IS INSTINCT JUST A HABIT?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3135, 18 September 1922, Page 2

IS INSTINCT JUST A HABIT?

Instinct is merely a method of babitJ'ormatiou. Or, from the opposite standpoint, iiabit ia only the way in which instinct exhibits itself. These are the conclusions reached by Dr ivniglit-Dunlap, of Johns Hopkins University, U.S.A., in his study of the subject. With this understanding, he lias no objection to the term "instinct'.' in general. As to specific and definite ''instincts," he says, they simply do not exist. Everything that we do has a basis partly inherited and partly acquired. The same reaction often enters into both. What are usually "the instincts," be says, are activitiesgrouped with reference to the ends atA taincd; not ends that the acting aniin" holds as conscious purposes, but ends that, the psychologist, biologist, philosopher, or whoever draws up the list of instincts, considers as attained by the activity in question. Any list which is convenient is as valid as any other list. He continues: "We find in the animal, human and infrahuman, tendencies to make certain responses to certain features of the environment. For example, at a certain time the bell rings, whereupon the students in my room gather up their books and file out through the door. There is thus demonstrated a tendency to react in a particular way. A number of minutes before the bell rang the tendeny was there', ready to play its part in bringing about_the action. A tendency, we may assume, is a certain arrangement in the nervous svstein; what Stout and others have called a disposition • something definitely in existence, whether we describe it as a physical or chemical arrangement. "As an illustration of the relation of 'disposition,' or 'tendency' to response, we may consider an electric door-hell and its operation. We press the button and the bell rings; because there was a mechanical arrangement of parts an existing 'disposition' of the sort that made the response possible when the stimulus was applied. We mean by the 'tendency' of an animal to react in a certain way nothing more occult than the 'tendency' of the bell to ring when the button is pressed." In the human animal, Dr Dunlap goes on, some of these tendencies are tendencies to perceive, some arc emotional and others still are mental. It is customary to use the term "instinct" in a general way to indicate the existence of native' reaction tendencies; "habit" in a corresponding way to indicate acquired tendencies, and "intelligence" to mean the capacity to acquire or modifv tendencies. With these methods of speech Dr Dunlap has no quarrel, but he says: — "There, is a further custom oi speaking of certain groups of instinctive tendencies as instincts. Lists of "instincts' have been compiled, and we have come in a rather naive way to speak of this or that instinct as if they were separable entities. We speak of 'the 'nesting instinct' of the bird, the 'instinct of flight,' the 'parental instinct,' etc. "Most of the classifiers oh.icct to defining an instinct as a mere group of reflexes. McDougall assumes that consciousness is involved. In a certain number primary emotions are assumed. The instinct of flight involves fear; repulsion involves disgust; curiosity. wonder; pugnacity, anger; sell-abase-ment, subjection; self-assertion, elation ; the parental instinct, tender emotion. , . . - , - . "From a purely physiological • point of view, there are no instincts. In the activities of flight, food-getting, and fighting as they actually occur, when the "tendency" Passes over into action, the same running movements may lie present. Some so-called instincts arc at times entirely included in other instincts. For instance, flight, pugnacity, and food-getting, taken just as groups of reactivities, may each occur as part of the parental instinct. This inclusiveness and overlapping of the so-called instincts is not the point of the greatest difficulty in classification, the writer thinks. The really obstructive difficulty lies in the indefinite shading of one instinct into another. For example, between flight and pugnacity, even when it is not a question of their being included in some other instinct, the lines are by no means sharp; for between the two there is a continuous gradation °f intermediate instincts. To quote further: "If we should attempt to distinguish reaction-tendencies on the basis of desire, or the purpose of the reacting animal, we might be on a better foundation. I think, myself, there is a distinct possibility there. I should say, however, that in this we are getting away from tho instinct basis altogether: that the classification of activities in accordance with their furtherance of desires is a very different problem. "The actual basis of all the suggested lists of instincts is in the purposes of the classifier, not in the purpose of the reacting animal which the classifier views as contributing to the obtaining of fond arc considered by him as the 'feeding instinct.' All of those which, from the point of view of the classifier, culminate in the perpetuation of the species, are considered the 'reproductive instinct.' The classifier may erect as many instincts as will accomplish liis own purposes. There is no reason for objecting to a 'mathematical intinct,' unless you do so on the ground of universality. The 'musical instinct,' the 'religious instinct,' and many others, are also widely distributed. There is also a tendency in the human animal to construct a political system. But after 1 all this difficulty with instincts is only a minor one. I think there is a still graver difficulty in the whole question of instinct and instinctive reactions. We have been so far assuming that there is a fundamental difference, in human and other animals, between instinctive and acquired reactions 1 . This conception is questionable, Tn the life of the higher animal, there are seldom, if ever, simple reactions to simple stimuli. The actual adjustments of the organism to its environment art? complex. "Tho acquired reaction and the socalled instinctive one. are equally 'native.' Suppose that a child is given a small piece of sandpaper at an ©airly aire, and that he puts that in his mouth, and subsequently cries. Tf the piece of sandpaper is given him repeatedly, the child eventually will rea,ct in a quite different way. Instead of grabbing the sandpaper, he will turn his head away and cry. and go through other reactions which expressbis intention of not putting the sandpaper in his mouth. The sandpaper 'ii this case i.s the stimulus. At the first prosentation, when the child puts it in his mouth, we have a so-called instinctive reaction. At the last presentation, when he does not put it in his moutli but does something else, we have a so-called' acquired reaction. Are not both reactions equally 'instinctive?'

"I can see no way of distinguishing usefully between instinct and habit. All reactions are definite responses to definite stimulus patterns, and the exact character of the response is determined j| in every case by the inherited co~nst\-J; tutiou of the organism and the stimu-j his pattern. Tf we consider instinct, we find it to he the form and method of habit-formation: if we consider habit, we find it to be the way in which instinct exhibits itself."