George Kelly Glossary

Foundations of Personal Construct Theory

Personal Construct Theory

Kelly's theory that people understand, anticipate, and respond to the world through individual systems of personal constructs. People continually interpret their experiences and revise their understanding when their expectations do not adequately predict events.

Constructive Alternativism

Kelly's philosophical position that reality exists, but there are many possible ways of interpreting or constructing that reality. No person's construction provides a complete view, and alternative constructions can be developed when existing ones no longer work well.

Construction

A person's interpretation or way of understanding reality. Different people may construct the same event differently because they approach it through different experiences and personal construct systems.

Fruitful Metaphor

Kelly's comparison of the ordinary person to a scientist. People form expectations about the world, behave in ways that test those expectations, observe what happens, and revise their understanding in much the same way that scientists develop and test hypotheses.

Person-as-Scientist

The idea that people actively develop explanations of events, make predictions based upon those explanations, test their predictions through experience, and modify their ideas when necessary.

Anticipation

The process of using one's construction system to predict or expect future events. Anticipation is central to Kelly's theory because people organize their understanding of the world partly so that they can predict what will happen.

Construction System

The organized system of personal constructs through which a person interprets experiences and anticipates events.

Validation

Confirmation through experience that a construct or anticipation successfully predicts events.

Invalidation

An experience showing that a construct or anticipation has failed to predict events adequately. Invalidation may lead a person to revise or reconstruct the existing construction system.

Reconstruction

Revising one's constructs or construction system when experience shows that existing ways of understanding the world are no longer adequate.

Personal Constructs

Personal Construct

An individual way of interpreting, distinguishing, and anticipating events. Constructs are personal because they reflect the individual's particular experiences and ways of understanding the world.

Bipolar Construct

A construct consisting of two contrasting poles. Kelly believed that people understand qualities through contrasts such as friendly-unfriendly, safe-dangerous, or generous-selfish.

Poles

The two contrasting ends of a bipolar construct.

Emergent Pole

The end of a construct representing the way in which two or more elements are perceived as similar.

Contrast Pole

The opposite end of a construct, representing the way another element differs from those grouped at the emergent pole.

Verbal Construct

A construct that can readily be expressed or identified through words.

Preverbal Construct

A construct that operates without a verbal label. People may use distinctions and expectations that affect their behavior even when they cannot easily put those distinctions into words.

Submerged Construct

A construct in which one pole is unavailable or denied even though the construct continues to influence the person's feelings and behavior.

Core Constructs

Constructs that are central to a person's identity and understanding of the self. Major changes to core constructs may threaten the person's sense of who he or she is.

Peripheral Constructs

Constructs that are less central to personal identity and therefore can usually be changed with less disruption to the person's overall construction system.

Fundamental Postulate and Corollaries

Fundamental Postulate

The central principle of Kelly's theory: people's psychological processes are directed by the ways in which they anticipate events. How a person thinks, feels, and behaves is influenced by how that person expects the world to operate.

Construction Corollary

People anticipate events by recognizing patterns and similarities in previous experiences. What has happened before provides the basis for predicting what may happen next.

Individuality Corollary

People differ from one another because they construct and interpret events differently.

Organization Corollary

Each person organizes individual constructs into a larger construction system. Constructs may be related hierarchically or in other organized patterns that allow the person to anticipate events.

Dichotomy Corollary

A person's construction system consists of a finite number of dichotomous, or bipolar, constructs. Each construct involves a contrast between two poles.

Choice Corollary

When choosing between alternatives, people generally select the one they believe offers the greatest opportunity to extend or clarify their construction system.

Range Corollary

Every construct is useful only within a limited range of events. No single construct can meaningfully be applied to everything.

Experience Corollary

A person's construction system changes as new experiences confirm or invalidate existing expectations. Experience therefore provides the opportunity for learning and reconstruction.

Modulation Corollary

The amount of change possible within a construction system depends partly upon how permeable its constructs are. Constructs that can incorporate new experiences allow greater change.

Fragmentation Corollary

A person may use different construction subsystems that are not completely consistent with one another. People can therefore think, feel, or behave differently in different roles or situations without necessarily possessing one perfectly unified system.

Commonality Corollary

People whose construction systems are similar are likely to experience, interpret, and respond to events in similar ways.

Sociality Corollary

Successful social interaction requires understanding how another person constructs the world. By attempting to understand another person's construction system, an individual can participate more effectively in a social relationship.

Organization and Change in Constructs

Superordinate Construct

A broader construct that includes or organizes other constructs beneath it within a person's construction system.

Subordinate Construct

A more specific construct organized beneath a broader construct in the construction system.

Constellation

A group of constructs that have become linked so that using one tends to bring the others with it. Such relationships can contribute to stereotyping when several characteristics are automatically assumed from a single judgment.

Tight Construction

Using constructs in a rigid and highly predictable manner. Tight construction can provide consistency and precision, but excessive tightness may reduce flexibility and encourage rigid conclusions.

Loose Construction

Using constructs flexibly so that relationships and predictions are less rigid. Loose construction permits exploration and creativity, but excessive looseness may make anticipation unreliable.

Creativity Cycle

A process of moving from loose construction to tighter construction. A person first explores alternative ways of construing a situation, then selects and tests a promising alternative more carefully.

Range of Convenience

The set of events or situations to which a particular construct can meaningfully be applied.

Comprehensive Construct

A construct with a broad range of convenience that can be applied to many different events or situations.

Incidental Construct

A construct with a relatively narrow range of convenience and therefore limited application.

Permeable Construct

A construct capable of incorporating new experiences or elements into its range of convenience.

Impermeable Construct

A construct that resists incorporating new experiences or elements and therefore permits relatively little modification.

Dilation

Broadening the range of a person's constructs so that they can include experiences that previously fell outside the construction system.

Constriction

Narrowing the range of one's constructs in order to reduce the number of experiences that must be interpreted or anticipated.

Elaboration

Developing or improving the construction system so that it provides a more useful understanding of experience and permits better anticipation of future events.

Extension Choice

Choosing an alternative that expands the construction system by exploring unfamiliar experiences or possibilities.

Definition Choice

Choosing an alternative that increases certainty and clarity within the existing construction system rather than expanding it into unfamiliar territory.

Constructs of Transition

Kelly used the idea of constructs of transition to describe experiences associated with changes or disruptions in a person's construction system.

Constructs of Transition

Kelly's way of understanding experiences commonly described as emotions or feelings that occur when a person's construction system is changing, challenged, or failing to anticipate events successfully.

Anxiety

The awareness that events fall outside the useful range of one's existing construction system. The person realizes that current constructs are not adequate for understanding or anticipating what is happening.

Threat

Awareness that a major change is about to occur within one's core constructs. Because core constructs help define personal identity, such change may be experienced as threatening to the self.

Guilt

The experience that occurs when a person's behavior is inconsistent with important core constructs concerning who that person believes himself or herself to be.

Aggression

The active attempt to extend or impose one's construction system upon reality. In Kelly's usage, aggression does not necessarily mean violence and may include assertive attempts to change circumstances.

Hostility

The continued attempt to force evidence to fit a construction that has already been repeatedly invalidated. Rather than changing the construct, the person insists that the construct must still be correct.

Psychopathology and Therapy

Psychological Disorder

In Kelly's theory, a pattern in which a personal construction continues to be used repeatedly despite consistent evidence that it does not adequately anticipate events.

Reconstruction

The therapeutic process of developing alternative ways of construing events when existing constructs no longer work effectively.

Movement

Change within the person's construction system. Kellian therapy encourages clients to experiment with alternative constructions rather than remaining trapped within unsuccessful ones.

Role-Playing (Enactment)

A therapeutic method in which a person temporarily takes another role or perspective in order to explore alternative ways of construing oneself, another person, or a relationship.

Fixed-Role Therapy

Kelly's therapeutic technique in which a client temporarily lives according to a deliberately constructed alternative personality or role. The purpose is not to replace the client's personality but to demonstrate that alternative ways of thinking and behaving are possible.

Character Sketch

A description of oneself, usually written in the third person, used in fixed-role therapy to help identify the constructs through which the person currently understands the self.

Fixed-Role Sketch

A description of an alternative fictional person constructed for the client to enact during fixed-role therapy. The new role encourages the client to experiment with constructs different from those normally used.

Assessment and the Repertory Grid

Role Construct Repertory Test

Kelly's assessment procedure for identifying the personal constructs a person uses to understand important people and relationships. It is commonly known as the repertory grid or rep grid.

Repertory Grid (Rep Grid)

A structured technique used to identify and compare a person's personal constructs. It can be used for assessment, self-discovery, therapy, and research.

Elements

The people, objects, situations, or other examples that a person compares when completing a repertory grid.

Similarity Pole

In the repertory grid procedure, the pole representing the important way in which two of three elements are perceived as similar.

Contrast Pole

The opposite pole representing the way the third element differs from the two similar elements.