An Introduction to Social Psychology

Chapter 9: Misuse of the Concept of Instinct

Luther Lee Bernard

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WIDESPREAD USE OF THE TERM INSTINCT—  Since the eighteenth century, when there was a strong attempt to understand the mechanisms by which human behavior actually occurred as well as to understand the environmental forces which produced behavior, there has been a good deal of emphasis upon the concept of instinct among the psychologists and ethicists. The concepts of conscience, sympathy, benevolence, and of other supposedly native impulses and behavior sets, were then already beginning to lose prestige. The nineteenth century saw these reputed causes of behavior pass out of legitimate social psychology as innate motives to conduct, although they remained as class terms for certain types of acquired dispositions. The demand was for more specific units of original behavior patterns, and the term instinct came largely to take the place of, and in some cases to include, the older projected entities which we have enumerated. At first the term instinct was itself used quite generally and loosely, as we have seen. Recognized specific instincts were few, but the general principle of instinct, or inborn behavior trait, was quite frequently invoked. Gradually the number of specific instincts increased, until late in the nineteenth and early in the twentieth centuries it became overwhelmingly large.

ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT—The reason for the invention of a vast number of specific instincts was the insistent demand of a number of newly integrated sciences, applied and theoretical, for a detailed explanation of human behavior. Psychology, having made connections with physiology and neurology about this tune, was supposed to he able to speak authoritatively on the matter. The social and mental sciences had at the close of the nineteenth century a flowering which was even more remarkable than that of the physical sciences a century

(124) and a half earlier and of the biological sciences in the middle of the nineteenth century. Education was evolving from an art into a science, and it was making connections with the new and independent science of psychology through two overlapping theoretical sciences, educational psychology and child psychology. Sociology had also come to demand for itself a scientific status in the study of institutions and groups. Social psychology, overlapping both psychology and sociology, was attempting to generalize individual behavior into collective behavior. Even economics and political science, and to a faint degree history, were beginning to look beneath the visible plane of conscious and purposive behavior in the market place and the political arena for the hidden motives and powers which their students began to suspect after all had made history and still continued to rule the world. Religion was beginning, as an intellectual discipline, to break with authoritarian dogmas and theories and to seek for the explanation of its doctrines in human personality and environmental conditions. Ethics was passing out of the status of an absolutistic doctrine into a theory of relativity in evaluating concepts of right and wrong.

The findings of biology and psychology and sociology were being invoked by all of these new trends. The search, in so far as it turned to an analysis of human nature instead of environment, was for more specific elements of behavior which could account for the relative fluidity and unfinality of behavior which were now perceived to be dominant in individual character and in human affairs. The principle of the reflex arc had been discovered and it had been elaborated into complex patterns of behavior. The organization of the nervous system and the complicated sensory structures began to be fairly well known. Behavior was no longer a mystical infiltration into the organism from the divine or metaphysical entities which ruled the human world from outside. An independent, self-existing natural law became one of the myths to be added to the more concrete traditions of the pagan gods. Reason and intuition, conscience, the soup the virtues and the vices, formerly regarded as entities residing in the individual to whom they had come as emanations from the mystical natural law or from divinity, were now perceived to be ana-

( 125) -lytical and synthetic verbal concepts symbolic of the nervous functioning arising out of the normal stimulus-response mechanisms by means of which the organism made its adjustments to its environment.

FIXITY OF BEHAVIOR NOT A PROOF OF ITS INSTINCTIVE CHARACTER—Introspection and objective observation easily disclosed the fact that many, perhaps most, of these stimulus-response processes or behavior patterns occurred in relatively fixed forms. People were observed to act in much the same way in similar situations over and over again. It was also noticeable that it was frequently very difficult to change the behavior pattern even when new stimuli were applied. This relative fixity of behavior, especially in what were called the fundamental relationships of life, was a matter of age-old observation. And since biology, which dealt primarily with the inherited mechanisms of the lower animal types, was the fashion of thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century, an inheritance explanation of the relative constancy of human behavior became the accepted theory. The behavior patterns were studied. Reflexes and random movements were neglected by the mental and social scientists as relatively unimportant, because they were too simple to loom large in adult collective behavior which was first studied by them. Tropisms had not yet been described or had but little vogue. The complex behavior patterns which were observed to function day by day, in both individual and collective adjustment situations, were seized upon and emphasized. Under the influence of biology, and in the absence of any account of an acquired origin—for the elements of the learning process were relatively unknown—their inheritance as units was assumed.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century we have gone much further in the analysis of the habit forming process. We have been able to show that it is an absurdity to claim true instinctive character for most of the complex behavior patterns, especially for those which mediate the rapidly changing adjustments of the organism a5 a whole to complex changing environments. This analysis has shown them to be acquired behavior patterns, or habit complexes. These acquired behavior patterns are also integrated in the neuro-protoplasm

(126) under the influence of the environmental pressures, just as are the other more fixed behavior patterns. But their integration occurs in the more flexible neuro-protoplasmic elements of the higher brain centers, and therefore they are more easily changed. Not all students of social psychology, and of the other sciences and arts which depend upon psychology and sociology, have yet come to make these distinctions or to see their importance. Many of them still cling to the old notion that all or practically all of the relatively fixed behavior patterns are inherited or instinctive, although this attitude of mind is rapidly disappearing from social psychology. The following paragraphs will serve to illustrate its error.

EXAMPLES OF THE MISUSE OF THE CONCEPT OF INSTINCT —We have defined an instinct as a specific response to a specific stimulus, the neural pattern or structure mediating the response being inherited. If the pattern—that is, the neural connections—is not inherited, then the behavior pattern is acquired and not instinctive, however definite and specific it may be. In the examples which follow these simple facts defining the nature of instinct will be seen to be violated.

LITERARY USAGE—The most inaccurate or unscientific employment of the term instinct is the literary one so frequently found in poetry or other elegant writing. The very common terms "instinct with beauty," "instinct with music," "instinct with spirit," or "instinct with truth" are examples of this. But this usage is found among serious as well as esthetic writers. One author says that matter is instinct with eternal energy. Marett tells us that the savage considers white animals, birds of night, monkeys, mice, frogs, crabs, snakes, and lizards to be instinct with a dreadful divinity. The historian Marvin speaks of "a view instinct with reverence for all existence." Benjamin Kidd has affirmed that "the labor movement in the west is becoming consciously instinct with the principle of universal war." Another writer tells us that "Everywhere this world and life are instinct with service." Washington Gladden found that "nature is instinct with reason," and another religious writer declares that "the message of the church has always been instinct with a power of social renewal." The term as here used does not necessarily imply

( 127) a behavior pattern or any hereditary connection, but is more or less a figurative usage.

CONFUSION WITH AUTOMATIC, UNPREMEDITATED, VAGUE, AND IMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR—One of the most frequent misuses of the term instinct or of its derivatives, "instinctive" and "instinctively," is to employ it to cover almost any behavior which is unconscious or automatic or unpremeditated or vague or impulsive. A few examples will illustrate this improper usage. Forel says that "woman has an instinctive admiration for men of high intellect and lofty sentiments." A. W. Small tells us that a certain program is "instinctively adopted, after a fashion, by every man who tries to deal with concrete social questions." A writer on housing reform insists that the method which the average citizen "instinctively adopts is to get up a petition of thousands of names in favor of his measure and send it to the legislature." If instincts are embedded in the race inheritance, as is claimed, this would indeed be an unexpected instinct, since interest in housing reform is very recent. A writer on international affairs states that "the Italian people have an instinctive affection for the people of Britain," although he does not explain to us the inherited basis of it. Jane Addams says that bad men were instinctively afraid of Lincoln. LeBon, the social psychologist and French publicist, even goes so far as to speak of "instinctive agreements among all its (the nation's) members on all great questions." Such agreements, if they existed, would necessitate a highly flexible and complicated inheritance mechanism indeed. Another writer comments on "the instinctive alliance of the woman suffrage movement with the uncertain and dangerous elements in our political life." Nietzsche says that the "will of the spirit . . . instinctively aims at appearance and superficiality." Small and Vincent's declaration that amenities become instinctive when they are insisted upon in early life would seem to make the instinctive (inherited) mechanism itself acquired. Likewise, E. T. Devine says, "Those especially who find their approach to the problems of social work through the doorway of economics have been trained . . . to ask instinctively two questions: Have we the money, or the resources, to do what we see requires to be done?"

( 128) Such examples might easily be multiplied many fold from the literature even of the social and psychological sciences, but it is not necessary. It must be clear from the context that the persons who are responsible for these illustrations were not speaking of inherited behavior at all, but misused the term instinct to cover learned attitudes although they may have believed they were dealing with inheritance.

COMPLEX HABITS MISTAKEN FOR INSTINCTS—In the case of supposed highly specific and definite, although complex, instincts we find the same tendency among writers who should be on their guard against such errors to confuse the acquired with the inherited. One writer speaks of the "instinct of the desire to liberate the Christian subjects of the Sultan." Professor Ross avers that "Christianity was born with the imperishable instinct to impregnate the meanest man with its soul," an expression which includes a rare collection of anthropomorphisms. A psychoanalyst thinks there is an instinct to mummify the corpse, also to photograph it. A novelist speaks of an instinct in one of his characters to offer himself as a sop to conventional honor. A writer on play and education has found an instinct for engaging the groceryman in conversation while a companion makes off with the bananas. The same writer knows of an instinct "for escaping down dark alleys and over roofs and by the exercise of many wiles." In the accompanying instance—"On the day that these decisions are announced from Paris, the instinct of every Turk will be to kill a Christian"—the instinct seems to be highly correlated with the human calendar as well as with persons. In this case, cited by Ross—"the instinct of an angry community to refuse coöperation"—the instinct appears to be a collective rather than an individual behavior pattern, an assumption which is scarcely tenable. The "instinct that prescribes the robbing of cellars and greenhouses" must be of relatively recent origin. According to another writer there was "an instinct to substitute for slavery a condition of serfdom," which gives a new and non-economic interpretation to at least one aspect of history. "A business man's instinct for organization and administration" would also appear to have more of the acquired than of the inherited in it. The "instinct of

( 129) the life of the underworld of finance," of which Benjamin Kidd speaks, is both indefinite and doubtful. An "instinct for paying propositions" should be of the greatest value to a financier.

In the world of culture as well as of economics there seems to be the same misapprehension about instincts. For example, The Nation declares that "Lamb had a fine instinct for apocalyptic passages." Less exalted, but equally improbable, is the "instinct of the girl to pat and arrange her hair" which has been isolated by an educational sociologist. Illustrations of this sort might be vastly multiplied. But it should be clear from these instances that the writers of these passages really have in mind the results of training and have fallen into the prevalent error already mentioned of mistaking habits for instincts because they are relatively definite and constant in their operation.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF INSTINCTS—The absurdity of classifying the behavior patterns which have just been reviewed as instincts is sufficiently evident without further comment. But when one comes to make a classification of supposedly true instincts the problem of discrimination becomes more difficult. What are the instincts which actually do exist and operate in directing human behavior or enter into composite acquired behavior complexes? Various Utopians and social theorists with unilateral explanations of social conditions and problems often recognize only a single dominant instinct, with possibly a few subordinate or supporting instincts thrown in for good measure. Thus the so-called instincts of acquisitiveness, constructiveness, gregariousness, sex, fear, play, nutrition, etc., have at various times and under various circumstances served as the key to all human behavior. Freud, the psychoanalyst, recognizes only two fundamental instincts, sex and self-preservation, which he believes determine all human conduct. To these Jung and his followers add the herd instinct. McDougall, in his Social Psychology. lists twelve such instincts, of which the first seven nay he called primary and the others secondary. They are fear, repulsion, pugnacity, curiosity, self-abasement, self-assertion, parental, reproduction, gregariousness, emulation, acquisitiveness, hunger. To these he adds some general

( 130) dispositions, which he does not call instincts, viz., sympathy, suggestion, play, and imitation. He does not even maintain that these general tendencies or dispositions are wholly or primarily inherited.

SOME SAMPLES—The number of classifications offered by various writers is almost without limit, and some of these classifications are very long.

Professor William McDougall, in his Outline of Psychology, lists and describes thirteen major and seven minor instincts as follows:

Major instincts

Minor instincts

S. S. Colvin [1] lists thirty instincts in the approximate order of their supposed development, as follows:

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R. C. Givler [2] attempts a classification of instincts from the functional standpoint, making use primarily of the concept of tropic response. He finds both primary (four in number) and derivative instincts. His list of the latter includes only the more important as he understands them. It should also be remarked that he regards any automatic response pattern as an instinct, whether it is inherited or acquired.

Primary instincts

Derivative instincts

William James[3] presented a carefully selected list of fifty-two supposedly legitimate instincts, while Thorndike [4] appears to have literally hundreds. Woodworth (Psychology) seems to accept at least 110.  Many of the psychologists and others writing on instincts group their approved instincts into general classes. Thus Colvin and Bagley [5] list 25 instincts under the following general headings: Adaptive, individualistic, sex and parental, social, and religious and esthetic. E. A. Kirkpatrick [6] accepts 30 instincts which he arranges under the headings: Individualistic or self-preservative, parental, group or social, adaptive, regulative, and resultant or miscellaneous. H. C. Warren [7] has only 26 instincts, which he classifies generally as nutritive, reproductive, defensive, aggressive, and social. Woodworth's 110 instincts are arranged under the three general headings of responses to organic needs, responses to other persons, and play

(132) instincts. Watson (Behavior) has II general headings or classes, as follows: ( I ) Structural characteristics, action systems, etc., (2) obtaining food, (3) shelter, (.4) rest, sleep, play, etc., (5) sex, (6) defense and attack, (7) special forms of instinct, (8) vocalization, (9) unclassified and non-adaptive but complex and complete acts, (10) unclassified and nonadaptive reflexes, (11) individual peculiarities in response.

A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS of the usage of instincts in 5684. cases taken from various types of literature, but mainly from the social sciences, by the author seems to show that the so-called instincts distribute themselves under 22 distinct headings and a group called miscellaneous as follows:

Types No. Cases   Types No. Cases
Altruistic 119 Migratory and climatic 64
Anti-social 185 Play 168
Disgust or repulsion 74 Recessive and repose 36
Economic 281 Religious 83
Esthetic 152 Retaliative 96
Ethical 48 Self-abasement 139
Family 413 Self-assertive 806
Fear and flight 287 Self-display 107
Food 228 Sex 853
Gregarious or social 697 Workmanship 266
Intellectual 262 Miscellaneous 229
Imitative 91

The presentation of this list does not mean that the writer accepts them as true instincts or complex inherited behavior patterns. The list merely represents the usage accepted as a whole or in part by approximately five hundred writers, mainly from the mental and social sciences. The numbers after the titles represent the frequency with which the type was found to occur.

The large number of classifications here presented or indicated is for the purpose of providing data for the student to analyze and make comparisons of usages.[8]

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CRITICISM OF THE CURRENT USAGE OF THE CONCEPT OF INSTINCT—Some criticisms of the current usage of the concept of instinct have doubtless already occurred to the reader. One is that there is no sort of agreement in regard to what are the true instincts. Some of the terms, such as acquisition, fighting, sexual love, gregariousness, self-assertion, self-abasement, appear repeatedly in the classifications, but an even larger number of so-called instincts can be found occasionally in a large number of classifications. Sometimes, also, a term which is used as a single specific instinct in one classification may be used to characterize a whole group or class of so-called specific instincts in another classification. An instinct must have original or inherited unity as a behavior pattern or it is not an instinct. A mere group of instincts, a concept, or a classificatory title cannot be an instinct. Such is not a concrete behavior pattern at all, for it does not exist except as a conceptual or abstract meaning term. It never appears in an adjustment situation as a unitary process of behavior. It is in effect only a list of concrete behavior patterns, which may or may not appear together at any one time or in some one individual organism.

This same criticism applies also to most of the so-called specific instincts in the classifications cited. Thus such terms as fighting, gregariousness, self-assertion, self-abasement, acquisition, play, imitation, and the like are not single and definite behavior patterns. They are class terms for hundreds and thousands of concrete behavior mechanisms which are grouped together in action or in conceptual thinking because of their general similarity of function. There are almost numberless ways of fighting, playing, imitating, or of having gregarious contacts with one's fellows. Each one of these may be a unit behavior pattern and therefore entitled to be called an instinct, if it is inherited. But the whole list of activities having a common conceptual or classificatory name never occur in action together, that is, they never function as a unit behavior process, as would be necessarv if they were true instincts. They occur in consciousness only by a short-cut process of symbolic integration and condensation. That is, the whole neuro-muscular organization which would be necessary to the

(134) effective overt expression of such a complex so-called instinct does not appear as the basis of the verbal concept which is used to symbolize the group of potential behavior processes included in the reputed instinct. It would probably not be possible for all of such behavior processes to come into consciousness at once in sufficient detail to enable them to go into action. It certainly would not be possible for all of the behavior patterns symbolized by one of these terms, miscalled an instinct, to go into overt action at the same time. What we are dealing with in such cases is, therefore, not behavior patterns in the neuro-muscular protoplasmic systems of the organism, but merely a collective or class symbol of many such concrete behavior patterns which never occur together or as a single overt behavior unit. And an instinct must be a unitary behavior pattern or it is not an instinct.

INSTINCTS ARE STRUCTURAL, NOT CONCEPTUAL—An instinct is a biological fact and it is a unit character, or it does not exist. It is structural. It is not possible to inherit an abstraction. The activity, which ordinarily by a species of metonymy is miscalled the instinct, is of course not inherited. The actual instinct which is inherited is the unit organization of the neurons, the physiological and neurological bases of which lie back of and give form to the activity or resulting behavior. The behavior is the visible manifestation of the structural neural organization which is not visible, because it is rooted in an inner neural organization. The behavior is the response of this neuro-muscular organization of the organism to environmental pressures. Only the structural organization can be inherited and therefore be an instinct.

A TRUE CLASSIFICATION OF THE INSTINCTS would be a description of these various neural mechanisms. But such a description is of course impossible in the present state of our knowledge about the distribution and organization of neural processes. As a consequence we are compelled to use the less accurate method of classifying instincts in terms of their overt manifestations, that is, iii terms of their stimuli and responses. Thorndike [9] has listed four such methods of classification as follows:

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I. By the functions which the tendencies perform
2. By the responses which are their end-terms
3. By the situations which are their first terms
4. By their origins or affinities in development

It is clear of course that there is no relationship of identity between the adjustment-function of a behavior pattern and its structure. The one is a psycho-social fact, is apprehended conceptually, and has objective existence only in consciousness. While the other is a matter of organic relationship and is developed in the protoplasm. Several very diverse structures or behavior patterns may have the same adjustment function, while the same behavior pattern may at different times or in different situations perform antagonistic adjustment functions. The structure may be inherited, while the function never can be, since it is organized only conceptually or symbolically as a method of evaluating the adjustment which is made to environment. Neither is there a complete correlation between responses and stimuli, on the one hand, and the behavior patterns or neural organizations, on the other hand, which produce the one and are the result of the other. Consequently these methods of classifying instincts are of but little value.

EXAMPLES OF CONCEPTUAL TERMS MISTAKEN FOR INSTINCTS—  Finally, these complex functional or value terms which are miscalled instincts, not only lack the structural unity of instincts, but they are not even inherited units. In each of these complexes of potential activity or behavior represented by such class terms as fighting, the maternal instinct, gregariousness, play, and the like, the acquired elements far outnumber the inherited. Take, for example, the so-called maternal instinct. There is no one activity or set of activities which the instinctivists have in mind when they speak of this "instinct." In different situations and on various occasions the imputed content of this so-called instinct may vary as widely as affection for the child, nursing it, spanking it to make it behave, caressing it, taking it to a baby clinic, getting it off to school, starting it in a profession, and thousands of other things. Of all of the possible activities and attitudes which the mother may manifest toward the child only a few

(136) are really inherited, and these are among the simplest of the whole number. They may possibly be represented by such acts as pressing the child to the breast, yielding it milk when it nurses, responding to its presence in the arms by clasping or pressure, and possibly kissing and emotional and mental disturbance when it cries or laughs.

But such acts as these are not sufficient to care for a helpless human infant. The real care of the child, that which enables it to survive and develop into a normal and well adjusted organic and social personality, must be learned. The behavior patterns for such care are acquired by observation and imitation of others in play, by reading books and hearing lectures on the subject, and by the experience of caring for a child. Thus the maternal instinct, which is supposed to account for our behavior in caring for children and to constitute the content of this behavior, turns out to be no instinct at all, is not even a unitary habit process, but is a classificatory concept covering many potential acts which never occur together or in unity. This so-called instinct is an abstract and acquired value term or complex rather than a concrete act. It exists actually as a symbol or as a meaning complex of symbols, but not as overt behavior or action. Consequently it cannot be an instinct. Moreover, the analysis and criticism which have been applied to the term maternal instinct may also be applied with like validity to practically all of the other complex "instincts" in the classifications here cited.

DO INSTINCTS EXIST IN MAN?—It may be asked, therefore, if there are any instincts. This question has been raised and sometimes it has been answered in the negative. It seems proper, however, to affirm the existence of instincts, but to deny that they are as numerous or as important relatively in the adjustment processes of man as in the lower animals. As said before, the human instincts which remain intact are concerned primarily with the vegetative or strictly vital processes, rather than with the wider adjustments of the organism to its environment. The latter, and especially those adjustments which we call cultural, are mediated by acquired behavior patterns. If we make a rigid distinction between reflexes and instincts on the basis of the relative complexity of the behavior

( 137) pattern, then it may be said that there are very few true instincts left intact in the human organism. But there is no definite dividing line between reflexes and instincts on the grounds of complexity, or on any other basis of distinction, and the tendency appears to be to make the term instinct inclusive of that of reflex. From this viewpoint it may be said that we have a great many very simple instincts. But the important fact to note is that the value complexes which for the most part constitute the content of the current classifications of instincts are not instincts, but are acquired complexes and behavior patterns or systems.

DO INSTINCTS DOMINATE THE FORMATION OF HABITS?— It has been claimed by some of the instinctivists that even if we admit that many or most of the so-called instincts are acquired behavior patterns or value complexes, nevertheless the latter are organized under the dominance of the instincts which they include in their structural organization. The contention is that even the acquired behavior patterns and complexes are not composed wholly of non-instinctive elements, but that they include inherited as well as acquired processes. This unquestionably is true. All, or practically all, of the acquired adjustment patterns are built up on the basis of the reflexes, instincts, and random impulses, as described in the previous chapter. In many cases, with the partial exception of the delayed instincts, the acquired pattern is organized about some instinctive pattern, sometimes to reënforce it and at other times to transform and sublimate or to repress it. The fact is that as the higher social and institutional environments multiply and increase in volume they come increasingly to dominate our behavior. They select our responses out of all the behavior units at our disposal and organize the suitable elements into new and acquired complexes which constitute the content of what we call civilized behavior. If we turn again to the analysis of the so-called maternal instinct, we shall find that the attitudes and practices which the modern mother develops towards her children are not determined by the relatively unimportant instinctive elements which we discovered in the total behavior. These may at times reënforce acquired tendencies, but often they motivate the mother in the opposite direction to

( 138) that which is enjoined upon her by her scientific training. Her behavior towards her child is dictated primarily by the social environment which brings to bear upon her the collective practices of the members of her group. These she imitates and practices herself, even when they are contrary to her instinctive urges. It is not the good mother who yields to her native impulses and amuses the baby when it cries or gives it the food it desires or spoils it for the sake of the satisfaction of her own emotions. The good mother does what the child specialists tell her, even at the cost of repressing or sublimating her inherited maternal impulses.

ENVIRONMENTAL DOMINANCE—And so it is with much or most of our modern civilization. Civilization is itself in large part a system of sublimations and repressions. We do not give our pugnacious, sexual, gustatory, fear, and gregarious impulses free rein. On the contrary we build up innumerable controls over them in order that we may not destroy the fabric of culture by a "return to nature" through a blind following of our impulses. If we eat without restraint we are liable to organic diseases and we lack sufficient incentive and initiative to do the work of society. If we do not learn to control our anger impulses society becomes a state of war instead of peace. Unbridled sex activity means overpopulation and poverty and degradation for large portions of mankind. Even unrestrained gregariousness results in an excess of entertainment and amusement and too little useful productive effort. The best method of control of these inherited impulses where they exist, as well as of their acquired modifications, is by what we call sublimation. This involves the turning of the impulses into derivative and substitute channels, as in the creation of art and the making and doing of useful things in the service of a derived ideal. If we employ the method of repression, which has sometimes been practiced and preached by the more puritanical factions and philosophies, there is always the danger that the thin veneer of culture may be broken through and that there will be an irresponsible release of the repressed impulses in a "return to nature" or to "barbarism." Our formative institutions, including those of education and religion, are always busy with this problem of the most effective control

( 139) systems and gradually, with the aid of social psychology and the social sciences, they should be able to devise a system which will bend the native impulses to the service of the best abstract ideals of a cultural civilization. Thus environment, rather than instinct, now shapes our behavior in the main. Environment even utilizes instinct in the service of its own collective mechanisms and values or ideals.

GENERAL LIMITATIONS DUE TO INHERITANCE—The argument as here presented is sometimes confusing to students of behavior. That it is not instinct but habit in the form of the psycho-social environment which in the main dominates and gives uniformity to behavior may be accepted by them, but they are not able to admit that inheritance exercises no influence over behavior. They are likely to feel that a criticism of the crude instinct hypothesis is an attack upon all forms of inheritance determination of behavior.

There is an inheritance basis for behavior, but it is largely negative and exists for the most part in the non-neural protoplasms. The general characteristics of man's anatomy and physiology constitute the main inherited bases of human behavior. They function as conditions and limitations upon the development of behavior patterns in the neuro-muscular systems. All men have approximately the same general conditions and limitations of behavior of this type. For example, we cannot form the habit of flying, because we have no wings. We cannot inhabit the bottom of the sea because our lungs are not so constructed as to enable us to do this. We cannot receive the stimuli of the radio broadcasting apparatus without special receiving apparatus, because the inherited structure of our auditory organs is not adequate for the purpose. In short, the limits within which all behavior must take place are determined by our inherited non-neural as well as neural structures. But the specific character or form which this behavior takes is in large degree determined by environment. These general limitations and facilitations due to inherited structures and physiological processes, as well as to acquired modifications of them, will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.

These limitations are perhaps more important than we sometimes realize, because they are so fixed and inflexible, while the

( 140) neural structures are relatively flexible and modifiable. We can build up, under environmental pressures, new neural patterns of behavior, especially in the cerebral cortex, but we cannot modify in any great degree our fundamental anatomy and physiology. Consequently the control which we seek to exercise over our behavior through the production of new neural integrations and organizations is frequently vetoed by the relative fixity of our non-neural inheritance.

PHYSIOLOGICAL NEED NOT INSTINCT—Other limitations and conditions of our behavior, structurally less specific, but largely inherited, are due to the physiological makeup of our organisms. Thus the taking of food, breathing, sleeping, and the performance of certain other functions are inevitable if life is to be preserved. The need for the performance of these functions is not the same as the mechanisms by which they are done and should be separated from them. The mechanisms of performance may be either inherited or acquired. The necessity for the performance, by whatever mechanism, is fundamentally determined in the hereditary constitution of the protoplasms, although the extent and time and conditions of the performance of the functions may be greatly modified by the environmental pressures which shape their patterns of behavior. In a somewhat similar, but less insistent way, thinking, the general character of our emotions, temperament, and the like are determined by our physiology, but their individual expressions of patterns are largely determined by environment. This fact is made apparent in a later chapter.

This, however, does not justify us in speaking of any of these general types of behavior as instincts. An instinct is a specific stimulus-response pattern, a neural structure. Such is not the case with the physiological necessity of eating, breathing, sleeping, thinking, or experiencing emotion. These are general physiological conditions basic to specific behavior. The locomotive cannot go without fuel, but the mechanism by which it operates is a different matter. Likewise the instinct or acquired behavior pattern by which we act is different from the physiological condition which demands food or sleep in order to provide the metabolic or other transformations which render the subsequent behavior possible. The confusion of the

( 141) physiological need with the instinct is a very common error and may be said to be basic to one of the prevalent misuses of instinct. It is one which will disappear when our thinking on this subject becomes somewhat clearer.

MATERIALS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Notes

  1. The Learning Process.
  2. Givler, R. C., Psychology, the Science of Human Behavior.
  3. Principles of Psychology.
  4. Original Nature of Man.
  5. Colvin, S. S. and Bagley, W. C., Human Behavior: a First Book in Psychology for Teachers.
  6. Fundamentals of Child Study.
  7. Human Psychology.
  8. For more extended classifications see the author's Instinct: A Study in Social Psychology, Chs. VII-IX and XVI; also E. L. Thorndike's Original Nature of Man.
  9. Original Nature of Man.

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