Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Racoon

I was in agreement with Yes response too IN. (at first??)
Thats not instinct though. We are not genetically programmed to be on top of high roofs!
Thats common sense. Fear. learned behaviour

My friend really rode me on this... I need PROOF (so I can shut him up!

The visual cliff experiment is an old, well known child psyche experiment similar to what Infinitenow describes. It’s not really meant to demonstrate that human beings have or don’t have innate instincts, rather to shed light on how, when, and why we develop visual depth perception. It presupposes that any human infant capable of perceiving a drop will try to avoid it.

You might better argue the case for human beings having inborn instincts by first reaching a consensus that animals with similar neuroanatomy do, then asking how human beings could not also have them. There’s a popular consensus that human beings and other primates’ nervous systems are “upgrades” of primitive ones similar to those in less intelligent animals, so human beings should retain their instincts.

I think there’s a tendency among people with limited knowledge of Biology and Zoology to over-ascribe complicated behaviors in all animals to “instincts”. For example, many people believe that dogs, monkeys, and human beings have an inborn fear of snakes, despite numerous studies that show that animals raised in captivity lack this sensible aversion.

So, while I think human beings, like nearly all animals, have instincts, both human beings and other animals have fewer instincts than is popularly believed.