Human Behavior: Instincts, Learning, and Adaptive Responses

Human Behavior: Understanding Our Responses

The environment affects us, moving us inwardly. We not only react with sadness and joy but also participate by responding in directly palpable ways. *Behavior* is the manner in which we react to observable reality.

Inherited vs. Learned Behavior: A Core Distinction

We define behavior as the observable reactions an individual has to a stimulus, whether internal or external.

What differentiates *behavior* is that these reactions can be observed, tested, and analyzed by anyone. For example, everyone can see when I cover my eyes with glasses, but no one can know what I think. This highlights the main difference between observable behavior and internal thought processes.

Instinctive Behavior: Innate Responses

Instinctive response patterns are biologically and genetically determined. Individuals inherit a set of behaviors that regulate and fix their actions. This offers an advantage, as these are guidelines that have been tested and proven over generations.

However, this advantage comes with a significant drawback: instincts involve a rigid determination, a requirement impossible to avoid.

While instinctive behavior is critical among insects and invertebrates, its prevalence changes as we ascend the evolutionary scale. Among higher mammals, instinctive responses coexist with learning and improvisation.

Open Practice: The Role of Learned Behavior

When we speak of human beings, it is fair to say that very few of their actions are purely instinctive. For instance, it is instinctive for infants to cry when they have a need. However, as a child grows, instinctive behaviors gradually lose ground to learned ones. In adult humans, very few responses are involuntary and automatic, barring simple reflex actions such as closing the eyes when something approaches.

In most situations, human beings do not have a pre-set biological pattern that offers an automatic answer to their problems. Instead, they must find a solution themselves. Therefore, in higher mammals, and especially in humans, the mechanism of behavior is modified as follows:

When receiving a stimulus, the response cannot be imposed automatically. The *organism (O)* analyzes and studies the stimulus, compares it with previous stimuli, makes a decision, and then *acts (R)* based on that decision.