Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

instinct

 
Dictionary: in·stinct   (ĭn'stĭngkt') pronunciation
 
n.
  1. An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli: the spawning instinct in salmon; altruistic instincts in social animals.
  2. A powerful motivation or impulse.
  3. An innate capability or aptitude: an instinct for tact and diplomacy.
adj. (ĭn-stĭngkt')
  1. Deeply filled or imbued: words instinct with love.
  2. Obsolete. Impelled from within.

[Middle English, from Latin īnstīnctus, impulse, from past participle of īnstinguere, to incite : in-, intensive pref.; see in–2 + stinguere, to prick.]


Search unanswered questions...
Enter a word or phrase...
All Community Q&A Reference topics
 

The concept of instinct is an attempt to explain why some kinds of behaviour develop consistently in a given species across a wide range of environments. Each species of animal exhibits some characteristic forms of behaviour that have this developmentally robust quality. Bees, for example, dance to indicate the location of pollinating flowers, and they do this with no formal instruction. When a type of behaviour develops in this way, without the need for learning or any other environmental input beyond the bare minimum for physical survival, it is usually attributed to a strong internal force that pushes development in certain directions rather than in others. It is to this idea of a strong internal force that the notion of instinct refers.

Though popular in the nineteenth century, the concept of instinct fell into disrepute during the early decades of the twentieth century. The rise of ethology in the 1940s led to a resurgence of interest in the concept. Led by Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, the ethologists argued that even learning — a paradigmatically non-instinctive kind of development — often required certain predispositions. The search-space of possible hypotheses was just too large to be explored successfully without the aid of some innate guide. The distinction between instinct and learning was not, therefore, an exclusive one: rather, many forms of learning required an instinctual support.

Though relatively uncontroversial for explaining animal behaviour, applying the notion of instinct to human behaviour has had a much more chequered history (see sociobiology). Nineteenth-century thinkers such as Darwin and Freud were quite happy to explain some human behaviour in terms of instincts, but in the twentieth-century psychologists were much more reluctant to do so. This is because psychology was dominated for much of the century by the view that the mind is a ‘blank slate’ upon which experience writes what it needs. It was not until cognitive scientists, such as Noam Chomsk, began, in the 1950s, to call attention to the problems with this view, that psychologists again began to take seriously the idea of innate constraints on learning.

Chomsky did for language what the ethologists had done for learning in animals: he pointed out that learning a language would be impossible without some predispositions to learn certain things. The distinction between learning and instinct was once again shown to be more subtle than the way in which it was often presented. Language is a good example, because, although it has to be learned, the learning is guided by innate rules, unlike, say, learning to play chess. In Darwin's apt phrase, the ability of humans to learn language is ‘an instinctive tendency to acquire an art’. The psychologist Steven Pinker has made this point vividly in his book The Language Instinct (1994).

The concept of instinct does not, therefore, entail an inflexible notion of development. On the contrary, it is quite compatible with the idea that developmental outcomes are contingent on environmental conditions, and with the idea that learning plays an important part in development. In contemporary cognitive science, developmental outcomes are seen as the result of a complex interplay of innate programs and environmental inputs. The innate programs do not take the form ‘Thou shalt’, but rather specify disjunctive rules such as ‘if … then …’. The environmental inputs determine whether the rules are applied or not. In this model of development, the disjunctive rules correspond to instincts.

— Dylan Evans

Bibliography

  • Lehrman, D. S. (1953). Critique of Konrad Lorenz's theory of instinctive behaviour. Quarterly Review of Biology, 28(4), 337-63.
  • Tinbergen, N. (1951). The Study of Instinct. Clarendon Press, Oxford
 
Thesaurus: instinct
Top

noun

  1. An innate capability: aptitude, aptness, bent, faculty, flair, genius, gift, head, knack, talent, turn. See ability/inability, approach/retreat.
  2. The power to discern the true nature of a person or situation: insight, intuition, intuitiveness, penetration, sixth sense. See thoughts.

 
Antonyms: instinct
Top

n

Definition: gut feeling, idea
Antonyms: knowledge, reason


 

Involuntary response by an animal, resulting in a predictable and relatively fixed behaviour pattern. Instinctive behaviour is an inherited mechanism that serves to promote the survival of an animal or species. It is most apparent in fighting and sexual activity. The simplest form is the reflex. All animals have instinct, but, in general, the higher the animal form, the more flexible the behaviour. Among mammals, learned behaviour often prevails over instinctive behaviour.

For more information on instinct, visit Britannica.com.

 
Philosophy Dictionary: instinct
Top

(Latin, instinctus, impulse or urge) The term implies innately determined behaviour, inflexible to change in circumstance and outside the control of deliberation and reason. The view that animals accomplish even complex tasks by nature and not by reason was common to Aristotle and the Stoics, and the inflexibility of their routines was used in defence of this position as early as Avicenna. A continuity between animal and human reason was proposed by Hume, and followed by sensationalists such as the naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The theory of evolution prompted various views of the emergence of stereotypical behaviour, and the idea that innate determinants of behaviour are fostered by specific environments is a guiding principle of ethology. In this sense it may be instinctive in human beings to be social, and for that matter to reason. See also animal thought.

 

[De]

A fixed pattern of behaviour which has genetic origins and which appears in all normal animals within a given species.

 

A complex, inborn adaptive response; an unlearned, fixed pattern of reflexes. If the responses are learned, the behaviour pattern is called a habit.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: instinct
Top
instinct, term used generally to indicate an innate tendency to action, or pattern of behavior, elicited by specific stimuli and fulfilling vital needs of an organism. Examples of almost purely instinctive behavior are found in the behavior of many lower animals, in which activity (often quite complex) is performed that is not based upon past experience, e.g., reproductive and food-gathering activity in insects. Instinctive behavior generally acts as an initiator or triggering mechanism to arouse the organism, and it is modified by learned behavior as well as innate regulatory mechanisms. For example, nest-building by birds is a complex activity triggered by instinctive drives and modified by environmental conditions, such as the availability of materials and sites. Among animals, fixed patterns of instinctive behavior include fighting, courtship behavior, and escape; even these can usually be shown to be modified by experience (see ethology). Freud used the term instinct when referring to human motivational forces, such as sex and aggression. Sociobiologists and ethologists such as Konrad Lorenz have sought to understand social behaviors in terms of instincts, among humans as well as other animals. The usage of the term among psychologists has largely died out; today, motivational forces among humans are generally referred to as instinctual drives.


 
Psychoanalysis: Instinct
Top

The notion of instinct is usually linked to the field of ethology or the psychology of animal behavior. It corresponds to a specific program of action for a species that is genetically transmitted and theoretically independent of individual experience. Given a particular situation, this programming activates a specific set of neurophysiological and endocrine responses. Modern research in ethology tends to limit the exclusive role of heredity in the determination of instinct and focus instead on the role of epigenesis.

In Sigmund Freud's work, and thus in psychoanalysis, the notion of instinct must be discussed on the one hand in terms of its differentiation from the notion of the drive and on the other hand in its own, animal acceptation.

Instinct falls under the category of what is inherited, that is, within the history of a species. By contrast, the drive belongs to the subject's individual history. In fact, it is the fundamental vector of that history. In mental life, it is experienced through representatives, which in the course of psychical processes are differentiated into ideational representatives of objects and words, on the one hand, and representatives of affects on the other. Anchored in the somatic, the drive becomes psychical in its trajectory from its source to its aim. Among its characteristics, its capacity to trace a progressive course towards a real satisfaction or a regressive course towards a hallucinatory satisfaction offers the subject a flexibility of functioning that contrasts with the relative rigidity of instinct.

On several occasions, Freud hypothesized the existence in human beings of a collection of instincts analogous to those of animals. These instincts would form the kernel of the unconscious; and primal fantasies, as the inherited representative images of phylogenesis, would flow from them. For Freud, the instinct exists as a preliminary phase, before that of the drive, and during a process of psychical disturbance, the drive could revert to the level of instinct. Current studies of psychosomatic disorders emphasize just such a "regressive" return to instinct.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1915c). Instincts and their vicissitudes. SE, 14: 109-140.

——. (1915e). The unconscious. SE, 14: 159-204.

——. (1918b [1914]). From the history of an infantile neurosis. SE, 17: 1-122.

—CLAUDE SMADJA

 
Science Dictionary: instinct
Top

Behavior that is not learned but passed between generations by heredity.

 
World of the Mind: instinct
Top
St Thomas Aquinas wrote that animal judgement is not free but implanted by nature. Thus, from an early time, instinctive behaviour was regarded as the counterpart to voluntary behaviour. In everyday, though not in scientific, speech the term 'instinct' is still used to imply 'without thought'. For example, if I heard a taxi driver say, 'I instinctively stamped on the brakes', I would assume that he meant that his behaviour was reflex or involuntary, and not that he was born with an innate ability to apply the brakes in motor cars.

The associationists believed that human behaviour is maintained by the knowledge of, and desire for, particular consequences of behaviour, and they looked upon notions of instinct with disfavour. However, John Locke did concede that there was 'an uneasiness of the mind for want of some absent good. ... God has put into man the uneasiness of hunger and thirst, and other natural desires ... to move and determine their wills for the preservation of themselves and the continuation of the species' (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690). Francis Hutcheson argued that instinct produces action prior to any thought of the consequences (An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of Passions and Affections, 1728). Thus Hutcheson made instinct into a kind of motivational force, and this concept was taken up by the 19th-century rationalists, such as William James, who conceived of human nature as a combination of blind instinct and rational thought.

The irrational forces in man's nature were emphasized by Freud, but the ideas of William McDougall (1871–1938) probably had a greater influence upon the scientific development of the concept of instinct. McDougall regarded instincts as irrational and compelling motivational forces. He enumerated particular instincts, each of which was accompanied by an emotion. Examples are: pugnacity and the emotion of anger; flight and the emotion of fear; repulsion and the emotion of disgust (Instincts and their Vicissitudes: Collected Papers, 1915). McDougall's views do not find favour with modern psychologists because they are derived from subjective experience and are therefore hard to verify. There is inevitable disagreement among psychologists as to the number of instincts that should be allowed.

A different line of thought was initiated by Charles Darwin. In his Origin of Species (1859), Darwin treated instincts as complex reflexes that were made up of inherited units and therefore subject to natural selection. Such instincts would evolve together with other aspects of the animal's morphology and behaviour. Darwin laid the foundations of the classical ethological view propounded by Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen. See ethology.

Lorenz maintained that animal behaviour included a number of fixed-action patterns that were characteristic of species and largely genetically determined. He subsequently postulated that each fixed-action pattern or instinct was motivated by action-specific energy. The action-specific energy was likened to liquid in a reservoir. Each instinct corresponded to a separate reservoir, and when an appropriate releasing stimulus was presented the liquid was discharged in the form of an instinctive drive which gave rise to the appropriate behaviour. Tinbergen proposed that the reservoirs, or instinct centres, were arranged in a hierarchy so that the energy responsible for one class of activity, such as reproduction, would drive a number of subordinate activities, such as nest building, courting, and parental care.

The concept of instinct that is identified with classical ethology does not find favour with the majority of present-day behavioural scientists, for two main reasons. The first reason is connected with the idea that there are instinctive forces, or drives, that determine certain aspects of behaviour. Although the notion of drive as an energizer has been very influential in psychology, it involves a misuse of the concept of energy. In the physical sciences, energy is not a causal agent but a descriptive term arising from mathematically formulated laws. Analogous laws can be formulated for animal behaviour, but they do not lead to a concept of energy that corresponds to the notions of drive popular with the early psychologists and ethologists. Although the idea of drive as an energizer of behaviour has intuitive appeal, this is not nowadays regarded as sufficient justification for a scientific concept. In addition there are empirical problems. Early psychologists sought to identify a drive for every aspect of behaviour: a hunger drive responsible for feeding, a thirst drive, a sex drive, etc. It proved impossible to classify animal behaviour in this way without resorting to a reductio ad absurdum involving drives for thumb sucking, nail biting, and other minutiae of behaviour. A more modern view is that animals choose from among the set of alternative courses of action that is available at a particular time, in accordance with certain precisely formulated principles of decision making. This approach obviates the view that animals are driven by instinctive forces to perform particular behaviour patterns.

The second reason for abandoning the classical concepts of instinct is an objection to the implication that certain aspects of behaviour are innate in the sense that they develop independently of environmental influences. Most scientists now recognize that all behaviour is influenced both by the animal's genetic make-up and by the environmental conditions that exist during development. The extent to which the influences of nature and nurture determine behaviour varies greatly from activity to activity and from species to species. For example, the vocalizations of pigeons and doves are relatively stereotyped and characteristic of each species, and are not influenced by auditory experience after hatching. The vocalizations of other birds, however, may depend heavily upon such experience, as in the strongly imitative birds, or they may be partly influenced by experience. For example, chaffinches will learn the song they hear during a particular sensitive period of early life, provided it is similar to the normal song.

While the influence of particular genes may be necessary for the development of a behaviour pattern, it is never a sufficient condition. All types of behaviour require a suitable embryonic environment for the correct nervous connections etc. to develop. Normally, the physiological medium provided by the parent is designed to ensure that normal embryonic development occurs. Just as the parent provides an environment suitable for the development of the embryo, so it may provide an environment suitable for the development of a juvenile. Thus a chaffinch is normally reared in an environment in which it inevitably hears the song of other chaffinches, and so it develops the song that is characteristic of its own species.

Even apparently stereotyped activities may, upon closer examination, be shown to be influenced by the environment. For example, the newly hatched chicks of herring gulls peck at the tip of the parent's bill, which bears a characteristic red spot on a yellow background. The chick's behaviour induces the parent to regurgitate food. The behaviour is typical of all newly hatched chicks, is performed in an apparently stereotyped manner, and would appear to be a classic example of instinctive behaviour. Upon closer examination, however, it can be seen that the initial behaviour of individual chicks varies considerably in force and rapidity of pecking, angle of approach, and accuracy. As the chicks gain experience their pecking accuracy improves, and the pecking movements become more stereotyped. Some of these changes are due to maturation. The chicks become more stable on their feet as their muscles develop, and their pecking coordination improves. Some of the changes are due to learning. Initially the chicks peck at any elongated object of a suitable size. Although the red spot on the parent's bill is attractive to them, it is not their only target. Once the chicks begin to receive food they learn to exercise greater discrimination. It is not surprising that the behaviour of different chicks develops along similar lines, because in the natural environment they are all confronted with a similar situation. Practice and experience in similar situations lead to similar results, and the behaviour of the older chick consequently becomes more and more like that of its peers.

The concept of instinct has undergone many changes over the years. Whereas, at one time, instinctive behaviour was seen as inborn, stereotyped, and driven from within, the modern approach is to treat the innate, the reflex, and the motivational aspects as separate issues. While much animal and human behaviour is innate in the sense that it inevitably appears as part of the repertoire under natural conditions, this does not mean that genetic factors are solely responsible. Modes of learning that are characteristic of the species may be just as important. Much of the nature–nurture controversy, particularly that associated with sexual and racial differences among humans, results from a failure to recognize the vast complexity of developmental processes.

(Published 1987)

— D. J. McFarland

    Bibliography
  • Hinde, R. A., Hinde, J. S., and Head, J. J. (1987). Instinct and Intelligence.


 
Veterinary Dictionary: instinct
Top

A complex of unlearned responses characteristic of a species.

  • herd i. — the instinct or urge to be one of a group and to conform to its patterns of behavior.
 
Word Tutor: instinct
Top
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: n. - Inborn pattern of behavior often responsive to specific stimuli.

pronunciation I think most people have a natural instinct to rebel. — Elvis Presley

 
Quotes About: Instinct
Top

Quotes:

"Instinct is untaught ability." - Alexander Bain

"The active part of man consists of powerful instincts, some of which are gentle and continuous; others violent and short; some baser, some nobler, and all necessary." - Francis W. Newman

"It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves." - James Russell Lowell

"A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Instinct is the nose of the mind." - Madame de Girardin

"What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life." - Henry David Thoreau

See more famous quotes about Instinct

 
Wikipedia: Instinct
Top

Instinct is the inborn behavior of a living organism that is not learned. Since 1910, most scientific journals consider the term outdated although it remains popular among the general public and a number of scientists. Instincts are thought to occur as fixed action patterns. These fixed action patterns are unlearned and inherited. Problems occurred when it was discovered that stimuli can be variable due to imprinting in a sensitive period. An example of this are baby ducks following a pig as if it were their mother who later, when they grew up, wanted to have sex with pigs.

Speculated examples of instinctual fixed action patterns can be observed in the behavior of animals, which perform various activities (sometimes complex) that are believed not to be based upon prior experience, such as reproduction, and feeding among insects. For example, sea turtles hatched on a beach automatically move toward the ocean and honeybees communicate the direction of a food source by dancing, all without formal instruction. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behavior, internal escape functions, and building of nests. Another term for the same concept is innate behavior.

Instinctual actions - in contrast to actions based on learning which are served by memory and which provide individually stored successful reactions built upon experience - have no learning curve, they are hard-wired and ready to use without learning, but do depend on maturational processes to appear.

Biological predispositions are innate biologically vectored behaviors that can be easily learned. For example in one hour a baby colt can learn to stand, walk, glide, skip, hop and run. Learning is required to fine tune the neurological wiring reflex like behavior. True reflexes can be distinguished from instincts by their seat in the nervous system; reflexes are controlled by spinal or other peripheral ganglia, but instincts are the province of the brain. It is very difficult to separate biological cause from learning effects due to epigenetics. Experience will change gene expression which is some cases can be transmitted as predisposition toward a particular behavior to one's children. The number of genes and their location can change protein production which can be effected by learning and the environment. Changing the environment will change what the gene does in future generations.

Contents

Overview

Technically speaking, any event that initiates an instinctive behavior is termed a key stimulus (KS) or a releasing stimulus. Key stimuli in turn lead to innate releasing mechanisms (IRM), which in turn produce fixed action patterns (FAP). More than one key stimulus may be needed to trigger a FAP. Sensory receptor cells are critical in determining the type of FAP which is initiated. For instance, the reception of pheromones through nasal sensory receptor cells may trigger a sexual response, while the reception of a "frightening sound" through auditory sensory receptor cells may trigger a fight or flight response. The neural networks of these different sensory cells assist in integrating the signal from many receptors to determine the degree of the KS and therefore produce an appropriate degree of response. Several of these responses are determined by carefully regulated chemical messengers called hormones. The endocrine system, which is responsible for the production and transport of hormones throughout the body, is made up of many secretory glands that produce hormones and release them for transport to target organs. Specifically in vertebrates, neural control of this system is funneled through the hypothalamus to the anterior and posterior pituitary gland. Whether or not the behavioral response to a given key stimuli is either learned, genetic, or both is the center of study in the field of behavioural genetics. Researchers use techniques such as inbreeding and knockout studies to separate learning and environment from genetic determination of behavioral traits. The definitions of what constitutes instinct in humans beyond infancy is conjectural. It could be said that as well as obvious instincts such as breathing, sex-drive, desire to communicate, etc., humans also have an instinct toward knowledge[citation needed]. The will to invent solutions to requirements, to present self and possessions aesthetically and to be organised economically, culturally, religiously and politically could be described as instincts to survival, which are further enhanced by learned behaviors which are not instinctive.

In a situation when two instincts contradict each other, an animal may resort to a displacement activity.Some sociobiologists and ethologists have attempted to comprehend human and animal social behavior in terms of instincts. 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.

Evolution

Instinctive behavior can be demonstrated across much of the broad spectrum of animal life. According to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, a favorable trait, such as an instinct, will be selected for through competition and improved survival rate of life forms possessing the instinct. Thus, for evolutionary biology, instincts can be explained in terms of behaviors that favor survival.

A good example of an immediate instinct for certain types of bird is imprinting. This is the behaviour that causes geese to follow around the first moving object that they encounter, as it tends to be their mother. Much work was done on this concept by the psychologist Konrad Lorenz. Another important aspect of imprinting is sexual selection[1]. Young birds tend to prefer the features of the parent of the opposite sex when it come to the preferred mate. An inhibitory effect is the Westermark Effect, the tendency not to be sexually attracted to siblings, because of the close contact in a sensitive period.

The idea that no learning is required for instinctive behavior does not always apply when it concerns the behaviors themselves. But the key stimuli and the specific outcome may vary somewhat due to different inputs. The output may vary in the sense that a finch will sing naturally (instinctively), but it will sing a song similar to the songs it has picked up in a sensitive period which explains the different regional accents in the finch songs.

The Baldwin Effect

In 1896, James Mark Baldwin offered up "a new factor in evolution" through which acquired characteristics could be indirectly inherited. This "new factor" was termed phenotypic plasticity: the ability of an organism to adjust to its environment during the course of its lifetime. An ability to learn is the most obvious example of phenotypic plasticity, though other examples are the ability to tan with exposure to the sun, to form a callus with exposure to abrasion, or to increase muscle strength with exercise. Over time, this theory became known as the Baldwin effect.

The Baldwin effect functions in two steps. First, phenotypic plasticity allows an individual to adjust to a partially successful mutation, which might otherwise be utterly useless to the individual. If this mutation adds to inclusive fitness, it will succeed and proliferate in the population. Phenotypic plasticity is typically very costly for an individual; learning requires time and energy, and on occasion involves dangerous mistakes. Therefore there is a second step: provided enough time, evolution may find an inexorable mechanism to replace the plastic mechanism. Thus a behavior that was once learned (the first step) may in time become instinctive (the second step). At first glance, this looks identical to Lamarckian evolution, but there is no direct alteration of the genotype, based on the experience of the phenotype.

Definitions

Scientific definition

The term "instincts" has had a long and varied use in psychology. In the 1870s, Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory. At that time, psychology was primarily a branch of philosophy, but behavior became increasingly examined within the framework of the scientific method. While use of the scientific method led to increasingly rigorous definition of terms, 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]

Any repeated behavior can be called "instinctual," as can any behavior for which there is a strong innate component.[citation needed] However, to distinguish behavior beyond the control of the organism from behavior that has a repetitive component we can turn to the book "Instinct" (1961) stemming from the 1960 conference. A number of criteria were established which distinguishes 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). The absence of one or more of these criteria indicates that the behavior is not fully instinctual. Instincts do exist in insects and animals as can be seen in behaviors that cannot be changed by learning. Psychologists do recognize that humans do have biological predispositions or behaviors that are easy to learn due to biological wiring, for example walking and talking.[citation needed]

If these criteria are used in a rigorous scientific manner, application of the term "instinct" cannot be used in reference to human behavior.[citation needed] When terms, such as mothering, territoriality, eating, mating, and so on, are used to denote human behavior they are seen to not meet the criteria listed above. In comparison to animal behavior such as hibernation, migration, nest building, mating and so on that are clearly instinctual, no human behavior meets the necessary criteria. And even in regard to animals, in many cases if the correct learning is stopped from occurring these instinctual behaviors disappear, suggesting that they are potent, but limited, biological predispostions. In the final analysis, under this definition, there are no human instincts.

In humans

Some sociobiologists and ethologists have attempted to comprehend human and animal social behavior in terms of instincts. 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.

Instincts in humans can also be seen in what are called instinctive reflexes. Reflexes, such as the Babinski Reflex (fanning of the toes when the foot is stroked), are seen in babies and are indicative of stages of development. These reflexes can truly be considered instinctive because they are generally free of environmental influences or conditioning.

Additional human traits that have been looked at as instincts are: sleeping, altruism, disgust, face perception, language acquisitions, "fight or flight" and "subjugate or be subjugated". Some experiments in human and primate societies have also come to the conclusion that a sense of fairness could be considered instinctual, with humans and apes willing to harm their own interests in protesting unfair treatment of self or others.[2][3]

Many scientists consider that it is instinctual in children to put everything in their mouths, because this is how they tell their immune system about the environment and the surroundings, what the immune system should adapt to.[4]

Other 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,[5] but is still highly debated.

See also

References

Beach, F. A. The descent of instinct. Psychol. Rev. 62:401-10.


 
Translations: Instinct
Top

Dansk (Danish)
n. - instinkt, intuition
adj. - instinktiv

Nederlands (Dutch)
instinct, gevoel voor, intuïtie

Français (French)
n. - (lit) instinct, intuition, (Psych) pulsion, (fig) combativité
adj. - instinctif

Deutsch (German)
n. - (Biol.) Instinkt, Neigung, intuitive Fähigkeit
adj. - erfüllt, belebt

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ένστικτο, ορμέμφυτο

Italiano (Italian)
impulso, istinto

Português (Portuguese)
n. - instinto (m)

Русский (Russian)
инстинкт

Español (Spanish)
n. - instinto, impulso, intuición
adj. - animado, movido, lleno, rebosante

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - instinkt

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
本能, 直觉, 充满的

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 本能, 直覺
adj. - 充滿的

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 본능, 천성, 직관
adj. - 차서 넘치는, 배어든

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 本能, 才能, 天性, 直感
adj. - 満ちた

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) موهبه, غريزة‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אינסטינקט, דחף פנימי תת-הכרתי, אינטואיציה, יכולת לא-מודעת‬
adj. - ‮מלא חיים, יופי, כוח וכו'‬


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
World of the Body. The Oxford Companion to the Body. Copyright © 2001, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Answers Corporation Antonyms. © 1999-2009 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Archaeology Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology. Copyright © 2002, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Sports Science and Medicine. The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science & Medicine. Copyright © Michael Kent 1998, 2006, 2007. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Psychoanalysis. International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Copyright © 2005 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Science Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.  Read more
World of the Mind. The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Second Edition. Copyright © Oxford University Press, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
Veterinary Dictionary. Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary 3rd Edition. Copyright © 2007 by D.C. Blood, V.P. Studdert and C.C. Gay, Elsevier. All rights reserved.  Read more
Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved.
eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial Read more
Quotes About. Copyright © 2005 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Instinct" Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more