PSYC 2740 Lecture Notes - Life Studies, Elf, Warini

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2740
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Personality psychologists ask why do people do what they do? . Motives are often based on needs, states of tension within a person: as a need is satisfied, the state of tension is reduced, the state of tension is caused by a deficit. Ex: the need to eat creates the motive of hunger. The motive of hunger, in turn, causes the person to seek out food, think about food constantly, and perhaps even to see food in objects not normally thought of as food. Motives propel people to perceive, think, and act in specific ways that satisfy the need. Henry murray was one of the first researchers to develop a modern theory of motivation. According to murray, a need is a potentiality or readiness to respond in a certain way under certain circumstances it is a noun which stands for the fact that a certain trend is apt to recur .