ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Kenneth J. Gergen

Kenneth J. Gergen is a smart man who studies how people interact with each other. Imagine you are playing with your friends at school. You have your own thoughts and feelings, but your friends have their own thoughts and feelings too. Kenneth studies how everyone's thoughts and feelings affect each other when they play together.

Kenneth talks a lot about something called "social construction". Imagine you and your friends are building a castle out of blocks. You each have different ideas about how to build it, but you work together to make decisions and build the best castle you can. That's kind of what social construction is – people working together to create something.

Kenneth also talks about how people communicate with each other. When you talk to your friends, you use words, body language, and facial expressions to get your ideas across. Kenneth studies how people use these different things to talk to each other and what it means for the things they create together.

Overall, Kenneth J. Gergen is a smart man who studies how people interact with each other and build things together by communicating and sharing their ideas.