Construing the Athlete and Exerciser: Research and Applied Perspectives from Personal Construct Psychology

Abstract

This paper focuses on personal construct psychology (PCP; Kelly, 1955/1991) and its potential usefulness for the field of sport and exercise psychology. We begin with an overview of the philosophical roots and the key components of PCP followed by a discussion of the key methodologies commonly employed for a personal construct inquiry (e.g., repertory grid and laddering). Part of this discussion focuses on two elaborations of PCP in sport and exercise settings, namely performance profiling and multisource/360-degree feedback. Following this, we describe two case examples of how we have employed PCP in our professional practice. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for research and professional practice. Our overview of this framework's philosophical position, its key components, and the methodologies employed for a personal construct enquiry provide a foundation upon which others may seek to explore its usefulness for an array of research and professional endeavors in sport and exercise settings.

This manuscript is based on a paper presented at the 17th International Congress on Personal Construct Psychology (July 16–20, 2007, Brisbane, Australia) and benefited greatly from discussions with participants at this congress. The authors would like to thank David Savage for his informative correspondences and the following individuals for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this manuscript: Fay Fransella, Brian Gaines, Chris Laming, Robin Hill, and Susie Cook as well as the Associate Editor and two anonymous reviewers. Support for the writing of this manuscript was given by a Whitfeld Fellowship to the first author.

Notes

Direct quotations of Kelly (1955/1991) throughout this paper were taken from the 1955 publication which is currently no longer in print, whereas the 1991 publication is still in print. However, we have included the page numbers of the fundamental postulate and the 11 corollaries for both publications in Table 1.

Neimeyer et al. (2001) have described 10 heuristics to help guide researchers and practitioners in the administration and interpretation of a laddered interview.

From this example, it may be assumed that the emergent pole of a construct is always the preferred pole. It should be noted that this is not always the case.