Instinct  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 19:00, 20 August 2007; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Instinct is the inherent disposition of a living organism toward a particular behavior. Instincts are generally inherited patterns of responses or reactions to certain kinds of stimuli. Instinct provides a response to external stimuli, which moves an organism to action, unless overridden by intelligence, which is creative and more versatile. Since instincts take generations to adapt, an intermediate position, or basis for action, is served by memory, which provides individually stored successful reactions built upon experience. The particular actions performed may be influenced by learning, environment and natural principles. Generally, the term instinct is not used to describe an existing condition or established state.

Examples can more frequently be observed in the behavior of animals, which perform various activities (sometimes complex) that are not based upon prior experience, such as reproduction, and feeding among insects. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behavior, internal escape functions, and building of nests.

It is debatable whether or not living beings are bound absolutely by instinct. Though instinct is what seems to come naturally or perhaps with heredity, general conditioning and environment surrounding a living being play a major role. Predominantly, instinct is pre-intellectual, while intuition is trans-intellectual.



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Instinct" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools