Aesthetic construing : an inquiry into Kelly's personal construct theory
Date
1972
Authors
Ozerkevich, Michael John
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
A theory of the nature of aesthetic construing was developed from within the framework of George Kelly's (1955) Psychology of Personal Constructs. Subjects employed a modified version of Kelly's role construct repertory test in a multidimensional scaling of polished and unpolished rocks. It was found that artist subjects generated more complex patterns or scaling of the rocks than did the non-artist subjects. It was also found that artist subjects demonstrated a greater degree of permeability of constructs than did non-artist subjects in that the artist subjects were able to include more of a second sample of rocks within the descriptions which they had produced for the first set of rocks than were the non-artist subjects. In addition, 12 different indices reported in the literature on personal construct psychology as measures of cognitive complexity were examined. It was found that each measure of horizontal complexity in the repertory grid correlated highly with the corresponding measure of vertical or column complexity in the grid . Estimates of test-retest reliability of the 12 complexity indices were also obtained. Further development of grid complexity indices and their rationale was shown to be necessary for future inquiry, particularly in light of the finding that different indices produced different conclusions with respect to the generality of cognitive complexity across different domains of content.