Personality and Personal Construct Logical Consistency

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Kelly's (6) theory of personal constructs suggests personality maladjustment occurs from the repeated use of invalid constructs. Chambers ( 1 ) suggested constructs' logical consistency is necessary for conflict-free, valid construction. A grid measure of lo,gical inconsistency ( 1 ) correlated with Cattell's 1 6 PF scores, suggesting neurotic maladjustment. Chambers and Sanders ( 4 ) later found alcoholics to be less logical. Chambers, Mahn, and Parsley ( 2 ) recently reported a curvilinear relation between logic and depression predicted by Neimeyer's personal construct theory of logic and depression. These studies support the link between logical inconsistency and neurotic forms of maladjustment. The present smdy extended chis line of inquiry. Logical inconsistency was predicted to correlate positively with the measure of neuroticism on the Eysenck Personality Inventory, positively with Chambers and O'Day's ( 3 ) Personal Construct Inventory measures of anxiety, guilt, and threat, and negatively with Crumbaugh and Maholick's ( 5 ) measure of purpose in life. Forty-six undergraduates with an approximate average age of 18 yr., participated for a small amount of academic credit. Subjects completed a coordinate grid ( 1 ) composed of self, mother, father, brother, sister, spouse (boy/girlfriend), same-sex friend, a disliked acquaintance, a recent acquaintance and ideal self. Subjects ranked these figures with respect to general similarity. This formed a square matrix of explicit ranks. Logical inconsistency was determined by finding Spearman correlations between the rows of explicit ranks, ranking these correlations across the rows to form implicit ranks and subtracting the explicit ranks from the implicit ranks. Logical inconsistency scores were the sums of the absolute values of these differences. As expected, inconsistency correlated with neuroticism ( r , ~ = .48, p < .01) , anxiety ( f r o = .44, # < .01) , guilt (740 = .52, p < .01) , threat (no = .52, # < .01) , and purpose in life (7:s = -.35, p < .05) . Pearson correlations were used. Degrees of freedom varied because some subjects did not complete all items. Association of logical inconsistency wich neurotic maladjustment is supported. Although based on a relatively small sample, the results are consistent with previous studies using many more subjects. These findings suggest further research wich the logic measure is warranted.