Instincts and tension reduction

Bernard Brown

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1388

Instincts and tension reduction

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Abstract

Instinct and Tension Reduction is a theory of causation, or motivation, of behavior – causation from a behaviorist perspective, motivation from a mentalist perspective. The idea is that when an inherent instinct, such as a need for food, exceeds a threshold value we act to reduce the tension so caused. In other words, when our bodies need food we are motivated to act to reduce the feeling of the tension of hunger by obtaining food and ingesting it. This idea goes back at least as far as Sigmund Freud’s theory of drive that, sans tension, went on to underpin the behaviorist theories of Drive Reduction in the 1940s.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences
Editors	Virgil Zeigler-Hill, Todd K. Shackelford
Place of Publication	Cham, Switzerland
Publisher	Springer, Springer Nature
Pages	2271-2276
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Electronic)	9783319246123, 9783319280998
ISBN (Print)	9783319246109
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1388
Publication status	Published - 2020

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10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1388

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Instincts and tension reduction

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