PSY 3520 Module 6 Cognitive-Existential Theories Paper: Kelly's Personal Constructs, May's Existentialism and Mortality Research Example

Seeing Through Our Own Lenses: Kelly, May and Facing Mortality at Work

Student Name

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Thomas Edison State University

PSY-3520: Psychology of Personality

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Seeing Through Our Own Lenses: Kelly, May and Facing Mortality at Work

Introduction

Last winter, a nurse who had worked at our hospital for 25 years died suddenly. Coworkers responded in strikingly different ways: some threw themselves into work, some talked about changing their lives, some became more devoted to their faith and some grew irritable with anyone who seemed to dismiss her memory. These differences raised two questions this module addresses: how do people make sense of events in their own ways, and how do they respond when reminded of death?

Kelly's Personal Construct Theory

George Kelly proposed that each person is like a scientist who forms hypotheses about the world and tests them. Kelly (1955) argued that people understand events through personal constructs, bipolar dimensions such as kind versus selfish, safe versus dangerous or successful versus failing, which they use to interpret and anticipate experience. His fundamental postulate held that a person's processes are psychologically channeled by the ways in which they anticipate events. Because each person's construct system is unique, two people can experience the same event very differently. Kelly called his philosophical position constructive alternativism: the world can always be construed in alternative ways, so people are never trapped by their circumstances, only by their constructions of them.

Construct Systems and Change

Kelly described anxiety as the awareness that events lie outside the range of one's constructs and threat as the awareness of an imminent comprehensive change in core constructs. When a coworker dies, constructs such as "this hospital is a safe, stable place" may suddenly fail to account for events, producing anxiety. People may respond by revising constructs or by holding to old ones more rigidly.

The Repertory Grid

Kelly developed the role construct repertory test, later called the repertory grid, to elicit a person's constructs. A person compares people or situations in their life, saying how two are alike and differ from a third, producing constructs that are then used to rate all the elements. Winter (2003) reviewed the use of the repertory grid in psychotherapy research. He described how grids have been used to measure clients' construing, to compare people with different problems, to examine change during therapy and to relate features of construing, such as how rigid or loosely organized a construct system is, to outcomes. He concluded that the grid offers a flexible, individualized measure that captures personal meanings missed by standardized questionnaires, though it requires skill to administer and analyze.

May's Existential Psychology

Rollo May brought European existential philosophy to American psychology. He argued that anxiety is a normal part of human existence, arising from our awareness of freedom, responsibility and death. Normal anxiety, faced with courage, can lead to growth; neurotic anxiety arises when people avoid these realities. May emphasized that people are responsible for choosing their responses to life, and that facing death can make life more meaningful.

Testing Existential Ideas: Terror Management

Terror management theory, influenced by existential thinkers including Ernest Becker, proposes that awareness of death creates potential terror, which people manage by investing in cultural worldviews and self-esteem that offer symbolic immortality. Burke et al. (2010) meta-analyzed 277 experiments in which people were reminded of their own death, a manipulation called mortality salience, compared with control topics such as dental pain. Mortality salience produced moderate effects across studies, leading people to defend their cultural worldviews more strongly, favor people who share their values, react against those who criticize them and strive to bolster self-esteem. Effects were often larger after a delay, when thoughts of death were no longer in focus.

Understanding My Coworkers

Kelly's theory suggests that each coworker's reaction reflected a different construct system: one who construes life through competence versus failure might throw herself into work; one who construes through meaningful versus wasted might talk of changing her life. Terror management research suggests why some coworkers became more devoted to faith or more defensive of the nurse's memory: reminders of death lead people to cling to their worldviews and to those who share them. May would add that the loss could become an opportunity to face mortality with courage and to choose more meaningful lives.

Supporting Staff After a Loss

These ideas suggest that support after a death should allow people to make sense of the loss in their own ways rather than prescribing one response. Bereavement support, memorial events that honor the person and the hospital's values and access to counseling for those whose anxiety persists are consistent with both theories. Managers should expect irritability and defensiveness as normal reactions rather than misconduct.

Constructs in Therapy

Kelly developed fixed-role therapy, in which a client practices living for a few weeks as a character with a different set of constructs, testing whether new ways of seeing the world work better. The method reflects his view that people can try out alternative constructions as a scientist tries out hypotheses.

Comparing Kelly and May

Kelly's theory is cognitive: people are active interpreters whose constructs can be revised. May's is existential: people confront anxiety and death and must choose how to live. Both emphasize freedom, Kelly through alternative constructions and May through responsibility, and both reject the idea that people are fully determined by drives or reinforcement.

Limits

Repertory grid research uses diverse methods that make comparisons difficult. Mortality salience studies are laboratory experiments, and some recent replication efforts have found smaller or inconsistent effects. My coworkers' reactions are interpreted, not measured.

Conclusion

Kelly showed that people understand the world through personal constructs that can be changed, Winter showed that the repertory grid can capture those constructs systematically and Burke, Martens and Faucher showed that reminders of death lead people to defend their worldviews and self-esteem. Together with May's call to face anxiety with courage, these ideas explain why a single loss produced so many different responses, and how a workplace can support people as they make meaning in their own ways.

References

Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155-195. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352321

Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs. W. W. Norton.

Winter, D. A. (2003). Repertory grid technique as a psychotherapy research measure. Psychotherapy Research, 13(1), 25-42. https://doi.org/10.1093/ptr/kpg005