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Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing innate (inborn) elements.The simplest example of an instinctive behaviour is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a corresponding clearly defined stimulus.
Instinct is often misinterpreted as intuition. Its reliability is dependent on past knowledge and occurrences in a specific area. [dubious – discuss] For example, someone who has had more experience with children will tend to have better instincts about what they should do in certain situations with them. This is not to say that one with a ...
Instinctive drift can be discussed in association with evolution. [11] Evolution is commonly classified as change occurring over a period of time. [ 11 ] Instinctive drift says that animals will behave in accordance with evolutionary contingencies, as opposed to operant contingencies of their specific training. [ 11 ]
Evolutionary psychology proposes that the human psychology consists primarily of psychological adaptations, [2] which is opposed by the tabula rasa or blank slate model of human psychology. Early behaviourists, like B.F. Skinner , tended to the blank slate model and argued that innate behaviors and instincts were few, some behaviourists ...
In psychology, a drive theory, theory of drives or drive doctrine [1] is a theory that attempts to analyze, classify or define the psychological drives. A drive is an instinctual need that has the power of driving the behavior of an individual; [2] an "excitatory state produced by a homeostatic disturbance".
He wrote a number of influential textbooks, and was important in the development of the theory of instinct and of social psychology in the English-speaking world. McDougall was an opponent of behaviourism and stands somewhat outside the mainstream of the development of Anglo-American psychological thought in the first half of the 20th century ...
Self-preservation is essentially the process of an organism preventing itself from being harmed or killed and is considered a basic instinct in most organisms. [6] Most call it a "survival instinct". Self-preservation is thought to be tied to an organism's reproductive fitness and can be more or less present according to perceived reproduction ...
Purposive behaviorism is a branch of psychology that was introduced by Edward Tolman. It combines the study of behavior while also considering the purpose or goal of behavior. [ 1 ] Tolman thought that learning developed from knowledge about the environment and how the organism relates to its environment. [ 2 ]