Instincts in humans

Instinct is behavioral triggering mechanism which occurs in all living organism. They are merely responses towards some stimuli. These stimuli can occur through environmental interaction or through learning. Human’s instincts are mostly witnessed in human behaviors which include sexual activation and human emotions. Instincts occur as a result of stimuli which trigger certain behaviors. These behaviors are predetermined by natural and environment setups.

Instincts are innate/ unlearned. The patterns of the actions are as result of instincts which are fixed, inherited but unlearned. This introduces a new concept of innate behavior. This shows that contrary to actions triggered by learning experience, instincts are shown as having no learning format. These behaviors are determined by human maturity. The biological outcomes can be termed as innate behaviors that can be adapted easily. Examples of these include; reproduction, courtship, fighting amongst others. Despite this, there is no specific argument of human behavior being instinct controlled. Some sociologists argue that instinctive behavior should acquire such characters such as being; irresistible and be vulnerable to changes. They also believe that it should apply to all organisms as well as being unlearned (John, 1993, 21). Instincts are mainly controlled by the brain and require some manipulation of the neurological system through learning. Learning may take various forms such as habituation and association. Habituation involves neglecting of non stimulating stimuli. On the other hand association involves linking up experience to obtain stimuli. In this type of learning, meaningful decisions are arrived at. It involves discriminating some things to gain others.

Instincts are involuntary in that they are inbuilt responses to a natural event. It is a natural inward impulse that result to some outstanding behavior traits such involuntarily, unreasoning and unconscious state leading to certain actions without considering the outcome. Thus instinct is an involuntary force in a certain direction of events. Instinct takes into consideration, the spiritual life and it triggers the thinking capacity in a human whom in failure to thing may be forced to do so. Whenever the degree of being conscious decreases as a result of contributing factors such as; fatigue and depression, then an instinctive behavior originates (Donald, Martin, 1997, 11). In this view, instinct can be discussed in various aspects which include sexuality, creativity, and activity amongst others.

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Experience is a contributing factor to certain behavior to one’s offspring’s by affecting gene appearance. Protein contents in the body are determined by the location and quantity of genes in the body and are controlled by the environment and learning. Genes are mainly affected by environmental changes which as a result bring changes in the lineage inheritance of genes. Key stimulus is an occurrence which affects behavior as a result of the instinct created. These stimuli contribute to innate simulations which as a result leads to fixed action patterns.

Instincts are complex fixed action patterns. Instincts are character traits that are inherited and unchanged in an organism. They are responses to environment and they occur unconditionally. They can be viewed as a prose of behaviors which are unchanged. These fixed action patterns occur as a result of a response to a signal or stimuli. These signals are referred to as releasers when they work as communicating bonds between organisms of the same species. Fixed action patterns in validity creates a rigid and inefficient survival mechanism since this will restrict an organism in behaving in a certain manner, for instance, the behavior of birds rolling white objects into their nests referring them to eggs. The type of the fixed action patterns are mainly determined by certain body cells which are referred to as sensory receptors (Andrew, 1994, 53). For example the auditory sensory receptor can receive a terrifying sound which may result to a flight response. The magnitude of the key stimulus is determined by the integration of various signals in the sensory cells which also determine the magnitude of the response. Hormones are cores of these responses and are produced in the endocrine system in a body.

Behavioral genetics is the study of human behavior which occurs as a result of a response to a certain stimuli triggered through learning or environment. Instincts can also be considered to be the contributors to survival activities such as cultural and political. These are prospered through learning which non instinct is. There are times when there double existences of contradicting instincts may lead to a displaced situation.

Instincts are activated by ‘releaser’. It is true that all human beings can be motivated or have motive. This implies that the behavior is in a certain manner so as to achieve a perceived stand. Emotions are believed to be day in day out scenario in every person across the divide whether promising or not. Mainly emotions and motives are mainly controlled by the nervous system (Andrew, 1994, 71). These bring some biological influences which trigger humans to behave in certain ways in response to the effects. These are instincts.

Instinct is present in every species. Instinct is viewed as the inbuilt trait of an organism directed to behavior pattern, in response to certain stimuli such as environmental. In nature, all living organisms are perceived to posses some behavioral traits as a response to some external stimuli and they respond to them without learning; for instance bees respond to nectar flowers without being instructed. Thus instincts are taken to apply to every species since most of the behavioral traits are as a result of instincts. They determine to great extent, the survival mechanism. For instance, imprinting is an instinct in certain birds. In this type of instinct, birds are swayed in following any moving object referring it to be the mother (Donald, Martin, 1997, 33). This instinct also contributes to selection of sex as birds tend to follow the traits of the parents of the opposite sex.

In considering the behaviors of species, learning may be involved, though, it is not a factor in instinctive behavior. The inputs in any occurrence may affect both the releasing stimuli and the results.

Sociobiology and ethnology deals are the study of human behavior and animal behavior. On the other hand, Psychoanalysts view instinct in terms of motivational drives. Instincts can be viewed as reflexes. These determine developmental stages in living organism. There is also existing argument that humans may not be having instincts thus making them to acquire complex behavior patterns (John, 1993, 50).

In conclusion, instincts can be viewed as inborn perception of a living organism as a response to some stimuli which are influenced by learning or environment. It can also be deduced that instincts occur in every species since it is a character trait in response to a certain stimuli which might be disastrous. Instincts can also be seen as reflexes in human body. There are some outstanding human characters which have been attributed to instincts. These include; human moods, fight and fight responses.

Work Cited

Andrew L. Cherry. The Socializing Instincts: Individual, Family, and Social bonds, Mahwah, NJ, Praeger Publisher, 1994

Donald H. Ford, Martin E. Ford. Humans as Self-Constructing Living systems, New York, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997

John Birtchnell. How Humans Relate: A New Interpersonal Theory, Mahwah, NJ, Praeger Publishers, 1993