We Are How We Perceive, A Story Of Personal Constructs

Two men in crisp, fitted suits sitting a cross from each other, waiting for their steaks to arrive, and chatting over a glass of vintage wine. As the waitress places the steak in front of the man with slick black hair, he immediately lashes out saying the it is cooked medium-well instead of medium — a difference hard to measure.

This scene can be observed in a variety of ways. A lady watching could say the man in the suit is a big jerk and should speak in a more gentle tone. Another woman might become attracted to his assertiveness and desire to get what he wants. A fellow man in a similar suit could think it is appropriate behavior because he would act the same. Or the laid-back programmer could think what an asshole he is, that who cares if its medium or medium-well. Or maybe an oenophilia (someone who loves wine) completely ignores the human interaction and is curious which wine they are drinking. Or perhaps an aspiring chef is looking past the interaction and into the kitchen, dreaming of one day running her own restaurant.

The way we think of ourselves or other selves is what psychologists call your “personal construct”. The way we perceive an interaction, or sometimes the lack of perceiving an interaction, gives us an insight into what kind of person we are.

Brian Little talks about personal constructs in his book Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, where he states:

You each have been imputing traits, inferring projects, and weaving narratives. Each of these different ways of making assessments about others — through traits, projects, and narratives — helps us understand personality and well-being. But beyond helping us understand others, they also help us understand ourselves. The way you construe others has consequences for your well-being. Generally speaking, the more numerous the lenses or frames through which you can make sense of the world, the more adaptive it is. Having too few constructs or insufficiently validated ones can create problems, particularly when life is moving quickly and you are trying to make sense of it. Your constructs can cage you in, and then life does not go as well as it might otherwise.

George Kelly, who wrote the two-volume book The Psychology of Personal Constructs, proposes that “each person is like a scientist, actively testing, confirming, and revising hypotheses about people, objects, and events in their lives.” This happens to our long time friends and our new encounters.

When we meet a new person, we begin forming a personal construct of that person. How we view a person is how our mind makes sense of this person — forming a personal construct — rather than how the person actually is. As Maya Angelou says, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” And when someone tries to tell you who you are, they are telling you from their own perspective of you that they created in their own heads. In a sense, their opinions of the world has influenced their personal construct of you, and Angelou advises that you should not believe them for that reason.

Glenn Greenwald, in a recent Ted Talk on Why Privacy Matters(link to it), was asked about those people who believed that it was not possible for someone like Edward Snowden to only act out of intrinsic motivation; that he had to have some ulterior motive. Greenwald responded by saying that idea is a mere reflection of the person asking, which shows they are incapable of thinking that someone would do good for good’s sake and nothing else.

We build personal constructs of our family and best friends as well. Those constructs are much more intricate and complicated because we have seen much more of the person. If our good friend is changing and growing, we are likely to adapt and grow with them if it is in our own personality to adapt.

Personal constructs that are rigid cause more harm when the joints of the structure break or get damaged. Meaning that if we ourselves have fixed opinions of the world, we would form fixed opinions of our friends. When friends change (or we change), if there isn’t any synergy between our two personal constructs after the change, then there is likely to be some degree of separation. Brian Little states:

Those who have more constructs available for anticipating events or the challenges of changed environments are less at risk for experiencing anxiety. Those with very few personal constructs, particularly if those constructs have a very narrow range of convenience, may frequently be upended in their anticipation of events: their constructs just don’t apply to many of the new situations they need to deal with in life. In other words, the more limited one’s repertoire of personal constructs, the greater the anxiety and the fewer the degrees of freedom one has in anticipating and acting upon events in your daily life. This helps explain why your sister can’t seem to move beyond her divorce, in spite of all your attempts to give her new things to do. She treats everyone in terms of a simple construct. “trustworthy vs. will leave me in a flash like Sam did,” and in so doing she reduces her degrees of freedom and retreats from re-engaging with life and moving ahead.”

If you have a construct system that is primarily centered around one core construct, this means that you have very little wriggle room when that construct is challenged. In other words, to the extent that you have an overly dominant core construct along which much of your construing is organized, you have limited degrees of freedom in navigating your world. If, however, you have many independent personal constructs or several pairs of goggles through which to anticipate events, when one pair doesn’t work so well or is invalidated, you can switch to a different construct.”

An open mind doesn’t just mean open to new ideas. An open mind means the ability to form many independent and fluid personal constructs so that when new information enters the mind, we are able to adapt and remain in a fluid state rather than the rigid structure who’s core joint was damaged.

Thinking positively about others isn’t some self improvement trick. Thinking positively of others is actually a reflection of our thoughts on the world, which happen to be directed towards an individual person. The next time you form an opinion of someone, or critique the behavior of a random stranger at a restaurant, pause for a second and reflect: you might gain some insight into who you are.

Originally published at seekingintellect.com on October 24, 2014. Subscribe to the Seeking Intellect Newsletter