Psychology by Robert S. Woodworth (top rated ebook readers .TXT) 📕

new stimuli acquire the power of arousing it, what learned reactions are substituted for the native preparatory and final reactions, and what combinations occur between the instinct in question and other reaction-tendencies.

Besides all this, it would be very desirable to present convincing evidence that each instinct listed is a genuine instinct, a part of the native equipment, and not something built up by experience and training. It is rather absurd, the free and easy way in which an instinct is often assumed, simply to fit behavior which needs to be explained--a money getting instinct, for example, or a teacher-hating instinct. Since money and teachers do not exist in a state of nature, there can be no instincts specifically related to them; and it is incumbent on the psychologist to show how such acquired tendencies are derived from the native tendencies.

The full program outlined above being much too extensive to follow out completely in this chapter, we shall only mention a few salient points under each instinct. We shall try to point out the primitive behavior of the child, that reveals the instinct at its lowest terms, and give some hint also of its importance in adult behavior.

Classification

Of all the instincts, two groups or classes stand out from the rest: the responses to organic needs, and the responses to other persons. The first class includes eating, avoiding injury, and many others; the second class includes the herd instinct, the mating instinct and the parental instinct, these three and perhaps no others.

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These two groups out, the rest are rather a miscellaneous collection, including the "random" or playful activity of young children, locomotion, vocalization, laughter, curiosity, rivalry and fighting. They might be named the "non-specific instincts", because the stimulus for each is not easy to specify, being sometimes another person, so that this group has great social importance, but sometimes being impersonal. This third class might also be called the "play instincts", since they are less essential than the other classes for maintaining the individual life or for propagating the species; and are, we may say, less concerned with the struggle for existence than with the joy of living.

Our classification then has three heads:

(1) Responses to organic needs,
(2) Responses to other persons,
(3) Play responses.

Responses to Organic Needs

Something has already been said [Footnote: See above, pp. 79-81, 112.] of the manner in which an organic state, such as lack of water, acting on internal sensory nerves, arouses in the nerve centers an adjustment towards an end-result, and how, if the end-result cannot immediately be attained, preparatory reactions occur, the preparatory reactions being in some cases closely attached, by nature, to the main tendency, and in other cases only loosely attached so that the tendency leads to trial and error behavior. The reactions that are nearest to the end-result are likely to be closely attached to the main tendency, while those that are farther from the end-result are loosely attached. Thus, in the case of thirst, the drinking movement itself is about all, in man, that is purely instinctive, {140} and the way of getting water to the mouth, or the mouth to the water, is a matter for trial and error, and only becomes fixed as the result of a process of learning. Still less can we mention any specific water-seeking reactions, in the human being, that are provided by the native constitution. Yet the whole business of relieving thirst is directed by the native thirst-impulse, and to that extent is an instinctive activity. And shall we say that so simple a matter as meeting this organic need is below the dignity of psychology, and can have little influence on the behavior of mankind? Hardly, when we think of the rôle played by springs, wells and drinking places of all kinds in the life of the race, of aqueducts and reservoirs, of all the beverages that have been invented, and of all the people whose job it has been to provide and dispense them. To be sure, any beverage with a taste, or a "kick", is not simply a thirst-reliever, but makes some additional appeal, good or bad; but all this simply illustrates the way instincts become modified, by combination with other instincts, and by the learning and fixing of various preparatory reactions that were not provided, ready-made, in the native constitution. The drinking instinct, or thirst impulse, is a very good example of this whole class of organic instincts.

Instincts connected with hunger.

Here again, the reactions nearest to the end-result (food in the stomach) are provided by nature. Sucking and swallowing appear at birth, chewing with the appearance of the teeth; and the infant also makes what seem to be instinctive movements of seeking the breast, as well as movements of rejecting it when satiated and of spitting out bad-tasting food. Putting food (and other things) into the mouth by the hands seems almost instinctive, and yet it has to be fixed by trial and error. Anything like definite food-seeking behavior, amounting to a hunting instinct, scarcely gets a chance to show itself in {141} the human child, because his food is provided for him. In many animals, hunting is a highly organized instinct; thus, crouching, stalking, springing and teasing the mouse when caught, have been proved to be instinctive in young cats. Some animals have definite food-storing instincts also, and possibly food-storing shows the acquisitive or collecting tendency in its lowest terms. Possibly, that is to say, hunting and collecting, as well as disgust (primarily of bad-tasting or bad-smelling food), are originally parts of the food-getting behavior, having the general character of reactions preparatory to eating. However this may be, we can easily see the great importance of the hunger motive in human life; we have only to consider the matter in the same way as we considered thirst just above.

Breathing and air-getting.

Breathing, obviously a native reaction, is ordinarily automatic and needs no preparatory reactions, simply because air is so easy to get. But let breathing be difficult, for any reason, and the stifling sensation is as impulsive as hunger or thirst. The stuffy air in a cave or in a hole under a haymow will lead a child to frantic escape. Possibly the delight in being out of doors which shows itself in young children, and is not lost in adults, represents a sort of air-hunting instinct, parallel to food-hunting. Closely connected with breathing is the function of circulation, automatic for the most part; and we should mention also the organic needs of waste-elimination, which give impulsive sensations akin to hunger and thirst, and lead to more or less organized instinctive reactions.

Responses to heat and cold.

The warm-blooded animals, birds and mammals, have the remarkable power of keeping the body temperature constant (at 98-99 degrees Fahrenheit, in man, somewhat higher in birds), in spite of great variations in the external temperature to which the body is exposed, and in spite of great variations in the {142} amount of heat generated in the body by muscular exercise. Sweating and flushing of the skin are reactions to heat, and prevent the body temperature from rising; paling of the skin, shivering and general muscular activity are responses to cold and prevent the body temperature from falling. Shrinking from great heat or cold are also instinctive, while seeking shelter from the heat or cold is a preparatory reaction that is not definitely organized in the native constitution of man, but gives rise to a great variety of learned reactions, and plays a considerable part in life.

Shrinking from injury.

The "flexion reflex" of the arm or leg, which pulls it away from a pinch, prick or burn, is the type of a host of defensive reactions--winking, scratching, rubbing the skin, coughing, sneezing, clearing the throat, wincing, limping, squirming, changing from an uncomfortable position--most or all of them instinctive reactions. With each goes some sort of irritating sensation, as pain, itching, tickling, discomfort; and a conscious impulse to get rid of the irritation is often present. When the simpler avoiding reactions do not remove the irritating stimulus, they are repeated more vigorously or give way to some bigger reaction tending towards the same result. The climax of the avoiding reactions is flight or running away. Akin to flight are cowering, shrinking, dodging or warding off a blow, huddling into the smallest possible space, getting under cover, clinging to another person; and most or all of these, too, are instinctive reactions. With flight and the other larger danger-avoiding reactions there is often present, along with the impulse to escape, the stirred up organic and conscious state of fear.

The stimuli that arouse movements of escape are of two sorts: those that directly cause some irritating sensation, and those that are simply signs of danger. The smaller avoiding reactions--flexion reflex, coughing, etc.--are {143} aroused by stimuli that are directly painful or irritating; whereas flight, cowering, etc., are mostly responses to mere signs of danger. A "sign of danger" is usually seen or heard at some distance, not felt directly on or in the body. Now, while avoiding reactions are attached by nature to the irritating stimuli, it is not at all clear whether escape movements are natively attached to any signs of danger, or, if they are, to what particular signs of danger they are attached. What visual or auditory stimuli, that are not directly irritating, will arouse escape movements in a young child? For the youngest children, no such stimuli have been found. You can easily get avoiding reactions from a little baby by producing pain or discomfort; you can get the clinging response by letting the child slip when he is being held in your arms; and you get crying and shrinking on application of a loud, grating noise, such a noise as is irritating in itself without regard to what it may signify. But you cannot get any shrinking from stimuli that are not directly irritating.

For example, you get no sign of fear from a little child on suddenly confronting him with a furry animal. With older children, you do get shrinking from animals, but it is impossible to be sure that the older child has not learned to be afraid of them. I have seen a child of two years simply laugh when a large, strange dog came bounding towards him in the park; but a year later he would shrink from a strange dog. Whence the change? There are two possibilities: either a native connection between this stimulus and the shrinking response only reached its maturity when the child was about three years old--and there is nothing improbable in this--or else the child, though actually never bitten by a dog, had been warned against dogs by his elders or had observed his elders shrinking from dogs. Children do pick up fears in this way; for example, children who are {144} naturally not the least bit afraid of thunder and lightning may acquire a fear of them from adults who show fear during a thunderstorm.

On the whole, the danger-avoiding reactions are probably not linked by nature to any special signs of danger. While the emotion of fear, the escape impulse, and many of the escape movements are native, the attachment of these responses to specific stimuli--aside from directly irritating stimuli--is acquired. Fear we do not learn, but we learn what to fear.

Crying.

We have the best of evidence that this is a native reaction, since the baby cries from birth on. He cries from hunger, from cold, from discomfort, from pain, and, perhaps most of all, as he gets a little older, from being thwarted in anything he has set out to do. This last stimulus gives the "cry of anger", which baby specialists tell us sounds differently from the cries of pain and of hunger. Still, there is so much in common to the different ways of crying that we may reasonably suppose there is some impulse, and perhaps