Abstract
Abstract The kernel of the Theory of Personal Constructs consists of 11 corollaries derived from the fundamental postulate that are usually thought of as empirical propositions. This article argues, following Smedslund (1988), that the corollaries may more properly be thought of as being necessarily true as a consequence of the implicative structure of language. This conclusion is based on evidence from a study in which 28 informants knowledgeable about the theory rated the extent to which various propositions were consistent with, or entailed by, the corollaries. Those propositions judged most consistent with the corollaries were then considered by 50 undergraduate psychology students who, for the most part, indicated that they believed them to be true and their negations to be false but who were also fairly readily able to think of exceptions to them. It is therefore suggested that the theory is capable of highly flexible interpretation and may be used as a resource to account for all behavior. Some implications of this reading of Kelly's theory are discussed
Published Version
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