Kelly Case

According to Kelly's theory, people function in the same way scientists do. They construct theories and hypotheses and test them against reality by preforming experiments. If the experiments support the theory, the theory is kept. If the experiments do not support the theory, the theory is rejected or modified. People perceive and organize their world of experiences by making hypotheses about their environment and testing them against the reality of daily life. Maria can be seen as a scientist when she wasn't sure how she wanted to deliver her third child; she took into consideration how she ended up having c-sections with her first two children because vaginal birth was out of the question after hours of unsuccessful labor. She researched and read as much as she could about which option was best and made a list of pros and cons as well as she had a consultation with her doctor to decide that a c-section was the best option. Maria can also be seen as a scientist when she had to find ways to get her children to do the things she wanted. She first tried telling them but that resulted in the children not listening and her loosing her temper. So she started making things into games, which lead to her children cooperating more and her not snapping at them.

An important personal construct of Maria and Carlos's is the idea about how to parent. They both believed that being a parent would be fun and that playing with their children is important along with caring for the children's physical needs. Carlos and Maria differ in that Carlos wants Maria to be a stay at home mother while Maria wants to at least work twenty hours a week and put the children in daycare. They also differ on little things like whether the children should open gifts on Christmas Eve or day and if grandparents should be allowed to babysit often. They both understood that parenting would be hard and that they would occasionally be tired.

What Kelly meant by the dichotomy corollary is that two things can be separate parts of the same thing: two mutually exclusive alternatives. This is necessary if a person is to anticipate the future correctly. We need to take into consideration not only similarities but also dissimilarities. An example of a dichotomous corollary in the case study is the similarities and differences that Maria and Carlos have in regards parenting.

An individual corollary is when two individuals view the same experience in two different ways. Because people construe events differ.