Hello, I’m Wang Fang.

We try to understand what happens to and around us, use experience to predict the future and set goals, and remember meaningful moments as we build our knowledge of the world.Cognitionis this kind of psychological process.

Unlike psychoanalysis’s unconscious, behaviorism’s external reinforcement, or humanism’s free will, cognitive personality theories focus on internal information processing.Some people dream; others act. Some are optimistic; others pessimistic.

Why do people see the world so differently?One key is understanding their cognitive structures and concepts, and how they use them—what they notice, how they explain, and how they predict and adjust.

Cognitive personality psychologists therefore attribute personality differences to different ways of processing information. In other words,how a person thinks determines their personality.After the theories already introduced, this program’s last two places go to cognitive approaches.

Today’s subject is psychologistGeorge Kelly(1905–1967). An only child born to Kansas farmers, at four he traveled west with his parents in a covered wagon to homestead. They found barren land without water and had to return. Kelly retained that pioneer spirit—practical, exploratory, industrious—throughout his life and theory.

Kelly studied physics and mathematics, intending to become an aerospace engineer. Growing social interests led him to a master’s in educational sociology and then psychology. He earned his doctorate in 1931 and taught at Kansas State University.

During the Great Depression, rural western communities suffered. Kelly organized a traveling counseling clinic with his students to help farmers. Though his doctorate concerned dyslexia rather than clinical psychology, he tackled the dominant clinical school of the time with his customary practicality:psychoanalysis.。

Unexpectedly, it failed these clients. The farmers chiefly neededexplanations of what was happening and predictions of what would happen next.Their distress came from drought, dust storms, and economic fear, not excess sexual energy.