Kelly, Meet Craik: A Role for Mental Models in Personal Construct Psychology

Abstract

Although both bodies of constructivist theory were originally developed by psychologists, and deal with how individuals and sets of individuals understand and navigate their worlds, there has been surprisingly little mutual acknowledgement let alone cross-fertilization between Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) and mental models. This article introduces mental models to the readership in PCP. It suggests how mental models theory and methods can sit within PCP, and add to theory about construing. We argue that mental models involve a specific process of construing, whereby people create a cognitive representation of a situation and apply causal logic to anticipate events and outcomes. Since the authors’ interest is in people-environment relationships, the article illustrates elicitation methods derived for our own mental models research, as an expansion of options to enrich PCP. These are semi-structured interviews within or away from landscapes (including transect walks); drawing methods supported by discussion; and focus groups with computer-aided visualization.