Telic Systems Research

When questioned about their day-to-day activities, almost everyone will offer what we would call Telic Attractors  – such as ‘aspirations’, ‘hopes’, ‘desires’, ‘goals’, ‘aims’, or ‘objectives’ – as motivations or justifications for these activities; many will also offer what we would call Telic Repellers – such as ‘fears’, ‘problems’ or ‘threats’ – as additional motivations or justifications. When asked ‘what they have done with their lives’ over the long term, they will again offer Telic constructs – such as  ‘achievements’, ‘attainments’, ‘disasters’ and ‘failures’ - as representing the significant ‘milestones’ – both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ - in their lives.

In our research, we investigate the ways in which people:

• Acquire, formulate or adopt Telic Attractors and Repellers in the first place;

• Address (or fail to address) these Telic Attractors and Repellers via their day-to-day activities and long term plans;

• Modify, lose interest in, or entirely discard the Telic Attractors and Repellers that had previously been declared to be salient motives for their day-to-day activities and long-term plans;

• Account for and rationalise the occasional fundamental transformations, ‘epiphanies’ or ‘sea changes’ in their personal motivational frameworks.

In order to contextualise these aspects of individual ‘life situations’ and ‘life trajectories’, we also investigate:

• How the acquisition, addressing, modification and abandonment of Telic Attractors and Repellers is shaped and driven by the social, economic, cultural and institutional contexts in which these changes take place.

• How the individual’s pursuit of Telic Attractors and avoidance of Telic Repellers modifies these contexts.