Inconsistency and change in conceptual organization

Abstract

The effects of inconsistent attributions on the way judges organized their concepts of other people were studied. Using a variant of Kelly' (1955) grid methodology, measures of construct organization were taken before, after and during an impression formation task which stressed either consistent or inconsistent attributions. Before treatment, judges rated adjectives (e.g. warm) on a list of personality characteristics. After treatment, judges rated the contrasts (e.g. cold). During treatment, judges rated consistent or inconsistent combinations of these adjectives. The results indicated that judges managed inconsistency by weakening the relations among their dimensions of judgement, and by alternately disrupting and recovering their usual or normal way of structuring judgements of others. Subjects with strong conceptual relations tended to use central (defined by principal components analysis) patterns for organizing their judgements of inconsistent people while subjects with weaker conceptual relations tended to make more frequent use of peripheral ways of construing people. Following inconsistency, subjects with strong relations modestly loosened their organizations of constructs while subjects with weaker relations greatly tightened their organizations. Implications for the genesis of thought disorder and the relationship between construct organization and understanding were discussed.