ASSIMILATIVE PROJECTION AND CONSTRUCT BALANCE IN THE REPERTORY GRID

Abstract

The relationship between the degree to which people see others as like themselves (assimilative projection) and the frequency with which they use positive adjectives to describe people was examined in the context of changing role perspectives. The assimilative projection scores of those persons who use a preponderance of positive over negative adjectives were found to be influenced by changes in role perspectives. By contrast, the assimilative projection scores of those persons whose use of adjectives was less ‘maldistributed’ were stable across roles. These results suggest that Boucher & Osgood's (1968) ‘Pollyanna hypothesis’ applies more precisely to persons whose views of themselves are influenced more readily by changing perspectives than to persons who maintain relatively stable conceptions of their own identities in relation to others. The results also have implications for repertory grid methodology, specifically for the practice of controlling for maldistribution. The effect of this control upon the mathematical structure of grids is examined.