Personal construct theory

Personal construct theory (PCT) is a psychological theory of human cognition. Eddington said, "Science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience." George Kelly, the psychologist and creator of personal construct theory pushed this idea two steps further. He inferred that psychology as a science was an attempt to set in order the facts of human experience so that the psychologist could make good predictions about what people will do when confronted by new situations. He explicitly stated that each individual's psychological task is to put in order the facts of his or her own experience. Then each of us, like the scientist, is to test the accuracy of that constructed knowledge by performing those actions the constructs suggest. If the results of our actions are in line with what the knowledge predicted then we have done a good job of finding the order in our personal experience. If not, then we must be willing to change something: our interpretations or our predictions or both. This method of discovering and correcting our constructs is simply the scientific method used by all modern sciences to discover the truths about the universe we live in.

People develop constructs as internal ideas of reality in order to understand the world around them. They can be based on observations or experiences. Constructs are often POLAR which means opposite, with one construct of good another is bad. They can be expanded with new ideas.