Animal Behavior

• Instincts are genetically programmed behaviors occurring when appropriate circumstances arise, requiring no prior learning.
• Early instinct theories were popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s and served as a base for ethology.
• Early instinct theories faced criticisms due to nominal fallacy, difficulty differentiating between learning and instinct, and a lack of standardized definitions.

William James

• Instincts manifest as tendencies to act in specific ways like modesty and fear.
• Instincts are impulses, occurring blindly the first time and then influenced by memory in future behavior.
• Habit or learning can inhibit an instinct.
• Some instincts are transitory, which ties into critical periods and imprinting.

William McDougall

• Instincts serve a purpose beyond being tendencies to react.
• Instincts have a cognitive component; knowing the object(s) that can satisfy it.
• Instincts have an affective component; feeling that the object arouses.
• Instincts have a conative component; striving toward or away from the object.
• Instincts can be activated/altered by external objects or thoughts.
• An instinct can change to express itself or multiple instincts simultaneously.
• Instincts can be altered with specificity.
• Anthropomorphism, i.e. attributing human characteristics to objects or animals, is problematic due to bias.

Classical Ethology

• Ethology is concerned with the evolution, development, and function of behavior.
• Classical ethology is based on Darwinian theory of evolution.
• Key figures in classical ethology were Lorenz and Tinbergen.
• An ethogram is a catalogue of species-typical behaviors.
• Appetitive behavior is flexible, adaptive searching behavior influenced by learning; searching for food is an example.
• Consummatory behavior involves fixed patterns responding to specific stimuli that are innate, stereotyped, and well-coordinated, like chewing.
• Action-specific energy (ASE) means each behavior has its own energy source.
• The Innate Releasing Mechanism (IRM) inhibits behavior using key stimuli that are environmental, or social releasers.
• Social releasers serve a communicative function.

Key Stimuli

• These can be simple or Configurational, meaning made up of multiple simple components.
• Supernormal Key Stimuli/Super-optimal Key Stimuli release behavior more effectively than normal stimuli.
• Fixed Action Patterns (FAP) are instinctive behaviors, responses that a key stimulus releases.
• Features of FAPs include being stereotyped and independent of immediate external control.

Characteristics of FAPs

• FAPs can be spontaneous.
• In vacuo/vacuum activity is evidence that the central nervous system controls behavior independently of experience.
• FAPs are independent of learning.
• Intention movements are low-intensity, incomplete responses indicating accumulating motivational intent.
• Intention movements serve a communicative function via "ritualization", and relationships are instinctual.
• Motivational conflict poses the question of which FAP will occur if multiple key stimuli happen simultaneously.

Conflict Behavior

• There are four categories of conflict behavior.
• Successive ambivalent behavior is the alternation of incomplete responses between 2 conflicting motivational states.
• Simultaneous ambivalent behavior is when both motivational states express together.
• Redirected behavior is when appropriate responses occur towards an inappropriate object due to a conflicting motive.
• Ethological displacement occurs when two equally strong motives conflict and inhibit each other, resulting in abnormal behavioral responses.
• A Reaction Chain illustrates stimulus release and innate response behavior.
• Imprinting is a socialization process in which a young organism forms an attachment to its parents.
• Imprinting happens during a sensitive period.

Imprinting Sensitivity

• Sensitivity in imprinting can occur 13-16 hours after ducklings hatch.
• Imprinting is a method in which learning and instinct intermix.
• Imprinting is not done for reward.
• Reversibility depends on if the bird is nidifugous (leaves nest shortly after hatching) or nidicolous (stays in nest for a while).
• Color is more important than shape, and maternal calls are more influential than species-typical visual stimuli.

Criticisms of the Classical Approach

• The differences between learning and instinct are not very clear.
• Nature versus nurture further complicates differentiating between learning and instinct.
• The concept of "energy" spilling over to lead to other behaviors is problematic.
• Blocking a behavior may lead to moving on to the next most behavior.
• Vacuum energy may result from stimulus generalization.
• A systems approach by Konishi showed that sensory systems attune to specific types of stimuli.
• Rods (dark/light, movement, shape) compared to cones (color, fine detail) is an example of stimuli attuned to specific types of stimuli.
• Feedback behavioral systems are influenced by development.
• Deafened song sparrows compared to song sparrows raised with canaries are an example of development influence on behavioral systems.
• A systems approach by Mayr describes programs as genetically-determined series of behaviors.
• Open programs can be modified by experience.
• Closed programs cannot be modified by experience, for example, "instinct".
• Seligman and Hager's approaches in the 1970s says that what is learned is biologically constrained.
• Prepared behaviors are instinctive or quickly learned.
• Unprepared behaviors occur through associations.
• Contraprepared behaviors are typically impossible to learn.
• Baerends emphasized negative feedback in the system to correct current behavior if the conditions change.
• Human behavior patterns seem to have innate components, as seen in studies by Eibl-Eibesfeldt.
• Facial expressions and shyness are human behaviors.
• Kagen, Reznick, and Snidman's research showed low thresholds for arousability, chronic environmental stress, and also said genetic predispositions require environmental influences.
• Additional innate behaviors include neoteny, or the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood.
• Neoteny induces helping behaviors in others.
• Ritualized behaviors include flirting and baby talk.
• Anger, or stamping feet and slapping surfaces is an additional innate behaviour.
• Other innate behaviors include eye contact that either stares rudely or communicates feelings like attraction and competence.
• Speech production may be genetically determined or influenced, in that children only imitate speech sounds.
• Sensitive periods correlate with genetically controlled localization of voice function.
• Speech's purpose, or representation of experiences, becomes a phonetic social releaser.
• Sex is thought to be innate due to courtship behavior patterns.
• Social releasers trigger FAP and sex and aggression are inversely related.
• Aggression/violence is used to gain increased access to women, therefore resulting in increased reproduction.
• Two categories of aggressive behavior are interspecific, or done between members of different species, and intraspecific, or done within same species.
• Predatory attacks of interspecific aggressive behavior is food-getting behavior.
• Predatory attacks are characterized by lack of emotionality for equilibrium between predator and prey.
• Mobbing behavior has groups of prey attack predators.
• Critical reactions are motivated by fear and instigated by an inability to escape.
• Intraspecific behavior can be advantageous beause it increases chances of survival.
• Ritualized tournaments are intraspecific aggression that better the species and protect the young.
• Ritualized tournaments include use of appeasement and are not full-on combat.
• Modern ethological approaches include Behavioral Ecology, in which behaviors determine adaptation.
• Predator-prey relationships, competition for resources, group membership, sexual behaviors and parental care are examined in Behavioral Ecology.
• Group membership, for example, helps determine adaptation.
• Modern ethological approaches also includes Cognitive Ethology, or how animals take in and process information that they will later rely on to guide their behavior.
• Animals take in and process information with or not consciousness.
• Evolutionary Psychology analyzes the human mind, or collection of evolved mechanisms that respond to contexts.
• Evolutionary Psychology is a field that explores how people resolved adaptive problems concerned with survival or reproduction.
• Current behaviors evolved for historical survival, and are therefore mostly not instinctual.