Understanding Personal Contructs

The judgments we make about people are not all without merit. We have spent our whole lives trying to figure out other people and our judgment skills have been honed and well practiced. However, as we blindly assess the people we are in contact with we sometimes forget how much alike or not alike we really are.The Personal Construct Theory explains that we create certain truths about people and things to help explain the reality around us. For this post, I did an exercise in constructs by comparing people I know by simply writing down a few words that come to mind when I think of them. I think the results of this exercise show how things can easily seem so different at first glance and how relationships help to dictate our thoughts.

I first compared my sister, Bridget, with a kid I knew from high school, Dave, who I did not like very much. I must preface this by saying that I have always been friendly with Dave and we were more friends than rivals. But I always knew he would be someone I did not stay in contact with all my life because I just did not like certain things about him. The similarities between the two were their stubbornness and selfishness. Their differences were Bridget I saw as smart, shy, and nice while Dave I saw as vapid, loud and materialistic. Next I compared one of my best friends Peter and one of my best female friends Andria. I wrote that they both were nice and generous. For Peter I wrote loyal, easy going, and goofy. For Andria I wrote caring, engaging, and pretty. Lastly I compared myself with my sister Bridget. Like her, I wrote down smart, shy, and stubborn. However, instead of selfish and nice, I saw myself as calm and calculating.

This exercise made me realize how the type of relationship I have with someone may affect my initial thoughts about them. I do feel, at least in written form, that my values could be unrefined because I kept going to similar adjectives. I think I may have stereotyped a bit based on the relationships I have and gender. For instance, when I started the list for my sister, I went straight for her faults even though I am closest with her than most on the list and think very highly of her. With my two friends, I immediately wrote loyal for my male friend and pretty for my female friend. Loyalty is generally a best friend quality. Pretty, on the other hand, is not something necessary for a friendship. However, since she is a female the first thing to come to my head was how pretty she is.

As far as being fair and complete; I think that is almost impossible. While the assessments I made were fair in my mind, they are far from complete. All of the constructs I used could probably be applied to everyone on my list in some capacity. We are all made up the same traits but some are more prevalent in others. I did judge myself very favorably because I have a favorable view of myself. I included some of my faults because I am very aware of them. I think for people to develop rich and complex constructs they must first realize how much they have in common with the rest of the world. You could be just like your worst enemy and nothing like your best friend even on the surface. They key is to respect people’s strengths and remember your weaknesses when criticizing.