Meaningfulness of Self, Ideal and other as Related to Own vs Therapist's Personal Construct Dimensions

Abstract

Starting from Kelly's Psychology of Personal Constructs and a study by Cromwell and Caldwell (1962), the meaningfulness of self, ideal and other was investigated within the contexts of the client's vs the therapist's personal language dimensions. It was hypothesized that: (1) clients at the beginning of therapy will find their own personal language dimensions more meaningful than those of the therapist, as judged by two criteria of meaning—one internal and one external to Kelly's theory; (2) a positive relationship will be found between the two measures of meaningfulness. Findings give added support to Kelly's notions, and, in particular, to an approach to the assessment of meaningfulness suggested by this theory.

Psychological construing and meaningfulness in schizophrenia

“…This concept of 'extreme response style ' aroused considerable interest among psychometricians, and data were accumulated about its relationship to both pathology and meaningfulness (ODonovan, 1965 ;Hamilton, 1968). Kelly's personal construct theory also predicted that meaningful constructs would be rated extremely, and there is evidence to support this (Cromwell & Caldwell, 1962; Smith & Kendall, 1963;Landfield, 1965).The main aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that psychological constructs are meaningless to schizophrenics who obtain low scores on standard measures of psychological construing, by examining the extremeness of their ratings on a Semantic Differential using psychological and non-psychologcal scales. A subsidiary aim was to replicate the findings (McPherson et al, 1971) relating Grid Test and Dixon test scores as measures of psychological construing.Bannister (1962) and McPherson & Gray (1976) hypothesized that psychological 154 Joan W .…”

“…This concept of 'extreme response style ' aroused considerable interest among psychometricians, and data were accumulated about its relationship to both pathology and meaningfulness (ODonovan, 1965 ;Hamilton, 1968). Kelly's personal construct theory also predicted that meaningful constructs would be rated extremely, and there is evidence to support this (Cromwell & Caldwell, 1962; Smith & Kendall, 1963;Landfield, 1965).…”

Exploring the Usefulness of Kelly's Personal Construct Theory in Assessing Student Learning in Science Courses

“…There is evidence in the literature that individuals consider their own constructs more personally meaningful than supplied ones when interpreting their social environment (e.g. Bonarius, 1965;Isaacson, 1966;Landfield, 1965). However, these studies relied exclusively on subjects' own judgment of the relative meaningfulness of elicited versus provided constructs (Adams-Webber, 1979).…”

The Relationship between Aesthetic Judgment and Dogmatism

“…There is evidence that the tendency to make extreme ratings is a function of the meaningfulness of the rating task, an issue that has been investigated in personal construct psychology [10][11][12]. In the present context, Fairhall used a prototype of the Art Judgment Inventory used here [13].…”