Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.
The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus.
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Beyond the simplest example of instinct described above, instinctive behaviors can also be variable and responsive to the environment. Any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience, that is, in the absence of learning. Sea turtles, newly hatched on a beach, will automatically move toward the ocean. A joey climbs into its mother's pouch upon being born.[1] Honeybees communicate by dancing in the direction of a food source without formal instruction. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behavior, internal escape functions, and building of nests.
Other examples of clearly instinctive behaviors include many reflexes. A true instinct is distinguished from other behaviors by mechanism; they do not go through the brain. Rather, the stimulus travels to the spinal cord and the message is then transmitted back through the body, tracing a path called the reflex arc. Reflexes are similar to fixed action patterns in that most reflexes meet the criteria of a FAP. However, a fixed action pattern can be processed in the brain as well; a male stickleback's instinctive aggression towards anything red during his mating season is such an example. Examples of instinctive behaviors in humans include many of the primitive reflexes, such as rooting and suckling, behaviors which are present in mammals.
Some instinctive behaviors depend on maturational processes to appear. For instance, we commonly refer to birds "learning" to fly. However, young birds have been experimentally reared in devices that prevent them from moving their wings until they reached the age at which their cohorts were flying. These birds flew immediately and normally when released, showing that their improvement resulted from neuromuscular maturation and not true learning.[2]
While fixed action patterns and reflexes are clear examples of almost entirely instinctive behaviors, most behaviors are complex and consist of both instinctive and learned components. For instance, in imprinting a bird has a sensitive period during which it learns who its mother is. Konrad Lorenz famously had a goose imprint on his boots. Thereafter the goose would follow whomever wore the boots. The identity of the goose's mother was learned, but the goose's behavior towards the boots was instinctive. Similarly, sleeping in humans is instinctive, but how much and when one sleeps is clearly subject to environmental factors. Whether a behavior is instinctive or learned is common subject of nature versus nurture debates.
In a situation when two instincts contradict each other, an animal may resort to a displacement activity (q.v.).
Instinct gets its earliest thorough treatment in biological literature courtesy of the famous entomologist Jean Henri Fabre. Fabre considered instinct to be any behavior which did not require cognition or consciousness to perform. Fabre's inspiration was his intense study of insects, some of whose behaviors he wrongly considered fixed and not subject to environmental influence. [3]
Instinct as a concept fell out of favor in the 1920s with the rise of behaviorism and such thinkers as B. F. Skinner, which held that all behavior was learned. These beliefs, like Fabre's belief that most behaviors were simply reflexive, also proved to be too simplistic.
An interest in innate behaviors arose again in the 1950s with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen who made the distinction between instinct and learned behaviors. The modern definition of instinct is heavily built off their work.
The term "instinct" has had a long and varied use in psychology and was first used in 1870s by Wilhelm Wundt. By the close of the 19th century most repeated behavior was considered instinctual. In a survey of the literature at that time, one researcher chronicled 4000 human instincts, meaning someone applied the label to any behavior that was repetitive. As research became more rigorous and terms better defined, instinct as an explanation for human behavior became less common. In a conference in 1960, chaired by Frank Beach, a pioneer in comparative psychology and attended by luminaries in the field, the term was restricted in its application. During the 60's and 70's, textbooks still contained some discussion of instincts in reference to human behavior. By the year 2000, a survey of the 12 best selling textbooks in Introductory Psychology revealed only one reference to instincts, and that was in regard to Sigmund Freud's referral to the "id" instincts.. In this sense, instincts have become increasingly superfluous in trying to understand human psychological behavior.
Freudian Psychoanalysts have stated that instinct refers to human motivational forces (such as sex and aggression), sometimes represented as life instinct and death instinct. This use of the term motivational forces has mainly been replaced by the term instinctual drives.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow argued that humans no longer have instincts because we have the ability to override them in certain situations. He felt that what is called instinct is often imprecisely defined, and really amounts to strong drives. For Maslow, an instinct is something which cannot be overridden, and therefore while it may have applied to humans in the past it no longer does.[4]
The book Instinct (1961) established a number of criteria which distinguish instinctual from other kinds of behavior. To be considered instinctual a behavior must a) be automatic, b) be irresistible, c) occur at some point in development, d) be triggered by some event in the environment, e) occur in every member of the species, f) be unmodifiable, and g) govern behavior for which the organism needs no training (although the organism may profit from experience and to that degree the behavior is modifiable).
In a classic paper published in 1972[5], the psychologist Richard Herrnstein decries Fabre's opinions on instinct (see: In biology section).
Some sociologists argue that humans have no instincts, defining them as a "complex pattern of behavior present in every specimen of a particular species, that is innate, and that cannot be overridden." Said sociologists argue that drives such as sex and hunger cannot be considered instincts, as they can be overridden. This definitory argument is present in many introductory sociology and biology textbooks,[6] but is still hotly debated.
In the book An Instinct for Dragons[7] anthropologist David E. Jones suggests a hypothesis that humans, just like monkeys, have inherited instinctive reactions to snakes, large cats and birds of prey. Folklore dragons have features that are combinations of these three, which would explain why dragons with similar features occur in stories from independent cultures on all continents. Other authors have suggested that especially under the influence of drugs or in dreams, this instinct may give raise to fantasies about dragons, snakes, spiders, which makes these symbols popular in drug culture. The traditional mainstream explanation to the folklore dragons does however not rely on human instinct, but on the assumption that fossil remains of dinosaurs gave raise to similar speculations all over the world.
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