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Everything about Instinct
Behaviour due to innate biological factors
Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing innate (inborn) elements. The simplest example of an instinctive behaviour is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a corresponding clearly defined stimulus. Every animal has instincts, including humans. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: InstinctA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: An ‘instinct for learning’: the learning flights and walks of bees, wasps and ants from the 1850s to nowInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: The Runaway JuryThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Broca's area and the language instinctCited 295 times
- Go sideways: Instinctive driftA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Human ethologyA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun A natural or inherent impulse or behaviour.
Noun An intuitive reaction not based on rational, conscious thought.
Adjective Imbued, charged (with something).
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
Broca's area and the language instinct
Beyond intuition and instinct blindness: toward an evolutionarily rigorous cognitive science
A Specific and Rapid Neural Signature for Parental Instinct
Learning by Instinct
The descent of instinct.
From instinct to intellect: the challenge of maintaining healthy weight in the modern world
The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor
How an Instinct is Learned
🆕 Influential since 2022
An ‘instinct for learning’: the learning flights and walks of bees, wasps and ants from the 1850s to now
Overwriting an instinct: Visual cortex instructs learning to suppress fear responses
Halogen-free instinct flame-retardant waterborne polyurethanes: composition, performance, and application
Mother’s Instinct? Biological Essentialism and Parents’ Involvement in Work and Childcare
Combining aggregation-induced emission and instinct high-performance of polyarylene ether nitriles via end-capping with tetraphenylethene
📚 Books worth reading
The Runaway JuryJohn Grisham · 1996
The TestamentJohn Grisham · 1999
The expression of emotions in man and animalsCharles Darwin · 1872
The Language InstinctSteven Pinker · 1994
Learning and instinct in animalsW. H. Thorpe · 1956
Animal InstinctsAlan Titchmarsh · 2000
An introduction to social psychologyMcDougall, William · 1908
Les merveilles de l'instinct chez les insectesJean-Henri Fabre · 1913
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Instinctive drift Instinctive drift, alternately known as instinctual drift, is the tendency of an animal to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour that interferes…
- Human ethology Human ethology is the study of human behavior. Ethology as a discipline is generally thought of as a sub-category of biology, though psychological theories…
- Psychological adaptation A psychological adaptation is a functional, cognitive or behavioral trait that benefits an organism in its environment. Psychological adaptations fall…
- History of evolutionary psychology The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who argued that all the most human of human capacities—the human intellect, rationality…
- Fixed action pattern In the study of animal behavior, a fixed action pattern is an instinctive behavioral sequence that is highly stereotyped and species-characteristic. Fixed…
- Emotionality Emotionality is the observable behavioral and physiological component of emotion. It is a measure of a person's emotional reactivity to a stimulus. Most…
- Jungian archetypes Jungian archetypes are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective…
- Functional psychology Functional psychology or functionalism refers to a psychological school of thought that was a direct outgrowth of Darwinian thinking, which focuses attention…