What Is Instinctive Drift In Psychology?
Sabrina Sarro
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The tendency of learned, reinforced behavior to gradually return to a more innate behavior. For example, raccoons trained to drop coins into a container will eventually begin to dip the coins into the container, pull them back out, rub them together, and dip them in again.
Contents
- 1 Which of the following is the best example of instinctive drift?
- 2 What important idea are instinctive drift and latent learning examples of?
- 3 Is an instinctive behavior an inherited behavior?
- 4 Which situation occurs in a instinctive drift quizlet?
- 5 What is instinctive drift quizlet?
- 6 What are 5 examples of instincts?
- 7 Is instinct an example of learning psychology?
What is instinctive drift in psychology example?
Instinctual Drift Although humans, animals, etc., can learn to perform different behaviors, there are times when they stop performing those behaviors in the way they learned and start reverting back to their more instinctual behaviors – this is the basic premise of Instinctual Drift.
- The animal no longer performs the behaviors it has been taught, but goes back to behaviors that are in its nature.
- It begins to do what it is driven to do regardless of the resulting punishment.
- For example, a dog with the nature to bark at visitors thinking they are intruders might have been taught to sit quietly when a guest enters through reward and punishment.
Under stress, however, it may have instinctual drift, disregarding the learned behavior and barking at the guest. : Instinctual Drift
Why does instinctive drift occur?
Biological Processes That Affect Associative Learning – Associative Learning – MCAT Content While many extrinsic factors can influence learning, biological processes can affect associative learning. Learning is a change in behavior as a result of experience.
- While many extrinsic factors can influence learning, learning is also limited by the biological constraints of organisms.
- For example, chimpanzees can learn to communicate using basic sign language, but they cannot learn to speak, in part because they are constrained by a lack of specialized vocal chords that would enable them to do so.
It was long believed that learning could occur using any two stimuli or any response and any reinforcer. But again, biology serves as an important constraint. Associative learning is most easily achieved using stimuli that are somehow relevant to survival.
- Furthermore, not all reinforcers are equally effective.
- Humans and organisms have some kind of biological predisposition : we are predisposed through evolution to learn some associations better than others.
- A dramatic example of this is illustrated by food aversions.
- If an organism consumes something that tastes strongly of vanilla and becomes nauseous a few hours later (even if the nausea was not caused by the vanilla food), that organisms will develop a strong aversion to both the taste and the smell of vanilla, even if the nausea occurred hours after consuming the food.
This aversion defies many of the principles of associative learning because it occurs after one instance, it can offer after a significant time delay of hours, and it is often an aversion that can last for a very long time, sometimes indefinitely. In studies, researchers tried to condition organisms to associate the feeling of nausea with other things, such as a sound or light but were unable to do so.
Therefore, food aversions demonstrated another important face of learning: learning occurs more quickly if it is biologically relevant. Should an organism (or human) try to overcome this aversion through operant conditioning, there is a chance they would experience instinctive drift, Try as they might, organisms have a tendency to revert to unconscious and automatic behavior that could interfere with learned behaviors from operant conditioning.
Learning and memory are two processes that work together in shaping behavior, and it is impossible to discuss how learning is processed in the brain without discussing memory. Certain synaptic connections develop in the brain when a memory is formed. Short-term memory lasts for seconds to hours, and can potentially be converted into long-term memory through a process called consolidation,
- Practice Questions
- MCAT Official Prep (AAMC)
- Sample Test P/S Section Passage 4 Question 19
- Section Bank P/S Section Passage 12 Question 95
- Key Points
- • While many extrinsic factors can influence learning, learning is also limited by the biological constraints of organisms.
• It was long believed that learning could occur using any two stimuli or any response and any reinforcer. But again, biology serves as an important constraint. Associative learning is most easily achieved using stimuli that are somehow relevant to survival.
Humans and organisms have some kind of biological predisposition: we are predisposed through evolution to learn some associations better than others. • Instinctive drift occurs when organisms have a tendency to revert to unconscious and automatic behavior that could interfere with learned behaviors from operant conditioning.
• Learning and memory are two processes that work together in shaping behavior. Certain synaptic connections develop in the brain when a memory is formed. Short-term memory lasts for seconds to hours, and can potentially be converted into long-term memory through a process called consolidation.
- Key Terms
- associative learning : a type of learning in which associations are made between events that occur together
- biological predisposition : when a subject (human, animal, plant) possesses some internal quality that gives them an increased likelihood of having a condition
- short-term memory: the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a brief period of time
- long-term memory : where lots of information is stored for us to recall at a later time
- consolidation: when newly acquired information (such as the knowledge that a reward follows a certain behavior) is temporarily stored in short-term memory and can be transferred into long-term memory under the right conditions
operant conditioning : initially described by B.F. Skinner, is the learning process by which a response is strengthened or extinguished through the reinforcement or punishment of a behavior
- reinforcer: something that increases the likelihood that specific behavior or response will occur
- aversion: a dislike to
- instinctive drift: the tendency of an animal to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour
- synaptic: the end of an axon or a neuron between neurons
: Biological Processes That Affect Associative Learning – Associative Learning – MCAT Content
What is drift in psychology?
Correlates of therapist drift in psychological practice: A systematic review of therapist characteristics , April 2022, 102132 Evidence-based psychological practice (EBPP) requires “integration of the best available research with clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture and preferences” (American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice, 2006, p.273).
Despite the emphasis placed on dissemination and implementation of EBPP, there is now a large body of research that demonstrates that when individuals with mental health disorders seek treatment, they are commonly provided with interventions that are not empirically supported (e.g., Berry & Haddock, 2008; Borntrager, Chorpita, Higa-McMillan, Daleiden, & Starace, 2013).
This tendency by psychologists (and other mental health workers) not to implement fully the empirically supported practices in which they are trained, even when resourced to do so, has been referred to as “therapist drift” (Waller, 2009). Therapists not providing, or only partially providing, empirically supported interventions may deliver ineffective treatments (Waller, 2009; Waller & Turner, 2016).
For example, Deacon, Lickel, Farrell, Kemp, and Hipol (2013) reported that in a study of therapists working with patients with panic disorder, 41% of therapists who provided interoceptive exposure therapy also instructed patients to use controlled breathing, despite there being no empirical evidence that the use of controlled breathing enhances interoceptive exposure (Deacon et al., 2013; Deacon, Lickel, et al., 2013; Schmidt et al., 2000; Whiteside et al., 2020) and the use of controlled breathing may become a safety behaviour for some patients (Craske, Rowe, Lewin, & Noriega‐Dimitri, 1997; Salkovskis, 1991).
Similarly, it is common for therapists to neglect to provide homework tasks for patients (Waller, 2009), even though evidence suggests that the setting of homework tasks by therapists and homework completion by patients both correlate significantly with positive patient outcomes (Kazantzis, Deane, & Ronan, 2000; Wootton et al., 2020).
The use of non-evidence-based interventions may also worsen outcomes for patients. For example, a comparative study of CBT for panic disorder and treatment as usual in an outpatient clinic found that 43% of patients receiving CBT experienced a clinically significant reduction across various outcome measures (panic severity; phobic avoidance; depression; general wellbeing), compared to only 19% of patients in the treatment as usual condition (Addis et al., 2004).
Similarly, at an outpatient university psychology training clinic, patients who received an empirically supported treatment (EST) achieved significantly greater symptom improvement than patients receiving non-ESTs (primarily psychodynamic and traditional humanistic interventions).
- Furthermore, patients in the EST group achieved their results in fewer sessions ( M = 10.20, SD = 9.39) than those who did not receive an EST ( M = 19.63, SD = 16.13; Cukrowicz et al., 2005).
- Even when therapists report familiarity with empirically supported interventions, such interventions are often delivered inconsistently or idiosyncratically.
For example, while most participants in a study of therapists working with patients with eating disorders were able to identify ESTs, approximately half used ESTs in combination with non-ESTs (Wallace & von Ranson, 2012) and Waller, Stringer, and Meyer (2012) found that none of the therapists in their study who were working with patients with eating disorders delivered any cognitive-behavioral technique more than 50% of the time.
Relatedly, Allen, Gharagozloo, and Johnson (2012) found that while only 25% of therapists in their study identified play therapy, which is not an EST, as an empirically supported intervention, 70% of therapists used it in practice. Finally, in a Dutch study of psychotherapy for depression, therapists often reported modifying manualized approaches, even when they were aware that such modification had no scientific foundation (Bruijniks, Franx, & Huibers, 2018).
Several important reviews have been undertaken that are important to the understanding of correlates of therapist drift. First, Lilienfeld, Ritschel, Lynn, Cautin, and Latzman (2013) explored the reasons therapists may demonstrate resistance to adoption of ESTs.
The associations identified by these researchers included biases that may lead therapists to place undue reliance on personal experience at the expense of empirical evidence; therapists’ misconceptions about the nature and operationalization of ESTs; and difficulty encountered by therapists in comprehending increasingly technical outcome studies.
Second, Shafran et al. (2009) examined barriers to dissemination of CBT. This review suggested that therapists’ attitudes toward the generalizability of laboratory studies to clinical environments, their reliance on experience at the expense of evidence-based practice, the rigorousness of training, misconceptions as to the importance of fidelity to CBT, and lack of knowledge as to the mechanisms of change explicit in CBT each played a role.
- Third, Waller and Turner (2016) published an important review of the literature, focusing on correlates of drift among cognitive-behavioral therapists and means by which they may be overcome.
- These barriers included knowledge; beliefs and attitudes; emotions; personalities and the interpersonal milieu (e.g., clinical setting; supervision) in which therapists operate.
While each of these studies is uniquely valuable, as yet there has been no systematic attempt to review the correlates of therapist drift among psychologists in clinical practice. Such a review could include characteristics of therapists, and the institutional milieux in which they operate.
Therapist characteristics are those which are innate to therapists, such as emotional reactivity, or are characteristics that have been acquired by therapists, such as education, theoretical orientation, or attitudes to research. Therapist characteristics stand in contrast with organizational factors, such as the support received by psychologists to implement ESTs or dissemination processes that facilitate adoption of ESTs.
In this review, however, we have focused on therapist characteristics, as the identification of such factors may assist in improving training of therapists and may facilitate dissemination of ESTs through the presentation of materials (e.g., therapy manuals) in ways that resonate with therapists’ understanding of the evidence base.
- Thus, the aim of the current study was to identify potential correlates of therapist drift across psychologists, focusing on therapist characteristics.
- Searches were conducted of the following databases: CINAHL (excluding Medline results); Embase; Medline; ProQuest Psychology; Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection; and PsycINFO.
The primary search term was ‘therapist drift’. Search strings were also constructed as follows: ‘empirically supported treatment’ OR ‘empirically validated treatment’ OR ‘evidence based practice’ OR ‘evidence based treatment’ OR ‘manualized treatment’ AND ‘therapist characteristics’ OR ‘fidelity’ OR ‘adherence’.
- The initial search yielded 1081 articles after duplicates were removed.
- The abstract of each article was reviewed by the first author resulting in the exclusion of 483 articles not meeting the inclusion criteria.
- The full texts of the remaining 448 articles were reviewed by the first author, resulting in the exclusion of a further 381 articles.
Sixty-six studies were included in the systematic review. These studies were all independently assessed by the other authors using a comprehensive The aim of the present study was to assess and synthesize existing literature to ascertain therapist characteristics that may be associated with therapist drift in psychologists.
The results indicated that: (1) therapist knowledge; (2) attitudes toward research; (3) therapist anxiety; (4) clinical experience; (5) therapist age; (6) theoretical orientation; (7) critical thinking; (8) personality traits; and (9) cultural competency may be factors related to therapist drift in psychologists.
While The tendency by therapists to drift from evidence-based practice and not to deploy ESTs with fidelity is a widely recognized phenomenon. While its importance is debated, the increasingly strong base of evidence suggesting that science improves practice suggests that therapist drift should be addressed lest patients receive poorer service than they otherwise would.
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S. *Mulkens et al. A. *van Minnen et al. J.M. *Meyer et al. S.O. Lilienfeld et al. L. *Levita et al. A.E. *Kraan et al. M.S. *Harned et al. N.R. *Farrell et al. B.J. *Deacon et al. B.J. *Deacon et al. C. Borntrager et al. C.B. *Becker et al. G.A. *Aarons G.A. *Aarons et al. M.E.
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*Beidas et al. K. Berry et al. C.M. *Boisvert et al. C.F. *Borntrager et al. L. *Brookman-Frazee et al. L. *Brookman-Frazee et al. C.E. *Brown et al. S.J. Bruijniks et al. B. *Campbell et al. J.E. *Chapman et al. E. *Cho et al. M.G. Craske et al. K.C. Cukrowicz et al.
The Scrambled Sentences Task (SST) is frequently used to assess interpretation biases (IBs). However, neither the range of its applications nor the quality of the empirical evidence it provides has been systematically examined. This systematic review investigates the types of samples and disorders in which the SST has been applied and evaluates its psychometric properties via a meta-analysis. The databases PubMed and EBSCOhost (including PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, PSYNDEX, MEDLINE) were examined (last search: September 2021) and 93 studies from 91 manuscripts were included. Results showed that the SST has been applied predominantly in unselected samples or those with elevated levels of subsyndromal symptoms, with about a third of the studies employing the SST in a clinical population. While the SST was initially developed to assess depression-related IBs, it has now been extended to other disorders, in particular anxiety disorders. Results of the meta-analyses indicated good convergent validity and reliability across disorders, albeit in the context of substantial heterogeneity. Findings concerning divergent validity were mixed with high correlations across disorders between the SST and trait anxiety in particular, questioning its specificity. Future research should consider developing standardized SST versions and investigating its relationships with other measures of IB. Alliance and adherence to therapeutic techniques are key elements of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Therapists’ beliefs about how important alliance and technique adherence are throughout CBT might impact how they deliver therapy. Furthermore, these beliefs might or might not be congruent with patients’ therapy-related beliefs. This research investigated whether therapists hold similar beliefs to patients regarding the importance of alliance and technique adherence throughout CBT and whether therapists could accurately predict patients’ beliefs. CBT therapists ( n = 103) and CBT patients ( n = 181) rated the importance of alliance and technique adherence to CBT outcomes in early, mid and late therapy. Therapists also predicted patients’ responses. Mann-Whitney U tests compared therapists’ responses and therapists’ predictions with patients’ responses at each stage of therapy. Therapists rated alliance and technique adherence as more important than patients did throughout therapy, with the largest discrepancy for alliance in early therapy. Therapists accurately predicted patients’ alliance importance ratings but underestimated patients’ technique adherence importance ratings for early and mid-therapy. Therapists are encouraged to challenge their assumptions about patients’ therapy-related beliefs by having open discussions with patients. Therapists are encouraged to prioritise technique adherence as well as alliance in early CBT. Stage models encourage a longitudinal perspective on the care of those with major depression: supporting vigilance to the risk for stage progression and the selection of interventions to address that risk. A central goal for this article is to evaluate the role of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) in addressing stage progression in the treatment of major depression. We summarize the evidence supporting depression-focused CBT for: (1) preventing depression onset, (2) treating syndromal depression, (3) treating residual symptoms, (4) preventing relapse, and (5) addressing pharmacologic treatment resistance. In addition, consistent with the goal of aiding prevention and intervention development by refining mechanistic treatment targets, we evaluate the role of two specific risk-factors for stage progression: insomnia and rumination. These risk factors have a feed-forward relationship with stress, both being amplified by stress and amplifying the negative consequences of stress. Moreover, each of these risk factors predict depression stage transmissions across multiple stages, and both are modifiable with treatment. Accordingly, insomnia and rumination appear to serve as excellent mechanistic targets for the prevention of depression stage progression. These findings are discussed in relation to current limitations and future research directions for targeting these risk factors and furthering the effective treatment of depression. Posttraumatic growth (PTG) has captivated the attention of clinicians and researchers over the past three decades. However, accumulating evidence suggests that individuals’ self-reports of PTG may be cognitively biased. In the current systematic review and meta-analysis, we aimed to investigate the relation between cognitive biases and perceived PTG. In line with existing theory on cognitive biases that may lead to illusory perceived PTG, we examined the following cognitive biases: defensiveness, memory bias, downward comparison bias, social desirability bias, positive attention bias, and growth beliefs. Forty-seven studies met criteria for inclusion in this review and 66 separate effects were coded for meta-analyses. Results indicated that cognitive biases were related to perceived PTG, with variation by type of cognitive bias. Moderator analyses revealed that downward comparison bias, positive attention bias, and growth beliefs exhibited stronger relations with perceived PTG than did defensiveness, memory bias, and social desirability bias. Further, subgroup analyses explored effects by type of cognitive bias and characteristics of cognitive bias measurements. The current study suggests that cognitive biases may have a role in individuals’ perceptions of their PTG. This contributes to theory on the origins of illusory perceptions of PTG and provides direction for improvements to the measurement of PTG and clinical approaches to PTG. Clinicians often fail to deliver the best psychological treatments available, especially if they perceive their patients as fragile or vulnerable. This fragility might be interpreted by clinicians through their internalised gender stereotypes (e.g. female patients are less resilient to a demanding treatment) or according to their patients’ emotional state (e.g. the patient is too delicate to endure the most stress-inducing aspects of therapy). The aim of this study was to test experimentally whether patients’ characteristics influenced therapy delivery. Some clinician characteristics were also considered. This was an experimental, vignette-based study that evaluated clinicians’ likelihood of utilizing several techniques commonly used in CBT by manipulating patients’ mood and gender. Clinicians’ personality traits were also included as covariates. Anxious patients were the most likely to receive the techniques, especially exposure and other behavioural techniques. Therapists delivered more techniques to male patients, while angry and calm female patients were the least likely to receive the techniques. Therapists were more likely to deliver talking techniques to female patients. Clinicians’ firmness and empathy had an effect on CBT delivery. Future vignette-based studies should validate and pilot the vignettes. Technique clustering should also be based in factor analysis or similar methods. Direct observational methods might be more reliable than self-report. The findings suggest that clinicians treat their patients differently, either consciously or inadvertently. These differences are likely to be related to clinicians’ own concerns and gender stereotypes about their patients. Exposure-based interventions are a core ingredient of evidence-based cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) for anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, previous research has documented that exposure is rarely utilized in routine care, highlighting an ongoing lack of dissemination. The present study examined barriers for the dissemination of exposure from the perspective of behavioral psychotherapists working in outpatient routine care ( N = 684). A postal survey assessed three categories of barriers: (a) practicability of exposure-based intervention in an outpatient private practice setting, (b) negative beliefs about exposure, and (c) therapist distress related to the use of exposure. In addition, self-reported competence to conduct exposure for different anxiety disorders, PTSD, and OCD was assessed. High rates of agreement were found for single barriers within each of the three categories (e.g., unpredictable time management, risk of uncompensated absence of the patient, risk of decompensation of the patient, superficial effectiveness, or exposure being very strenuous for the therapist). Separately, average agreement to each category negatively correlated with self-reported utilization of exposure to a moderate degree (-.35 ≤ r ≤ -.27). In a multiple regression model, only average agreement to barriers of practicability and negative beliefs were significantly associated with utilization rates. Findings illustrate that a multilevel approach targeting individual, practical, and systemic barriers is necessary to optimize the dissemination of exposure-based interventions. Dissemination efforts may therefore benefit from incorporating strategies such as modifying negative beliefs, adaptive stress management for therapists, or increasing practicability of exposure-based interventions.
Andrew J.H. Speers is a PhD (Clinical Psychology) candidate at the University of New England, Australia. His areas of research interest include clinical application of empirically supported treatment, therapist cultural competency and the special therapeutic needs of same sex attracted patients.
- Navjot Bhullar is currently a Professor of Psychology at Edith Cowan University, Australia.
- Her research examines psychological and environmental influences on mental health and well-being.
- She also has extensive experience in using different research methodologies and advanced multivariate statistical techniques.
Suzanne Cosh is a psychologist and Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Health in the School of Psychology at the University of New England, Australia. Her research interests are the areas of clinical and health psychology including co-morbid mental health disorders and chronic disease.
What types of behaviors would be included in instinctive drift?
Most of the animals showed a permanent displacement of the leverpress response by more genetically based behaviors, such as scratching and biting, as the ratio requirement increased. This type of phenomenon has been referred to as instinctive drift.
Which of the following is the best example of instinctive drift?
Best explained by the concept of instinctive drift. learning that is not demonstrated until one is motivated to perform the behavior. Which of the following is an example of instinctive drift? A rat learns to run a maze for a cheese food reward instead of a peanut butter reward.
What is an example of instinctive thinking?
The adjective instinctive describes something you do without thinking about it. If you have an instinctive desire to help animals, you might automatically stop your car to pick up every stray dog you see. Something that is instinctive occurs naturally, the way babies know how to cry and suck as soon as they’re born.
adjective unthinking; prompted by (or as if by) instinct “offering to help was as instinctive as breathing” synonyms: natural self-generated, spontaneous happening or arising without apparent external cause
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘instinctive’, Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors. Send us feedback EDITOR’S CHOICE
What is the theory of instinctive behavior?
Observations on Instinct Theory – The instinct theory suggests that motivation is primarily biologically based. We engage in certain behaviors because they aid in survival. Migrating before winter ensures the survival of the flock, so the behavior has become instinctive.
- Birds who migrated were more likely to survive and therefore more likely to pass down their genes to future generations.
- So, what exactly qualifies as an instinct? In his book Exploring Psychology, author David G.
- Meyers suggests that in order to be identified as an instinct, the behavior “must have a fixed pattern throughout a species and be unlearned.” In other words, the behavior must occur naturally and automatically in all organisms of that species.
For example, infants have an innate rooting reflex that leads them to root for and suck on a nipple. This behavior is unlearned and occurs naturally in all human infants. Doctors often look for an absence of such instinctive reflexes in order to detect potential developmental issues.
What important idea are instinctive drift and latent learning examples of?
Instinctive drift and latent learning are examples of what important idea? The success of operant conditioning is affected not just by environmental cues, but also by biological and cognitive factors.
What is instinctive impulse?
Instinct, an inborn impulse or motivation to action typically performed in response to specific external stimuli. Today instinct is generally described as a stereotyped, apparently unlearned, genetically determined behaviour pattern. instinct.
What are drifting behaviors?
Definition: – The continual re-establishment of new, often unstated, and unofficial standards of behavior in an unintended direction. It often occurs as established, official standards of behavior are not enforced. Ambiguous guidance, poor supervision, and lack of training and oversight contribute to this change in observed standards.
- Certain psychological and social pressures can greatly increase the likelihood of behavioral drift.
- This phenomenon is commonly observed in detention and other settings in which individuals have control or power over others’ activities of daily living or general functioning.
- Behavioral drift is detrimental to the mission and may occur very quickly without careful oversight mechanisms and training.
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What is an example of drift?
Britannica Dictionary definition of DRIFT 1 : a slow and gradual movement or change from one place, condition, etc., to another
the slow drift of the clouds As she got older, you could observe a drift in her writing towards more serious subjects. the government’s drift towards a centralization of power a population drift
— see also continental drift 2 : a large pile of snow or sand that has been blown by the wind
We sped over the drifts on our skis.
3 informal : the general or basic meaning of something said or written
I don’t get your drift, I won’t tell you his name, but he’s someone you know very well, if you catch my drift,
4 : movement of an airplane or a ship in a direction different from the one desired because of air or water currents Britannica Dictionary definition of DRIFT 1 : to move slowly on water, wind, etc.
The boat slowly drifted out to sea. The clouds drifted across the sky.
2 of snow or sand : to form a pile by being blown by the wind : to form a drift
The snow drifted against the side of the house. Drifting snow covered most of the car.
3 a : to move smoothly or easily in a way that is not planned or guided
The party guests drifted from room to room, eating and mingling. Her eyes drifted across the crowd. The conversation drifted from topic to topic. My thoughts drifted back to the time when we first met.
b : to behave or live in a way that is not guided by a definite purpose or plan
After he left the army he just drifted for a few years. She drifted from job to job. He has always drifted through life without a care.
— see also drifter 4 : to change slowly from one state or condition to another
The patient drifted in and out of consciousness all day.
How is instinctive behaviors inherited?
THE RESPONSE TO LORENZ – Decades of subsequent research have since taught us to be skeptical of Lorenz’s broad assertions about the origins of behavior. For one thing, head-scratching turns out to be more flexibly produced than Lorenz assumed. Burtt and Hailman 3, for example, reported that small, young birds typically scratch their heads by moving a leg under a wing.
Moreover, some adults will use the overwing method when perching and will switch to the underwing method in flight. Based on these and other observations, they suggested that a bird’s method of scratching depends not on pre-programmed instructions but on the bird’s posture, balance, and center of gravity at any given moment 4,
Terms such as hardwired and innate gloss over the fact that scratching depends on context—on multiple factors acting in real time. By changing context, we reveal how flexible a behavior can be. Writing in Scientific American, in an article cunningly titled “How an instinct is learned,” Hailman 5 challenged Lorenz’s fundamental notion of instinct: “The term `instinct,’ as it is often applied to animal and human behavior, refers to a fairly complex, stereotyped pattern of activity that is common to the species and is inherited and unlearned.
- Yet, braking an automobile and swinging a baseball bat are complex, stereotyped behavioral patterns that can be observed in many members of the human species, and these patterns certainly cannot be acquired without experience.
- Perhaps stereotyped behavior patterns of animals also require subtle forms of experience for development” (p.241).
Hailman meticulously demonstrated the influence of such subtle forms of experience through his investigations of pecking in newly hatched sea gulls. Hailman’s perspective is a forerunner to today’s developmental systems approach to the origins of abilities, traits, and behaviors 6,
The striking observation that guides the developmental systems approach is that processes —sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle—give rise to the emergent properties of each individual’s behavior. DNA plays a critical role in these processes, but does not by itself create traits. Accordingly, instincts are not preprogrammed, hardwired, or genetically determined; rather, they emerge each generation through a complex cascade of physical and biological influences 7 – 9,
(This process-oriented developmental perspective is has long been referred to as epigenesis, This term should not be confused with epigenetics, which refers specifically to the study of how non-genetic factors influence gene expression. See David Moore’s article, Behavioral Epigenetics, in this collection.) Lorenz’s instinct concept did not adequately consider the roles that development and experience play in the emergence of species-typical behaviors and in the transmission of behavior across generations.
Even Lorenz’s explanation for the phenomenon that is most closely associated with him—visual imprinting in ducklings—has undergone significant modification over the years. Whereas Lorenz believed that hatchlings come into the world equipped with a single learning program that simply needs to be activated by an appropriate stimulus, subsequent research shows that imprinting comprises two independent processes 10,
The first process entails a predisposition for chicks to orient toward stimuli that resemble the head and neck region of a generic mother hen; under natural conditions, this predisposition typically results in the chick orienting toward its own mother.
The second process entails the acquisition of detailed information about the stimulus; again, under natural conditions, this process typically results in the chick learning about its mother. Interestingly, this two-process model has been applied to the problem of how human infants develop their ability to recognize faces (for a recent review, see Johnson et al.11 ) Gilbert Gottlieb spent much of his career investigating another form of imprinting— auditory imprinting—in which newly hatched chicks and ducklings are attracted to the mother’s call 8,
Because the behavior of hatchlings seemed to be expressed without any obvious experience with the mother or her call, this adaptive behavior was thought to be an instinct. However, Gottlieb pursued this question in a way that no one else had before him by asking whether embryos obtain critical experiences while still in the egg,
- Amazingly, he found that they do: Embryos vocalize from within the egg, and these vocalizations shape the development of the auditory system in a way that is critical for their post-hatching attraction to the mother’s call.
- Gottlieb also found that he could make a hatchling of one species prefer the maternal call of another species by manipulating its earlier embryonic experiences.
Thus, even prenatal experiences shape the development of species-typical behavior, often in subtle and non-obvious ways.
Is an instinctive behavior an inherited behavior?
An inherited trait is a characteristic that is passed from parents to their babies (offspring). A behavior is a way of acting. Inherited behaviors are called instincts. Learned behaviors are not inherited but learned from others.
What is an example of instinct vs reflex?
The difference is that a reflex is a typically a simple reaction or a response to an environmental trigger whereas an instinct is a much more complex set of behaviors. For instance, an example of a reflex would be when a baby turns his head toward an object that is pressed against one cheek in an effort to nurse.
Which situation occurs in a instinctive drift quizlet?
Psych test 3 Flashcards Which statement best describes the type of learning known as classical conditioning? Click the card to flip 👆 A type of learning in which a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus.
- Click the card to flip 👆 Preparedness and instinctive drift both illustrate that an organism’s biological heritage may place constraints on general learning processes.
- Which perspective is most supported by this evidence? Albert Bandura According to Bandura, which of the following will have the greatest effect on your motivation to perform a response that you have observed a model perform? Observational learning What are mirror neurons? Neurons that are activated by performing an action or by seeing another monkey or person perform the same action.
When initially meeting with new clients, a business host often provides a good meal and pleasant surroundings. In these situations, clients may develop positive feelings toward their host and the company they represent. In this context, what classical conditioning term describes the “pleasant surroundings”? Unconditioned stimulus John Watson is probably best known for his work with an 11-month-old boy named “Little Albert”.
What kind of response did Watson condition in this young child? Stimulus generalization Which of the following is most likely a classically conditioned response? If a student was bullied at school, they would have a constant fear of going to school What does the research say about the real-world and long-term effects of media violence? Increase in aggression At the time World War II, Nazi Germany would show alternating pictures of rats or roaches crawling over filthy garbage and stereotypical Jewish faces.
What was their intent? They wanted to have a negative emotional reaction to Jews and associate them with vermin subject to extermination. What is the correct order for developing and implementing a self-modification program? Step 1: Specify your target behaiviour Step 2: Gather baseline data: -Identify possible controlling antecendants -Determine initial level of response -Identify possible controlling consequences Step 3: Design your program Step 4: Execute and evaluate your program Step 5: Bring your program to an end : Psych test 3 Flashcards
What is instinctive drift quizlet?
What is instinctive drift? Instinctive drift occurs when the animal has strong instinctive behaviors in the conditioned response and drifts toward the instinctive behavior to the detriment of the conditioned behavior.
What are 5 examples of instincts?
Can Human Instincts Be Controlled? Eric R. Pianka Abstract, Like all animals, humans have instincts, genetically hard-wired behaviors that enhance our ability to cope with vital environmental contingencies. Our innate fear of snakes is an example. Other instincts, including denial, revenge, tribal loyalty, greed and our urge to procreate, now threaten our very existence.- Any attempt to control human behavior is bound to meet with resistance and disapproval.
- Unless we can change our behavior, humans are facing the end of civilization.
- Our problem has several elements.
- 1) We have invented economic and social systems that encourage greedy behavior, and we have actually institutionalized runaway greed.
(2) We are in a state of complete denial about the growth of human populations. (3) Earth’s finite resources simply cannot support 7.6 billion of us in the style to which wed like to live. (4) We must make a choice between quantity and quality of human life. People have an instinctive fear of snakes. We are afraid of snakes because humans evolved alongside these creatures, many of which are dangerous. This fear saved the lives of our ancestors and became hard-wired innate behavior, also known as instinct. Similarly we possess many other instincts that were adaptive during most of human history. Human instincts evolved long ago when we lived off the land as hunter-gatherers and took refuge in simple shelters like caves. Although our instinctive behaviors were adaptive during prehistoric times(that is, they enhanced our ability to survive and reproduce), they no longer work in modern man-made environments. Our brains appear to be organized in ways that promote such duality (download Morrisons Evolution’s Problem Gamblers ). In fact, some of our instinctive emotions have become extremely serious impediments now threatening our very survival. Let us focus on denial, tribal loyalty, revenge, greed, and procreation. Any attempt to control human behavior is bound to meet with resistance and disapproval – however, we have reached the point where we have no alternative. For example, greed must certainly have been adaptive for early cave dwellers. In times of scarcity, a greedy caveman who refused to share his food stores during an ice age or at the onset of winter would have been more likely to survive and hence would have enjoyed higher fitness (reproductive success) than a generous one who shared his limited resources with the less fortunate. Natural selection programmed us to be selfish. Greed is a natural human instinct – we are all selfish and greedy at heart, and for sound evolutionary reasons. Humans invented money and institutionalized runaway greed, allowing others to become billionaires – what sense does it make to have more than you can actually use? Similarly, tribal loyalty and revenge made sense – if another caveman messed with your tribe, you bashed him over the head and he was unlikely to do it again. Such instincts worked to our advantage when we were cavemen, but have become dangerously maladaptive in today’s man-made artificial world. Revenge makes no sense when one contemplates pushing a red button to set off nuclear explosives that will destroy yourself as well as your enemies. Likewise, an instinctive urge towards tribal loyalty was useful when we lived in small bands, but such loyalties are now exploited to pit nationalities, political parties and religions against one another, often leading to deadly confrontations. Humans explain events and phenomena in two very different ways. One approach to knowing (common sense) involves thinking and is objective, based on making repeatable observations that allow us to predict nature and future events – this rational logical approach to knowing led to scientific methodology. Another, very different, non-objective mystical approach to knowing (faith-based) is based primarily upon the invocation of supernatural explanations, bolstered by authorities who claim to have special access to supernatural sources. This irrational non-scientific approach, championed by religions of all kinds, has helped many humans accept and cope with things they have no power to change or difficulty understanding rationally, such as unexpected deaths, other misfortunes, or natural disasters. Unfortunately, the power conferred on religious leaders has often led to serious abuses and resistance to accepting the rational understanding of the functioning of nature as demonstrated by new scientific discoveries. These two diametrically opposed ways we interpret and know about our environments have contributed to the regrettable past and modern day conflicts between science and religion. Human intelligence has also evolved so that we have remarkably good abilities to detect intentions of other humans in social interactions. We seem to have a propensity for superstitious mysticism and a tendency to emphasize explanations that invoke intention over those based on sheer mechanism, situation, or circumstances. Indeed, humans may be predisposed to see intentions in their friends and enemies. Similarly, we attribute conscious thought and intention to the actions of non-human animals (anthropomorphism). For example, predators want to kill us and prey want to escape from us. We even look for meaning and purpose in inanimate things such as the climate or the universe. Thus a destructive storm is interpreted as having occurred because people strayed from religious tradition or did something wrong and needed to be punished. Everyone, religious or not, relies on objective rational thinking to handle problems encountered in everyday life. Thus, we all know we must eat to stay alive, things fall down not up or sideways, we seek to avoid collisions when driving, balance our budgets, etc. Remarkably, people switch back and forth between rational knowing to mystical faith-based knowing with ease. Natural selection has organized our brains in ways that promote such duality (Morrison 1999; Trivers 2011; Pianka 2015). Natural selection molded our emotions and instincts, including setting aside the right half of our brain for storage of subconcious irrational information. Rational logic and common sense reside in the left half of our brain along with speech. Morrison (1999) argues that this duality effectively gave the irrational right side of our brains invisible contol over the rational left side:
People enjoy and thrive on mysticism as illustrated by the huge success of the Harry Potter books. We train our children to believe in age-specific mythical creatures, starting with the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, and Santa Claus (Papa Noel in Brazil). One father decided it was time to break the news to his 12 year-old son who still believed in Santa Claus. When he told the boy there was no Santa Claus, his smart kid got a gleam in his eye and said Oh, I get it, there’s no God, either! Then, Daddy had to quickly backtrack and reassure his son that God was indeed real. Kids are expected to outgrow the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, and Santa Claus, but never the myth of a benevolent deity. That one is supposed to endure throughout life. Religions occupy a very special place in the irrational right side of our brains adjacent to our carefully programmed feeling of ‘spirituality’! Any challenge to a devoutly religious person’s faith meets with adamant opposition, even physical hostility. Interestingly, music resides in the irrational right side of the brain in the same place where language and speech reside in the rational left side (Broca’s area). Music evokes powerful emotions in humans and is exploited by our leaders to arouse us into action: thus national anthems evoke patriotism and are used to inflame our tribal instincts as we go into insane wars. Religious and political fervor is exploited similarly as religious and political groups are pitted against each other. Sports fans form similar opposing groups using their team’s theme song to elicit passion. We are born into a given skin color, nationality, language, religion, and culture – all are accidents of birth but have profound effects on our lives and the societies we live in. Indeed, taken together they determine which side you’ll be on in the next war! Few people are able to shift from their birth group to another. The rules of a level playing field dictate that people will always want to emigrate from an impoverished birth group into another that enjoys a higher standard of living. Governments discourage illegal immigration. Oceans and border patrols reinforce boundaries and maintain heterogeneity and disparities between national groups. The driving force behind all living entities is Darwinian natural selection, or differential reproductive success. Unfortunately, natural selection is blind to the long-term future – natural selection rewards just one thing: offspring. It is a short-sighted efficiency expert. Individuals who leave the most genes in the gene pool of the next generation triumph – their genetic legacy endures, whereas those who pass on fewer genes lose out in this ongoing contest. One of our most powerful instincts is the urge to procreate, which manifests itself in different ways in males than in females. Males simply want lots of sex whereas females are programmed with nesting behaviors that involve a safe home place for their family (of course, sexual selection is much more complex than that one sentence brief synopsis). Primitive humans did not even know how babies were formed, but nevertheless they made them. By favoring parts that fit and nerve endings that tingled in just the right places, natural selection, that ultimate puppet master, made certain wed reproduce. Huddled together with our furs during winters and the long ice ages, two became three. Hence we are programmed to have instincts to breed.- And breed, we do, in fact, we are much too good at it for our own good, all 7.6 billion of us.
- If we don’t stop reproducing soon, human civilization is doomed.
- Some humans, unfortunately the most successful from the perspective of natural selection, combine greed with breeding and have obscenely large families,
Rather than be celebrated on TV, such people should be social outcasts, ostracized from society, because they are stealing others rights to reproduce. Earth simply doesn’t have enough resources to support all of us in the style to which wed like to become accustomed.
Moreover, resources such as water, land, and food, are finite, whereas human populations are always expanding, steadily reducing per capita shares. People are encouraged to think that resources are ever expanding when the opposite is true. We are in a state of total denial about the overpopulation crisis – instead of confronting reality, people only want to relieve its many symptoms, such as shortages of food, oil, and water, global climate change, pollution, disease, loss of biodiversity, and many others.
Overpopulation is a near fatal disease that cannot be cured by merely alleviating its symptoms. Take an aspirin, get a good night’s sleep, and come back in the morning. Unless we face reality and reduce human populations, we are in for a world of hurt and even greater human misery.
- Of course, eventually, our population must decrease, but we could lessen the upcoming misery by taking action now.
- Unfortunately, most people are unlikely to be proactive and are much more likely to procrastinate until they are forced to react.
- Competition is ubiquitous wherever resources are in short supply.
Plants compete for light and water. Fungi and microbes compete for nutrients. Animals compete for food and space. Competition leads to greedy behaviors. Humans have institutionalized greed – we allow, even encourage, runaway greed. Our political and economic systems facilitate greed. Greed is the underlying driving force for both capitalism and entrepreneurship. Our banking and insurance companies, coupled with the formation of limited liability corporations have allowed greed to explode. Nevertheless, some of Earths greedy enemies can be identified – overpopulation, banking and economic systems, insurance companies, corporations (especially pharmaceutical companies and big oil), and corruption in governmental officials, to mention a few of the most important. Early on, the framers of our American economic system intended to control corporate priviledges and powers tightly. They wanted to subjugate corporations to democratic oversight and to exploit these regulated institutions as infrastructure for building canals, roads and bridges.
- At issue was who would control authority to grant corporate charters (Nace 2003).
- The subject was discussed at length and voted on in the Constitutional covention, but because the states were opposed federal control, the final text did not include any mention of corporations.
- States were given the power to charter corporations, but sparingly, because corporate power was seen as a potential threat to democracy (Nace 2003).
The Supreme Court of Virginia ruled that a charter should not be given if the applicant’s object is merely private or selfish; if it is detrimental to, or not promotive of, the public good. Limited corporate powers were given for specific public projects like toll roads, bridges, canals, and banks.
- Incorporation was denied if it smacked of monopolistic power, and if not, charters were limited in spatial and temporal scope as well as activities allowed.
- Charters were revoked if transgressions occurred.
- Such restrictions on corporate powers were gradually lifted, especially by small states in need of revenue like New Jersey and Deleware.
Railroads became powerful monopolies. Today’s corporations have superhuman powers: they live forever, know no spatial or temporal boundaries, and can shape shift and rename themselves at will. We have designed an economic system that has allowed greed to explode.
- Corporations now exist solely for whatever profits they can make and as such, they are inherently greedy at heart.
- Corporations have no conscience and because they are not people, they do not qualify to have constitutional rights despite the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that recently gave them such powers (indeed, America no longer enjoys a democracy but with that court decision, it has become a corporacracy – Chomsky 2010).
Corporate executives are paid obscene salaries and are not personally liable for activities they oversee. Corporations control politicians, who pass limited liability legislation and laws that allow tax evasion, both of which assure obscene corporate profits.
- They may well also control judges.
- Our Supreme Court’s absurd ruling gave corporations unlimited power to buy politicians.
- Corporations cannot be abolished because we can’t live without them, but we must find ways to restrict corporate privileges.
- Obscene CEO salaries should be a thing of the past.
- CEOs should be held liable and should pay exorbitant taxes.
Corporations should not be allowed to evade taxes by moving offshore. Corruption in corporations must no longer be tolerated – we cannot allow them to own our judges and politicians, and politicians must become more responsive to opinions of average citizens.
- Executive and political privileges must be eliminated.
- Politicians should not enjoy all the special perks they have given themselves – they should have the same health insurance as the rest of us and should ride in tourist class alongside us in pubic conveyances.
- As public servants, their bank accounts should be on-line in the public domain for their constituent’s to examine.
Our culture has institutionalized runaway greed as illustrated by the stock market: it is designed to assist Wall Street executives to profit from small investors who buy shares of corporate stocks hoping to grow their investment. Instead, each time the market crashes small investors lose while larger investors manage to gain at their expense. With amazing prescience, in 1864 Lincoln said, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. He also said America will never be destroyed from the outside.
If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. Runaway human greed now threatens our very future and must somehow be controlled. Any attempt to control greed will be strenuously opposed, especially by the rich and powerful. Indeed, it may prove to be impossible to overcome such destructive human instinctive behaviors.
As a wise woman from a third world country once said at the UN: If the rich countries refuse to share their wealth with us, we will certainly share our poverty with them. We need a more egalitarian society with assured health care, shelter, food, and water for all. Our tax laws need to be revised and our economic system must be changed radically. Taxes would escalate to 99.9% with rising incomes. Instead of getting a deduction for each dependent, we should tax people for having children. Taxes on the first child would be moderate, but they would escalate rapidly so that nobody could afford to have very many children.
- This would reduce population growth and discourage irresponsible parenthood.
- Unwanted children and juvenile delinquency would diminish.
- We should impose a similar taxation scheme on vehicles, graduated by size and fuel efficiency.
- Hopefully, combined with high fuel prices, such taxes would eliminate pickup trucks, SUVs and Hummers.
This would conserve diminishing fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many other changes are needed, for example, solar water heaters should be mandatory in this new world. But all such changes only provide symptomatic relief, temporary by their very nature.
We must confront our life threatening disease and reduce our population. If there were fewer of us, the average quality of life for each could be improved. Our economic system is based on the principle of a chain letter: grow, grow, grow the economy. Ponzi schemes like this cannot work for long in a finite world.
We must replace the archaic concept of an ever-growing economy with a sustainable one in equilibrium where each of us leaves the planet as it was when we entered it (Solzhenitsyn 1974; Daly 1991, 1997; Nadeau 2008 ). John Stuart Mill (1859) pointed out that wise people have seen this coming for a long, long time: I cannot,
Regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old school. I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition. I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each others heels,
are the most desirable lot of humankind, It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved.
(my italics). Mill wrote that over 150 years ago – its basically a statement about how a stationary world can be desirable. In a stationary world, you don’t have to worry about inflation, bubbles bursting, stock market crashes, or survival kits. A stationary world is sustainable and the world stays the same from day to day, so that we can focus in on things that really matter and plan for future generations.
Lets take Mill’s advice and get to work on improving the art of living. Let’s be proactive and show some concern for our afterlives: let’s save something for our grandchildren (our afterlives). Acknowledgments Students in my freshman human overpopulation crisis seminar class helped me distill these ideas down.
- I thank Professor Lawrence L.
- Espey for commenting on the manuscript.
- References Chomsky, N.2010.
- The Corporate Takeover of U.S.
- Democracy.
- These Times.
- Daly, H.E.1991.
- Steady-State Economics.
- Island Press, Washington, D.C.
- Daly, H.E.1997.
- Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development.
- Beacon Press Mill, J.S.1859.
On Liberty. Ticknor and Fields, Boston. Morrison, R.1999. The Spirit in the Gene: Humanity’s Proud Illusion and the Laws of Nature. Comstock. Morrison, R.2013. Origin of Faith Nace, T. (2003). Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy.
San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Nadeau: Brother, Can You Spare Me a Planet? Nadeau, R.2008. The Economist has No Clothes, Scientific American, April 2008, p.42. Pianka, E, R.2008. The Human Overpopulation Crisis Pianka, E, R.2012. Spaceship Earth Pianka, E, R.2015. On Human Nature Solzhenitsyn, A.I.
(1974). Letter to the Soviet Leaders, New York, Harper and Row. Download a pdf of this essay Links Anthropocentrism ERP: Arrogant Ignorance and Blind Optimism Diamond: “The Worst Mistake Humans Ever Made” Reg Morrison’s “Evolution’s Problem Gamblers ” Last updated 19 September 2012 by Eric R.
What are the 5 basic human instincts?
Five Prominent Instinctive Factors – Jung identified five prominent groups of instinctive factors: creativity, reflection, activity, sexuality and hunger. Hunger is a primary instinct of self-preservation, perhaps the most fundamental of all drives. Sexuality is a close second, particularly prone to psychization, which makes it possible to divert its purely biological energy into other channels.
The urge to activity manifests in travel, love of change, restlessness and play. Under reflection, Jung included the religious urge and the search for meaning. Creativity was for Jung in a class by itself. His descriptions of it refer specifically to the impulse to create art. Though we cannot classify it with a high degree of accuracy, the creative instinct is something that deserves special mention.
I do not know if “instinct” is the correct word. We use the term “creative instinct” because this factor behaves at least dynamically, like an instinct. Like instinct it is compulsive, but it is not common, and it is not a fixed and invariably inherited organization.
Therefore I prefer to designate the creative impulse as a psychic factor similar in nature to instinct, having indeed a very close connection with the instincts, but without being identical with any one of them. Its connections with sexuality are a much discussed problem and, furthermore, it has much in common with the drive to activity and the reflective instinct.
But it can also suppress them, or make them serve it to the point of the self-destruction of the individual. Creation is as much destruction as construction.
What is an example of instinctual drive?
Experiencing the Animal Potential of the Soul – We share with the animal kingdom a focus on the physical world; we are oriented toward and preoccupied with physical and other external phenomena. Partly as a result of this focus, we also share with animals the instinctual drives toward and passions for survival, food, sex, procreation, company, pleasure, power, dominance, possessiveness, territory, security, safety, comfort, entertainment, and so on.
We are primarily driven by our survival, sexual, and social instincts. And these instincts operate in us the same way they operate in the animal kingdom, with drivenness, compulsion, and irrational passion for their gratification. When we experience the animal potential of the soul, what we call the animal soul, we are then full of desires, cravings, uncontrollable impulses, lust, and passion for what the world offers.
We want with passion, crave with hunger, and desire with instinctual abandon. We desire instant gratification, but our appetite for such gratification has no bottom and no end. We want and want and want. We want to eat, copulate, possess, dominate, even nourish and nurse ad nauseam.
What is an example of instinct vs reflex?
The difference is that a reflex is a typically a simple reaction or a response to an environmental trigger whereas an instinct is a much more complex set of behaviors. For instance, an example of a reflex would be when a baby turns his head toward an object that is pressed against one cheek in an effort to nurse.
What is drift and example?
Britannica Dictionary definition of DRIFT 1 : a slow and gradual movement or change from one place, condition, etc., to another
the slow drift of the clouds As she got older, you could observe a drift in her writing towards more serious subjects. the government’s drift towards a centralization of power a population drift
— see also continental drift 2 : a large pile of snow or sand that has been blown by the wind
We sped over the drifts on our skis.
3 informal : the general or basic meaning of something said or written
I don’t get your drift, I won’t tell you his name, but he’s someone you know very well, if you catch my drift,
4 : movement of an airplane or a ship in a direction different from the one desired because of air or water currents Britannica Dictionary definition of DRIFT 1 : to move slowly on water, wind, etc.
The boat slowly drifted out to sea. The clouds drifted across the sky.
2 of snow or sand : to form a pile by being blown by the wind : to form a drift
The snow drifted against the side of the house. Drifting snow covered most of the car.
3 a : to move smoothly or easily in a way that is not planned or guided
The party guests drifted from room to room, eating and mingling. Her eyes drifted across the crowd. The conversation drifted from topic to topic. My thoughts drifted back to the time when we first met.
b : to behave or live in a way that is not guided by a definite purpose or plan
After he left the army he just drifted for a few years. She drifted from job to job. He has always drifted through life without a care.
— see also drifter 4 : to change slowly from one state or condition to another
The patient drifted in and out of consciousness all day.
Is instinct an example of learning psychology?
Instincts and reflexes are innate behaviors —they occur naturally and do not involve learning. In contrast, learning is a change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience.