Definition
An analogy used by George A. Kelly to help explain the personal construct theory’s view of the person as actively formulating hypotheses about the world, themselves, and others; testing them; and in case revising them in the light of the outcomes.
Introduction
In the first pages of his only published book, The Psychology of Personal Constructs, Kelly (1955) puts forward the proposal of having a look at man-the-scientist. In speaking of man-the-scientist, he refers to all mankind and not merely to a particular class of people who have publicly attained the stature of scientists. Psychologists, Kelly observes rather ironically, like to think of themselves as scientists, whose ultimate aim is to predict and control. “Yet, curiously enough,” Kelly (1955) goes on, “psychologists rarely credit the human subjects in their experiments with having similar aspirations. It is as though the psychologist were saying to himself, ‘I, being a psychologist, and therefore a scientist, am...
References
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Chiari, G. (2017). Man-the-Scientist (Kelly). In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_983-1
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