Instinct

An instinct is an innate or inherited mental structure which determines its possessor to

perform certain specific actions in certain situations: It is a natural impulse by which animals
are guided apparently independent of reason or experience.

(i) An instinct is an inherited or innate psychological disposition,

(ii) Which determines its possessor to perceive and to pay attention to objects or ideas of
certain class,

(iii) To experience an emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an

object and

(iv) To act in regard to it in a particular manner or at least, to experience and an impulse to

such action.

For example: infants have an inborn rooting reflex that helps them seek out a nipple
and obtain nourishment, while birds have an innate need to migrate before winter. Both of
these behaviors occur naturally and automatically. They do not need to be learned in order
to be displayed.

Examples of this include a dog shaking after it gets wet, a sea turtle seeking out the ocean
after hatching, or a bird migrating before the winter season.

Ethologist Konrad Lorenz famously demonstrated the power of instincts when he was able
to get young geese to imprint on him. He noted that geese would become attached to the
first moving thing they encountered after they hatched, which in most cases would be their
mothers. However, by ensuring that he was the first thing the geese encountered, they
instead became attached or imprinted, on him.

Types of Instincts:
Instincts are innate mental impressions which have a spontaneous effect upon the
behaviour of the individual. In order to understand fully the operation of instincts, it is
essential to arrive at a proper understanding of the types of instincts. Psychologists have
been studying and analysing them from time to time, and on the basis of this observation
and analysis, scholars have classified them and thus thrown light on the kinds of minds
found in human beings.
Scholars have clarified their ideas about instincts as outlined
below:

(a) Appetitive.

(b) Reactive.

According to Drever, the appetitive instincts are those which have their origin in pleasant or
painful experiences and in which the desired purpose is associated exclusively with this
pleasure or pain. The reactive instincts (familiar or known situations) manifest themselves in
reaction to particular objects, and the purposes implicit in them are associated with the
situations or objects to which the individual reactions.

Kilpatrick classified instincts into five classes, as follows:

1. Self-preservative instinct.

2. Reproductive instinct.

3. Gregarious instinct.

4. Adaptive instinct.

5. Regulative instinct.

Characteristics of Instincts:
Rudolf Pinter writes about instincts—Instincts are more complicated than reflexes. There is
no sharp dividing line between the reflex and instincts. An instinct, according to some
psychologists, involves a series of reflex activities. One reflex furnishes the stimulus to the
next. The connection depend upon the inherited structure of the organism are subject to
modification only within certain limits instincts are original tendencies to action, depending
upon the specific nature of the environment as to how the reaction will be carried out. A
normal healthy infant will vocalize, but just what form his vocalization will take and what
language it will develop into depends upon the nature of the environment surrounding him.

As soon as a person is born, his mind tends in a particular direction, and even without
receiving and education, the child begins performing certain activities, such as sucking milk
from his mother’s breast. Similarly, certain other activities such as raising the hand to strike
at someone in anger, or running away in fear, opening the eyes wide in surprise, etc., appear
to be perfectly spontaneous or natural. Spontaneous activities of this kind, being put into
operation by innate or inborn mental impressions, are referred to an instinct.