Instinct
Instinct - literally instinct - usually referred to the unknown, inner foundations ( " drives" ) of the perceptible to the observer behavior of an animal. This term was never clearly defined in the behavioral sciences and psychology, but used by different authors vary. Today, he is also colloquially often used figuratively for " a secure feeling for something " and refers to human behaviors that occur without reflected control.
The word instinct was derived in the 18th century from the Latin term instinctae naturae, which again the verb instinguere (, incite, spur, prick ') was based. The adjective instinctive means " guided by instinct, drive, emotionally ." It was instinctif modeled after the French word in the 19th century.
The study of instincts, so the putative inner causes of the observable behavior of the animals, saw the since the 1930s emerged from the animal psychology classical ethology as one of their essential research objectives and there was the instinct theory. In contrast to the representatives of classical ethology the followers of behaviorism rejected the search for inner causes of behavior on principle.
Definitions of " instinct "
Since the Middle Ages the term instinct, impulse, momentum, and others were more used though, not specifically defined. Instincts were initially regarded as a divine gift, the precise analysis remains denied to the human mind, whereby thoughts of philosophers of ancient Greece were taken. Only in the 19th century, following advances in the fields of anatomy and neurology, a pragmatic access to the phenomenon of innate behavior was possible. So William James wrote in 1887 about the animals:
Hermann Samuel Reimarus wrote in 1760 in his book General considerations about the instincts of animals, mainly about her art shoots. To the knowledge of the context of the world, the Creator and our own animals following " instincts " to " mechanical instincts of animals ", who were from the construction of her body dependent; " Asking shoots ", characterized by habits, likes and dislikes; " Arbitrary impulses " that served the self-preservation; and finally " artistic drives " the " for the preservation of every animal and its kind " were used.
Occasionally the term instinct has also been applied recently to spiritual, non- conscious processes of people, such as in 1846 by Ernst Heinrich Weber:
Charles Darwin meant by instinctive behavior to a behavior that can be controlled completely without experience already first-run, on the other, those which have been acquired through experience. In his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and animals describes Darwin in 1872, for example, that animals through the rearing of her hair " their enemies over to look bigger and more terrible ," thereby assuming a threatening attitude and " that further such positions and sounds after a time by habit were instinctively. "
William James
William James wrote in 1872 a still useful formulation, according to which the instinct is the ability to
Heinrich Ernst Ziegler
The German zoologist Heinrich Ernst Ziegler (1858-1925) supported the 1904 reflex chain theory and wrote that " reflexes and instincts inherited ( kleronomen ) pathways of the nervous system based " and that the instincts of reflections have been formed " by major complications ."
William McDougall
William McDougall (1871-1938) was the instinct 1908 three functions:
- A perceptive: The instinct determine how we acquire things by means of the senses
- An emotional: The instinct determine how we saw things
- A motivational: The instinct determine how we dealt with things
Every instinct arranged McDougall also have a corresponding emotion to (eg flight instinct ↔ fear)
Until the 1930s the vitalists kept the instincts of a scientific research neither accessible nor in need.
Konrad Lorenz wrote in 1950: ". As an instinct or impulse we call a throughout spontaneously active system of behavior that is functionally sufficiently uniform to deserve a name " The instinct is therefore to physiological processes, ultimately hypothetically interconnections of neurons in the brain returned.
Nikolaas Tinbergen
Nikolaas Tinbergen (1956 ) defined instinct as a hierarchically organized mechanism in the nervous system, which responds to certain internal and external, vorwarnende, initiating and directing impulses and they answered with coordinated, life- and species-preserving movements: thus a complex system of cues, caused thereby internal state changes (see Congenital trigger mechanism ) and subsequent activities.
The sociologist Arnold Gehlen (1904-1976) postulated a hereditary " instinct reduction" in humans, which he generally saw as " deficient being ".
Application of the concept of instinct to humans
Otto Klineberg cited three criteria that must be met in order to talk in humans by instinct can:
In the literature the term instinct is at best used carefully today. This is mainly for three reasons:
Firstly, recent results of socialization research and behavioral biology have the " naturalness " of behaviors partially refuted.
On the other behaviors are only called " instinct" or " instinct " is explained without this behavior. Example: Someone flees after an accident, so it's the instinct to flee; or as an assistant, so it's the helper instinct. Philosophy of science, this is called a Problemdopplung: It is no longer only to explain the behavior, but also referred to as engines hypothetical cause.
In addition, the instinct is to refute evolution as a theoretical explanation hardly size. Manfred Hassebrauck describes the increase of evolutionary explanations for social behavior and cognitive processes. He critically remarked, make it " now once a prototype [ ... ] ultimate explanations dar. "
LL Bernard presented in 1926 a catalog of the instincts found in the literature together and found 5684 different instincts.
Today avoid psychology and behavioral biology broadly the term instinct and replace it, for example by innate behavior.