Dr. Tajuddeen A. Williams

Reflection on Cognitive Theories

· Personal Essays

Cognitive theory has not been my favorite theory to learn about but I have learned quite a bit about Kelly and how he viewed the self and personality. It was mentioned plenty of times in our reading that Kelly’s view was people are scientist (Boeree, n.d.). They see and attempt to understand the world by asking questions. He argued that peopled utilized the scientific process from hypothesis to observation. This process, according to Kelly, means your experiences, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, etc. and these things help you to anticipate the world.

Personal Construct Psychology (PCP), as he calls it, is much less of a theory because it was developed from the start as a complete psychology (Atherton, 2013). Kelly presented PCP as an alternative to behaviorism and psychodynamic theories. Under Kelly’s view of the person as a scientist in contrast to behaviorist, that we are actors rather than reactors. Kelly believed that personality development is a function of our cognitions. This is specifically how we make meaning out of the events in our lives (Morely, n.d.). For Kelly, person constructs are an individual’s conclusions, interpretations, or deductions about life and that PCP consisted of one fundamental postulate and eleven corollary assumptions. The fundamental postulate states: “A person's processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events” (Boeree, n.d.).

I spent a lot of time going over how Kelly viewed constructs. Kelly saw them as bi-polar (Boeree, n.d.) and that a construct isn’t a single term. It’s a dimension of meaning. The dimension of meaning for a person isn’t enough to understand a term, we also have to understand the contrast in order to fully understand how a person makes sense of their experience (Burr, 2012). Although people may have similar words to describe something, the dimension of meaning will be different for each person (Warren, Concepts, Constructs, Cognitive Psychology, and Personal Construct Theory, 1991). An example of this is comfort when it comes to describing a hotel. One person may think of comfort as being the atmosphere whereas another person may view comfort as being cozy in a room. Just as the positive terms one would use to describe the comfort level of a hotel, the polar opposite of those terms may be very different as well. It’s from those constructs that we begin to understand a person.

In an attempt to understand personal constructs, I started looking at things that I encounter every day in life. One of the things that I tend to read are memes. I noticed that through memes, people share their personal constructs with the world. Whether it is how they view behavior that they find objectionable or the opposite of that. People tend to vocalize how they view things without people really taking notice or realizing it. One example that I mentioned in this week’s discussion was about Good Guy Greg. In another example, there was a picture posted of a motorcycle parked at the front of the parking space as opposed to being back all the way in. The caption was something to the effect of “Good Guy Motorcycle Rider – Parks at the front of the parking space so you don’t get your hopes up”. What I noticed with these memes is that people’s personal constructs are shared by people and accepted by others as their own.

I’ve mentioned before in my other writings that I feel that each theory has a place in attempting to understand the human psyche. I don’t completely agree with everything I’ve come to understand about Kelly’s theory. I’m still partial to humanistic and psychoanalytical theories more so than cognitive. There are some similarities between psychoanalysis and personal construct theory (Warren, Psychoanalysis and personal construct theory: An exploration, 1990). However, I will say that I believe cognitive theory has made a huge impact in psychology. It’s from Kelly’s work, as well as Horney and Alder, that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) was formed. Having gone through CBT, I can definitely appreciate the work that was put in by these psychologist.

References

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