Personality Theory

Personality Theory

Cognitive theory of personality

Cognitive theory of personality is similar to the humanist, but it contains a number of significant differences. The founder of this approach is the American psychologist George Kelly (1905-1967). In his opinion, the only thing people want to know in life - that's what happened to him and that it will happen in the future. The main source of personal development, according to Kelly, is the environment, social environment. Cognitive theory emphasizes the influence of personality on the intellectual processes of human behavior. In this theory, every person is compared to the scientists test hypotheses about the nature of things, and makes forecasts of future events. Any event is open to multiple interpretations. The main concept in this direction is to "construct". This concept includes all the known features of cognitive processes (perception, memory, thinking and speech). Thanks to the constructs the person not only knows the world, but also establishes interpersonal relationships. Constructs that underlie these relationships are called personal constructs. Construct - a kind of classifier template of our perception of other people and themselves. Kelly discovered and described the main mechanisms of personal constructs, and also formulated the fundamental postulate and 11 corollaries. The postulate asserts that personal psychological processes channeled in such a way as to ensure maximum individual prediction of events. All other investigation refines this basic tenet. From the perspective of Kelly, each of us builds and tests hypotheses, in fact, solve the problem of whether this is a sports person or a non-sports, music or non-musical, intelligent or unintelligent, and so on, using relevant constructs (classifiers). Each construct has a "dichotomy" (two poles): "Sport - unsportsmanlike", "musical, unmusical," etc. A man chooses randomly one pole of the dichotomous construct, the outcome that best describes the event, i.e., has better predictive value. Some constructs are suitable for describing a small circle of events, while others have a wide range of applicability. For example, the construct "smart-stupid" is hardly suitable to describe the weather, but the construct of "good-bad" is actually suitable for all occasions.

People differ not only in the number of constructs, but also their location. Those constructs that are actualized in the mind quickly are called super ordinate, and are slower - subordinate. For example, if, having met a certain person, you immediately think of it in terms of whether it is wise or foolish, and only then - good or bad, then you construct a "smart-stupid" is a super ordinate, and the construct of "good- evil "- subordinate. Friendship, love, and all the normal relationship between people is possible only when people have similar constructs. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a situation in order to successfully communicate two persons, one of which is dominated by the construct of "honest-dishonest," and the other of such a construct is not at all (Cervone, 2010).

Construct the system is not a static entity but is in constant change under the influence of experience, i.e., the identity is formed and develops ...