Why Was Kelly's Theory Called the Jackass Theory???

Question

Please give me the answer of this question,I'm very curious and wonder the answer.Thank you for your help!!!

Answer 1

It's basically because Kelly claimed to focus on the animal (human) rather than the environmental forces that either pushed or pulled the animal into action. This was a new concept for the time. Previously it was just the push or pull theories describing motivation. A popular metaphor to distinguish between the basis of the two theories was that the push theory was like a carrot encouraging a mule to move while the pull theory was like a pitchfork encouraging a mule to move. Kelly rejected the notion of motivation and wanted to focus solely on the animal, which would be the mule in the metaphor. Just to be funny he went with jackass, which is similar animal for which the metaphor still works.