Limitations and Misuse of Theory

In popular use, belief in instincts has confused and hurt people more than
it has enlightened or helped them. Instinct theory often imposes a rigid
either-or form on people’s thinking about human motivation. That is, people
are encouraged by the notion of instinct to wonder if some behavior—
aggression, for example—is either inherent in people or learned from experience.
Once one’s thoughts are cast into such a mold, one is less likely to consider
the strong likelihood that a behavior has multiple bases, which may be
different from one person to the next. Instead of looking for the many possible
reasons for human aggression—some related to inherent qualities and
some related to learned qualities—one looks for a single cause. Often, intently
focusing on one possibility to the exclusion of all others blinds people
to the very fact that they are doing so. Searching for “the” answer, they fail to
recognize that their very method of searching has locked their thinking
onto a counterproductive track.
Instinct theory has been invoked to grant humans special status above that of other animals. Generally, this argument states that humans can reason
and rationally control their actions, while lower animals are guided
solely by instincts. At best, this argument has been used to claim that humans
are especially loved by their god. At worst, the idea that lower animals
are supposedly guided only by instinct was used by philosopher René Descartes
to claim that animals are essentially automatons, incapable of actually
feeling pain, and that therefore they could be vivisected without anesthesia.
Instinct theory has also been used to support the claim that some people
are more worthy than other people. Those with fewer “base instincts,” or
even those who by their rationality have overcome them, are supposedly superior.
Acceptance of such ideas has led to very real errors of judgment and
considerable human suffering. For example, over many centuries, across
much of the world, it was believed that women, simply by virtue of being female,
were not capable of sufficiently clear thinking to justify providing
them with a formal education, allowing them to own property, or letting
them hold elected office or vote. Anthropologist Margaret Mead, in her
1942 book And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America, reports
reversal of the claim that women inherently lack some important quality.
Young women in her classes, when told the then-prevailing view that people
had no instincts and therefore that they had no maternal instinct
became very upset, according to Mead, believing that they lacked something
essential. Many minority racial or ethnic groups have suffered in similar
fashion from claims that, by their unalterable nature, they are incapable
of behaving at levels comparable to those in the majority.
Instinct theory has been used to suggest the absolute inevitability of many
undesirable behaviors, sometimes as a way of excusing them. The ideas that
philandering is part of a man’s nature or that gossiping is part of a woman’s
are patently foolish uses of the concept of instinct.
Sources for Further Study
Birney, Robert Charles, and Richard C. Teevan. Instinct: An Enduring Problem
in Psychology. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1961. A collection of readings
intended for college students. Contains fourteen articles, ranging
from William James’s 1887 discussion of instinct to Frank Beach’s 1955
“The Descent of Instinct,” in which Beach traces the idea of instinct from
the time of the ancient Greeks up to the 1950’s and concludes that “the
instinct concept has survived in almost complete absence of empirical
validation.”
Breland, Keller, and Marian Breland. “The Misbehavior of Organisms.”
American Psychologist 16 (November, 1961): 681-684. In the process of
training performing animals, the Brelands were forced to contend with
inherited behaviors of their pupils. This article alerted a generation of
psychologists to the possibility that instinct had been inappropriately
eliminated from their thinking. The writing is clear and amusing, and the article should be fairly easy to locate; most college and university libraries
will have the journal.
Cofer, Charles Norval, and M. H. Appley. Motivation: Theory and Research.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964. Long regarded as a classic on the
topic of motivation, this book includes (in chapter 2, “Motivation in Historical
Perspective”) thirty-two pages of material that traces instinct
through the centuries. Chapter 3, “The Concept of Instinct: Ethological
Position,” discusses ways the once discredited concept was returning to
psychology in the early 1960’s.
Hilgard, Ernest Ropiequet. Psychology in America: A Historical Survey. San
Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987. The material Hilgard
covers is often complex, but his clear organization and writing make it accessible
to most readers. Material related to instinct in several chapters
(for example, those on motivation, comparative psychology, and social
psychology) can help a reader gain further background on instinct’s
place in psychology.
Mead, Margaret. And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America.
1942. Reprint. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000. The classic by Mead on
Western contemporary cultures.
Watson, John Broadus. Behaviorism. 1924. Reprint. New Brunswick, N.J.:
Transaction, 1998. The fifth chapter ofWatson’s popular presentation of
the new psychology he was sponsoring (“Are There Any Human Instincts?”)
nicely illustrates how behaviorism handled instinct. This chapter
contains Watson’s famous declaration, “Give me a dozen healthy infants,
well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and
I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any
type of specialist I might select. . . . ” Watson’s writing is still charming, but
his position is today mainly a curiosity.
Weiten, Wayne. Psychology: Themes and Variations. 6th ed. Belmont, Calif.:
Thomson/Wadsworth, 2004. Introductory psychology texts all have some
coverage of instinct’s return to psychology and, more important, describe
how several other concepts have been introduced to deal with topics
with which instinct was once inappropriately linked. Weiten’s text is
one of the best: easy and interesting to read, yet strong in its coverage of
scientific psychology.
Harry A. Tiemann, Jr.
See also: Aggression; Behaviorism; Conditioning; Drives; Imprinting; Learning;
Motivation; Reflexes.