 |
 |
 |
Psychology of Communication: personality
|
|||
|
Psychology of Communication: personality
|
Kelly placed the emphasis on cognition in personality development. Cognition includes the processes involved in thinking, problem solving and predicting events in the environment and Kelly believed that each of us acts like a natural scientist in that one of our prime needs is to predict and control events in our environment. We think about what happens to us and we construct theories about what's going on, attempting to satisfy the drive to make sense of things. If you ask your normally helpful Communication Studies lecturer (!) for help and she gives you the brush-off, you don't just leave it at that. You try and figure out a reason: did you ask in the wrong way? had you done something to upset her? perhaps she's got problems with the management? You'd cast your mind back over her and your behaviour and try to work out why this has happened, establishing a theory or two and trying to see how they fit the observed facts - just like a scientist in fact: 'man creates his own ways of seeing the world in which he lives; the world does not create them for him. He builds constructs and tries them on for size.' (1963: 12) In an uncertain universe, the constructs we establish should, like a scientific hypothesis, also have predictive power. According to the philosopher of science, Karl Popper, the proper scientific method is to establish a hypothesis and then seek to falsify it. We can never confirm a scientific hypothesis; the best we can claim for a hypothesis can only ever be that it has so far successfully withstood such and such a series of tests intended to falsify it. Kelly recognizes, however, that, in our personal constructs, we will not always proceed like the 'good' scientist and may often practice unsound science, seeking confirmation of our hypotheses, rather than seeking to falsify them. We don't always simply establish a hypothesis and test it against observed facts in an entirely disinterested and neutral fashion. Rather, it may well happen that we actively seek confirmation of the hypotheses we have established. Kelly takes the example of a man who construes his neighbour as hostile, i.e. that his neighbour will seek to do him harm, given the opportunity. He tests this hypothesis by throwing rocks at his neighbour's dog. When the neighbour responds angrily, 'the man may then believe that he has validated his construction of his neighbour as a hostile person. (1963: 13)
Kelly argued that social cognition consists of the constant development, testing and, possibly, discarding of such theories. Although we will develop theories about all kinds of things in our environment, the prime focus of our concern is other people and what makes them tick and Kelly saw his theory as being restricted 'more particularly, to problems of interpersonal relationships'. (1963: 11)
In Kelly's view we all develop a set of personal constructs which we use to make sense of the world and the
people in it. The constructs are bipolar (i.e. they have two ends), or dichotomous and will vary from one person to another. Thus, his psychology is a psychology of individual differences:
People can be seen as differing from each other, not only because there might have been differences in the events which they have sought to anticipate, but also because there are different approaches to the anticipation of the same events.
(1963: 55)
They might consist of, say, 'sensitive/unfeeling', 'thoughtful/thoughtless', 'tough-minded/easy-going', 'honest/dishonest'. Each of us has a whole 'repertoire of such constructs which we apply to and test on the people around us. So, for example, a student of mine might hypothesise that I am pretty easy-going and so hypothesise that I am likely to accept sloppy work. When that turns out not to be true, the construct is revised. The student may then attempt to apply her construct of me as dishonest and predict that I will take a bribe for better marks. When I take the money, the construct is supported.
It's important to note the word 'personal' in 'personal construct theory'. We won't all have the same constructs in our repertory. Each individual has her own set of constructs. Within the set of constructs,
... the person builds his life upon one or the other of the alternatives represented in each of the dichotomies. This is to say that he places relative values upon the ends of his dichotomies. Some of the values are quite transient and represent merely the convenience of the moment. Others are quite stable and represent guiding principles. Even the stable ones are not necessarily highly intellectualized - they may appear, rather, as appetitive preferences.
(1963: 65)
To find out how a person's construct system worked, Kelly developed what became known as a repertory
grid. The therapist asked clients to think about people they knew and find words to describe them - that
provides the therapist with the main constructs. The main constructs are then arranged in a grid and the
client's assessment of other significant people is noted down on the grid. In this way, by seeing if certain
constructs were likely to cluster together, the therapist could come to see if the client had distinctive ways of
understanding the world.
Depending on the type of practical work you are developing it may be important for you to measure your audience members' personal constructs. This may be especially so if you anticipate that they may be considerably different from your own, perhaps with particular respect to their attitudes towards the subject of your project.
You will almost certainly wish to gauge their attitudes to your finished artefact. Osgood's semantic differential may be one way of doing that, but it has the disadvantage that it provides the respondents with the bipolar constructs. Since, according to Kelly, we all have a different repertory of constructs, it may be more appropriate to let respondents choose their own. A possible method is shown on the right.
Psychoanalytic theories
Humanistic theories
Social learning theory
Trait theories
Personality measurement
|