psychology-health

   
A personal construct is an organizational system that individuals use to weigh how things are similar to each other, and how they are different. People use their personal constructs to assess how a situation is, might be, or has been, so that they can try to predict how a situation will affect them. Kelly’s belief was that an individual uses their personal construct as their motivator for whether they will or will not do something, based on the anticipated end result.

A person’s behavior is affected by their constructs based on how they organize and interpret information regarding a particular social situation. Personal constructs differ from one person to the next, so the categories of the personal construct for one person may be entirely different to another. According to George Kelly (1955), “What moves people to act is their desire to know what the world has in store for them”(para.2).

     In a social situation where business is being discussed, one person may be comfortable and act in a confident and inquisitive way, while another individual might feel alienated or shy due to a lack of knowledge on the topic, and wish they were not present. If the situation were known to them beforehand, the second person may not have attended the function, but would be equally as confident as the first person, if they happened to be with another group of people who enjoyed discussing crafts and parenting. This different behavior is because each person has different personal constructs. We use our personal constructs to decide if we think we will feel good as a result of a situation, or to know how we can shape the situation to fulfill our best interest.

Reference

McAdams, D. (2006). The person: A new introduction to personality psychology. (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

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