Chapter 29
INVENTORY OF HUMAN INSTINCTS AND PRIMARY EMOTIONS
A LIST OF THE NATIVE STOCK OF TENDENCIES AND OF THE EMOTIONS THAT SOMETIMES GO WITH THEM.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that instinct was important only in animal or child psychology, because the human adult governed his conduct entirely by reason and calculation of consequences. Man does not outgrow instinct, any more than he outgrows emotion. He does not outgrow the native reaction-tendencies. These primitive motives remain in force, modified and combined in various ways, but not eliminated nor even relegated to an unimportant place. Even in his most intelligent actions, the adult is animated by motives that are either plain instincts or else derivatives of the instincts. According to some of the leaders in psychology, he has no other motives than these; according to this book, as will be set forth later, there are "native likes and dislikes" (for color, tone, number, persons, etc.) to be placed beside the instincts as primary motives; but, according to either view, the instincts are extraordinarily important in the study of motivation, and a complete and accurate list of them is very much to be desired. Life is a great masquerade of the instincts, and it is not only entertaining to unmask them, but illuminating as well.
A complete account of an instinct would cover the following points: the stimulus that naturally arouses it, the end-result at which it is aimed, the preparatory reactions that occur, external and internal; and also, from the {138} introspective side, the conscious impulse, the peculiar emotional state (if any), and the special sort of satisfaction that comes when the end-result is reached. Further, we should know what modifications or disguises the instinct takes on in the course of experience--what new stimuli acquire the power of arousing it, what learned reactions are substituted for the native preparatory and final reactions, and what combinations occur between the instinct in question and other reaction-tendencies.
Besides all this, it would be very desirable to present convincing evidence that each instinct listed is a genuine instinct, a part of the native equipment, and not something built up by experience and training. It is rather absurd, the free and easy way in which an instinct is often assumed, simply to fit behavior which needs to be explained--a money getting instinct, for example, or a teacher-hating instinct. Since money and teachers do not exist in a state of nature, there can be no instincts specifically related to them; and it is incumbent on the psychologist to show how such acquired tendencies are derived from the native tendencies.
The full program outlined above being much too extensive to follow out completely in this chapter, we shall only mention a few salient points under each instinct. We shall try to point out the primitive behavior of the child, that reveals the instinct at its lowest terms, and give some hint also of its importance in adult behavior.
Classification
Of all the instincts, two groups or classes stand out from the rest: the responses to organic needs, and the responses to other persons. The first class includes eating, avoiding injury, and many others; the second class includes the herd instinct, the mating instinct and the parental instinct, these three and perhaps no others.
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These two groups out, the rest are rather a miscellaneous collection, including the "random" or playful activity of young children, locomotion, vocalization, laughter, curiosity, rivalry and fighting. They might be named the "non-specific instincts", because the stimulus for each is not easy to specify, being sometimes another person, so that this group has great social importance, but sometimes being impersonal. This third class might also be called the "play instincts", since they are less essential than the other classes for maintaining the individual life or for propagating the species; and are, we may say, less concerned with the struggle for existence than with the joy of living.
Our classification then has three heads:
(1) Responses to organic needs, (2) Responses to other persons, (3) Play responses.
Responses to Organic Needs
Something has already been said [Footnote: See above, pp. 79-81, 112.] of the manner in which an organic state, such as lack of water, acting on internal sensory nerves, arouses in the nerve centers an adjustment towards an end-result, and how, if the end-result cannot immediately be attained, preparatory reactions occur, the preparatory reactions being in some cases closely attached, by nature, to the main tendency, and in other cases only loosely attached so that the tendency leads to trial and error behavior. The reactions that are nearest to the end-result are likely to be closely attached to the main tendency, while those that are farther from the end-result are loosely attached. Thus, in the case of _thirst_, the drinking movement itself is about all, in man, that is purely instinctive, {140} and the way of getting water to the mouth, or the mouth to the water, is a matter for trial and error, and only becomes fixed as the result of a process of learning. Still less can we mention any specific water-seeking reactions, in the human being, that are provided by the native constitution. Yet the whole business of relieving thirst is directed by the native thirst-impulse, and to that extent is an instinctive activity. And shall we say that so simple a matter as meeting this organic need is below the dignity of psychology, and can have little influence on the behavior of mankind? Hardly, when we think of the rôle played by springs, wells and drinking places of all kinds in the life of the race, of aqueducts and reservoirs, of all the beverages that have been invented, and of all the people whose job it has been to provide and dispense them. To be sure, any beverage with a taste, or a "kick", is not simply a thirst-reliever, but makes some additional appeal, good or bad; but all this simply illustrates the way instincts become modified, by combination with other instincts, and by the learning and fixing of various preparatory reactions that were not provided, ready-made, in the native constitution. The drinking instinct, or thirst impulse, is a very good example of this whole class of organic instincts.
Instincts connected with hunger.
Here again, the reactions nearest to the end-result (food in the stomach) are provided by nature. Sucking and swallowing appear at birth, chewing with the appearance of the teeth; and the infant also makes what seem to be instinctive movements of seeking the breast, as well as movements of rejecting it when satiated and of spitting out bad-tasting food. Putting food (and other things) into the mouth by the hands seems almost instinctive, and yet it has to be fixed by trial and error. Anything like definite food-seeking behavior, amounting to a _hunting_ instinct, scarcely gets a chance to show itself in {141} the human child, because his food is provided for him. In many animals, hunting is a highly organized instinct; thus, crouching, stalking, springing and teasing the mouse when caught, have been proved to be instinctive in young cats. Some animals have definite food-storing instincts also, and possibly food-storing shows the acquisitive or collecting tendency in its lowest terms. Possibly, that is to say, hunting and collecting, as well as disgust (primarily of bad-tasting or bad-smelling food), are originally parts of the food-getting behavior, having the general character of reactions preparatory to eating. However this may be, we can easily see the great importance of the hunger motive in human life; we have only to consider the matter in the same way as we considered thirst just above.
Breathing and air-getting.
Breathing, obviously a native reaction, is ordinarily automatic and needs no preparatory reactions, simply because air is so easy to get. But let breathing be difficult, for any reason, and the stifling sensation is as impulsive as hunger or thirst. The stuffy air in a cave or in a hole under a haymow will lead a child to frantic escape. Possibly the delight in being out of doors which shows itself in young children, and is not lost in adults, represents a sort of air-hunting instinct, parallel to food-hunting. Closely connected with breathing is the function of circulation, automatic for the most part; and we should mention also the organic needs of waste-elimination, which give impulsive sensations akin to hunger and thirst, and lead to more or less organized instinctive reactions.
Responses to heat and cold.
The warm-blooded animals, birds and mammals, have the remarkable power of keeping the body temperature constant (at 98-99 degrees Fahrenheit, in man, somewhat higher in birds), in spite of great variations in the external temperature to which the body is exposed, and in spite of great variations in the {142} amount of heat generated in the body by muscular exercise. Sweating and flushing of the skin are reactions to heat, and prevent the body temperature from rising; paling of the skin, shivering and general muscular activity are responses to cold and prevent the body temperature from falling. Shrinking from great heat or cold are also instinctive, while seeking shelter from the heat or cold is a preparatory reaction that is not definitely organized in the native constitution of man, but gives rise to a great variety of learned reactions, and plays a considerable part in life.
Shrinking from injury.
The "flexion reflex" of the arm or leg, which pulls it away from a pinch, prick or burn, is the type of a host of defensive reactions--winking, scratching, rubbing the skin, coughing, sneezing, clearing the throat, wincing, limping, squirming, changing from an uncomfortable position--most or all of them instinctive reactions. With each goes some sort of irritating sensation, as pain, itching, tickling, discomfort; and a conscious impulse to get rid of the irritation is often present. When the simpler avoiding reactions do not remove the irritating stimulus, they are repeated more vigorously or give way to some bigger reaction tending towards the same result. The climax of the avoiding reactions is flight or running away. Akin to flight are cowering, shrinking, dodging or warding off a blow, huddling into the smallest possible space, getting under cover, clinging to another person; and most or all of these, too, are instinctive reactions. With flight and the other larger danger-avoiding reactions there is often present, along with the impulse to escape, the stirred up organic and conscious state of _fear_.
The stimuli that arouse movements of escape are of two sorts: those that directly cause some irritating sensation, and those that are simply signs of danger. The smaller avoiding reactions--flexion reflex, coughing, etc.--are {143} aroused by stimuli that are directly painful or irritating; whereas flight, cowering, etc., are mostly responses to mere signs of danger. A "sign of danger" is usually seen or heard at some distance, not felt directly on or in the body. Now, while avoiding reactions are attached by nature to the irritating stimuli, it is not at all clear whether escape movements are _natively_ attached to any signs of danger, or, if they are, to what particular signs of danger they are attached. What visual or auditory stimuli, that are not directly irritating, will arouse escape movements in a young child? For the youngest children, no such stimuli have been found. You can easily get avoiding reactions from a little baby by producing pain or discomfort; you can get the clinging response by letting the child slip when he is being held in your arms; and you get crying and shrinking on application of a loud, grating noise, such a noise as is irritating in itself without regard to what it may signify. But you cannot get any shrinking from stimuli that are not directly irritating.
For example, you get no sign of fear from a little child on suddenly confronting him with a furry animal. With older children, you do get shrinking from animals, but it is impossible to be sure that the older child has not _learned_ to be afraid of them. I have seen a child of two years simply laugh when a large, strange dog came bounding towards him in the park; but a year later he would shrink from a strange dog. Whence the change? There are two possibilities: either a native connection between this stimulus and the shrinking response only reached its maturity when the child was about three years old--and there is nothing improbable in this--or else the child, though actually never bitten by a dog, had been warned against dogs by his elders or had observed his elders shrinking from dogs. Children do pick up fears in this way; for example, children who are {144} naturally not the least bit afraid of thunder and lightning may acquire a fear of them from adults who show fear during a thunderstorm.
On the whole, the danger-avoiding reactions are probably not linked by nature to any special signs of danger. While the emotion of fear, the escape impulse, and many of the escape movements are native, the attachment of these responses to specific stimuli--aside from directly irritating stimuli--is acquired. Fear we do not learn, but we learn what to fear.
Crying.
We have the best of evidence that this is a native reaction, since the baby cries from birth on. He cries from hunger, from cold, from discomfort, from pain, and, perhaps most of all, as he gets a little older, from being thwarted in anything he has set out to do. This last stimulus gives the "cry of anger", which baby specialists tell us sounds differently from the cries of pain and of hunger. Still, there is so much in common to the different ways of crying that we may reasonably suppose there is some impulse, and perhaps some emotional state, common to all of them. The common emotion cannot be anger, or hunger, or discomfort or pain. To name it grief or sorrow would fit the crying of adults better than that of little children. The best guess is that the emotional state in crying is the feeling of _helplessness_. The cry of anger is the cry of helpless anger; anger that is not helpless expresses itself in some other way than crying; and the same is true of hunger, pain and discomfort. Crying is the reaction appropriate to a condition where the individual cannot help himself--where he wants something but is powerless to get it. The helpless baby sets up a wail that brings some one to his assistance; that is the utility of crying, though the baby, at first, does not have this result in view, but simply cries because he is hungry and helpless, uncomfortable and {145} helpless, thwarted and helpless. The child cries less as he grows older, because he learns more and more to help himself.
With the vocal element of crying goes movement of the arms and legs, which also has utility in attracting attention; but what may be the utility of shedding copious tears remains a mystery, in spite of several ingenious hypotheses that have been advanced to explain it.
Fatigue, rest and sleep.
That fatigue, primarily an organic state, gives rise to fatigue sensations and to a neural adjustment for rest--a disinclination to work any longer--and that drowsiness is a somewhat different organic state that gives an inclination to sleep--all this has been sufficiently set forth in earlier chapters. Going to sleep is a definite act, an instinctive response to the drowsy state. In the way of preparatory reactions, we find many interesting performances in birds and mammals, such as the curling up of the dog or cat to sleep, the roosting of hens, the standing on one leg of some birds; and we see characteristic positions adopted by human beings, but do not know how far these are instinctive and how far acquired. Closing the eyes is undoubtedly a native preparatory reaction for sleep.
Like the other responses to organic needs, rest and sleep figure pretty largely in the behavior of the adult, as in finding or providing a good place to sleep. Certainly if fatigue and sleep could be eliminated, as some over-enthusiastic workers have pretended to hope, life would be radically changed.
Instinctive Responses to Other Persons
We are next to look for action and emotion aroused by persons, specifically--not by persons and things alike. Fear can be aroused by persons, but also by things. In a social animal, such as man, almost any instinct comes to have {146} social bearings. Eating and drinking become social matters, and all the organic instincts figure in the placing and making of a home. Home is a place of shelter against heat and cold, it is a refuge from danger, it is where you eat and where you sleep. It meets all these organic needs but--it is specially where "your people" are.
Home is a place where _unlike_ persons foregather, male with female, adults with children, and thus it symbolizes the "family instincts", mating and child-care, which are responses to persons unlike in sex or age. But home also illustrates very well the herd instinct, which is a response to like persons, "birds of a feather flocking together". It is not the single home that illustrates this, but the almost universal grouping of homes into villages or cities.
The herd instinct or gregarious instinct.
It might be argued that a city or village was the result of economic causes, or, in the olden days, a means of protection against enemies, and not a direct satisfaction of any instinct in man to flock together. But often a family who know perfectly well that their economic advantage demands their remaining where they are, in some isolated country spot, will pull up stakes and accept an inferior economic status in the city, just because the country is too lonely for them. One woman, typical of a great many, declined to work in a comfortable and beautiful place in the country, because "she didn't want to see trees and rocks, she wanted to see people". There is no doubt that man belongs by nature with the deer or wolf rather than with solitary animals such as the lion. He is a gregarious creature.
The gregarious instinct does not by any manner of means account for all of man's social behavior. It brings men together and so gives a chance for social doings, but these doings are learned, not provided ready-made by the instinct. About all we can lay to the herd instinct is uneasiness when {147} alone, seeking company, remaining in company, and following the rest as they move from place to place. The feeling of loneliness or lonesomeness goes with being alone, and a feeling of satisfaction goes with being in company.
Probably there is one more fact that belongs under the herd instinct. A child is lonely even in company, unless he is allowed to _participate_ in what the others are doing. Sometimes you see an adult who is gregarious but not sociable, who insists on living in the city and wishes to see the people, but has little desire to talk to any one or to take part in any social activities; but he is the exception. As a rule, people wish not only to be together but to do something together. So much as this may be ascribed to the instinct, but no more. "Let's get together and _do something_"--that is as far as the gregarious instinct goes. _What_ we shall do depends on other motives, and on learning as well as instinct.
The mating instinct.
Attraction towards the opposite sex is felt by a small number of children, by most young people beginning from 15 to 20 years of age, by a minority not till a few years later, and, by a small number, never at all. On account of the late maturing of this instinct, in man, instinctive behavior is here inextricably interwoven with what has been learned. A definite organic and emotional state, lust, goes with this instinct. Preparatory reactions, called "courtship", are very definitely organized in many animals, and often quite elaborate. In man, courtship is elaborate enough, but not definitely organized as an instinct; and yet it follows much the same line as we observe in animal courtship. It begins with admiring attention to one of the opposite sex, followed by efforts to attract that one's attention by "display" (strutting, decoration of the person, demonstrating one's prowess, especially in opposition to rivals). Then the male takes an aggressive attitude, the {148} female a coy attitude; the male woos, the female hangs back, and something analogous to pursuit and capture takes place, except that the capture may be heartily accepted by both parties.
The "survival value" of this instinct is absolute; without it the race would not long survive. But it has "play value" also, it contributes to the joy of living as well as to the struggle for survival. There is much in social intercourse, and in literature and art, that is motivated by the sex impulse. Some would-be psychologists have been so much impressed by the wide ramifications of the sex motive in human conduct that they have attributed to it all play, all enjoyment, all the softer and lighter side of life, even all the spiritual side of life. One need only run over the long list of instincts, especially those that still remain to be mentioned, in order to be convinced of the one-sidedness of such a view. On the other hand, some moralists have been so deeply impressed by the difficulties that arise out of the sex motive, as to consider it essentially gross and bad; but this is as false as the other view. The sex impulse is like a strong but skittish horse that is capable of doing excellent work but requires a strong hand at the reins and a clear head behind. It is a horse that does not always pull well in a team; yet it is capable of fine teamwork. It can be harnessed up with other tendencies, and when so combined contribute some of its motive force to quite a variety of human activities.
The parental or mothering instinct.
In many species of animals, though not by any means in all, one or both of the parents stays by the young till some degree of maturity is reached. In some kinds of fish, it is the male that cares for the young; in birds it is often both parents. In mammals it is always the mother. Instinctively, the mammalian mother feeds, warms and defends her young. Just as {149} instinctively, the human mother does the same. This instinctive reaction to the little baby is attended by a strong emotion, called, for want of a better name, the "tender emotion".
The strongest stimulus to arouse this instinct is the little, helpless baby. The older child has to take second place with the mother, so soon as there is a little baby there. After a child is weaned, and after he is able to get about and do for himself to quite an extent, he has less hold on the maternal instinct. The love and care that he may still get is less a simple matter of instinct.
Though the little baby is the strongest stimulus to this instinct, older children and even adults, provided they are like the baby in being winsome and helpless in some way, may arouse the same sort of feeling and behavior, tender feeling and protective behavior. A pet animal may arouse the same tendency, and a "darling little calf" or a "cute little baby elephant" may awaken something of the same thrill. Even a young plant may be tended with a devotion akin to the maternal. The fact seems to be here, as with other instincts, that objects similar to the natural stimulus may arouse the same impulse and emotion. Love between the sexes is often a compound of sex attraction and the mothering instinct; and it is interesting to watch a happily mated couple each mothering the other.
But is it allowable to speak of this instinct as present in the male human being, or in any one not a mother? Undoubtedly the woman who has recently become a mother is most susceptible to the appeal of a little baby, but the response of other women and of girls to a baby is so spontaneous that we cannot but call it instinctive. Men and boys have no special desire to feed or cuddle a little baby, and are quite contented to leave the care of the baby mostly to the "women folks". But they do object strongly to seeing the {150} baby hurt or ill-treated, and will respond by protecting it. Also, they like to watch the baby act, and like to help it along in its efforts to do things. This may be instinctive in the man; at least it reminds us of the behavior of a mother cat or dog or horse, when she plays with her young and stimulates them to action. When the mother cat brings a live mouse for her half-grown kittens to practise on, she is acting instinctively, and probably a man is obeying the same instinct when he brings the baby a toy and derives pleasure from watching the baby's attempts to use it.
The parental instinct would thus seem to lie at the root of education, considered as an enterprise of adults directed towards getting the young to acquire the behavior of the race; and it also lies at the root of charity, the desire to protect the helpless.
Is there any instinct in the child answering to the parental, any "filial" instinct, as it were? Psychologists have usually answered no, but possibly they have been misled by the word "filial" and looked in the wrong direction. The parental instinct is an instinct to give, and the answering instinct would be one to take--not to give in return. It is probably not instinctive for the child to do for the parent, but is it not instinctive for the child to take from the parent, and to look to the parent for what he wants? It is not exactly "unnatural conduct" in a child to impose on his mother, as it would be in the mother to impose on the child; but would it not be unnatural in a child to take an unreceptive and distrustful attitude towards his mother?
Filial love is different. It is not purely instinctive, but depends on intelligence. It is only possible if the child has the intelligence to see the parent as something besides a parent--as some one needing care and protection--and if the child himself takes a parental attitude towards the parent. But that is a grown-up attitude, seldom taken by {151} young children. It is not the infantile instinct, which, if there is such an instinct, is the spring of trustful, docile, dependent, childlike and childish behavior.
The Play Instincts
Any instinct has "play value", but some have also "survival value" and so are serious affairs. Survival value characterizes the instincts we have already listed, both the responses to organic needs and the responses to other people. But there are other instincts with less of survival value, but no less of play value, and these we call the play instincts, without attaching any great importance to the name or even to the classification.
Playful activity.
The kicking and throwing the arms about that we see in a well-rested baby is evidently satisfying on its own account. It leads to no result of consequence, except indeed that the exercise is good for the child's muscles and nerves. The movements, taken singly, are not uncoordinated by any means, but they accomplish no definite result, produce no definite change in external objects, and so seem random and aimless to adult eyes. It is impossible to specify the stimulus for any given movement, though probably stimuli from the interior of the body first arouse these responses. They are most apt to occur during the organic state of "euphoria", and tend to disappear during fatigue.
There is a counter-tendency to this tendency towards general activity, and that is _inertia_, the tendency towards inactivity or _economy of effort_. Most pronounced in fatigue, this also appears in lassitude and inert states that cannot be called fatigue because not brought on by excessive activity. After sleep, many people are inert, and require a certain amount of activity to "warm up" to the active condition. As the child grows older, the {152} "economy of effort" motive becomes stronger, and the random activity motive weaker, so that the adult is less playful and less responsive to slight stimuli. He has to have some definite goal to get up his energy, whereas the child is active by preference and just for the sake of activity.
During the first year or so of the child's life, his playful activity takes shape in several ways. First, out of the great variety of the random movements certain ones are picked out and fixed. This is the way with putting the hand into the mouth or drumming on the floor with the heels, and these instances illustrate the important fact that many learned acts develop out of the child's random activity. Without play activity there would be little work or accomplishment of the distinctively human type. Second, certain specific movements, those of locomotion and vocalization, appear with the ripening of the child's native equipment, and take an important place in his play. Third, his play comes to consist more and more of responses to external objects, instead of to internal stimuli as at first. The playful responses to external objects fall into two classes, according as they manipulate objects or simply examine them.
We have, then, a small group of instincts that is very closely related to the fundamental instinct of random activity.
Locomotion.
Evidence has already been presented [Footnote: See p. 95.] indicating that walking is instinctive and not learned, so that the human species is no exception to the rule that every species has its instinctive mode of locomotion. Simpler performances which enter into the very complex movement of walking make their appearance separately in the infant before being combined into walking proper. Holding up the head, sitting up, kicking with an alternate motion of the {153} two legs, and creeping, ordinarily precede walking and lead up to it.
What is the natural stimulus to locomotion? It is as difficult to say as it is to specify the stimulus in other forms of playful activity. From the fact that blind children are usually delayed in beginning to walk, we judge that the sense of sight furnishes some of the most effective stimuli to this response. Often the impulse attending locomotion is the impulse to approach some seen object, but probably some satisfaction is derived simply from the free movement itself. There certainly is no special emotion going with locomotion. Locomotion has, of course, plenty of "survival value", and might have been included among the organic instincts.
Some of the other varieties of human locomotion, such as running and jumping, are probably native. Others, like hopping and skipping, are probably learned. As to climbing, there is some evolutionary reason for suspecting that an instinctive tendency in this direction might persist in the human species, and certainly children show a great propensity for it; while the acrobatic ability displayed by those adults whose business leads them to continue climbing is so great as to raise the question whether the ordinary citizen is right when he thinks of man as essentially a land-living or surface-living animal. As to swimming, the theory is sometimes advanced that this too is a natural form of locomotion for man, and that, consequently, any one thrown into deep water will swim by instinct. Experiments of this sort result badly, the victim clutching frantically at any support, and sometimes dragging down with him the theorist who is administering this drastic sort of education. In short, the instinctive response of a man to being in deep water is the same as in other cases of sudden withdrawal of solid support; it consists in clinging and is attended by the emotion of fear.
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Vocalization.
Crying at birth proves voice-production to be a native response, but we are more interested just here in the playful cooing and babbling that appear when the child is a few weeks or months old. This cheerful vocalization is also instinctive, in all probability, since the baby makes it before he shows any signs of responding imitatively to the voices of other people. It seems to be one form of the random activity that goes with euphoria. The child derives satisfaction not so much from the muscular activity of vocalization as from the sounds that he produces, so that deaf children, who begin to babble much like other children, lag behind them as the months go by, from not deriving this auditory satisfaction from the vocal activity. Though whistling, blowing a horn, shaking a rattle and beating a drum are not native responses, it is clear that the child naturally enjoys producing sounds of various sorts.
The baby's cheerful babbling is the instinctive basis on which his speech later develops through a process of learning.
Manipulation.
While the first random activity of the baby has nothing to do with external objects, but simply consists of free movements of the arms and legs, after a time these give place to manipulation of objects. The baby turns things about, pulls and pushes them, drops them, throws them, pounds with them. Thus he acquires skill in handling things and also learns how things behave. This form of playful activity contains the germ of constructiveness and of inventiveness, and will come into view again under the head of "imagination."
Exploration or curiosity.
Along with manipulation goes the examination of objects by the hand, the mouth, the eyes and ears, and all the senses. Listening to a sudden noise is one of the first exploratory reactions. Following a moving light with the eyes, fixing the eyes upon a {155} bright object, and exploring an object visually by looking successively at different parts of it, appear in the first few months of the baby's life. Exploration by the hands and by the mouth appear early. Sniffing an odor is a similar exploratory response. When the child is able to walk, his walking is dominated largely by the exploring tendency; he approaches what arouses his curiosity, and embarks on little expeditions of exploration. Similar behavior is seen in animals and is without doubt instinctive. With the acquisition of language, the child's exploration largely takes the form of asking questions.
The stimulus that arouses this sort of behavior is something new and unfamiliar, or at least relatively so. When an object has been thoroughly examined, it is dropped for something else. It is when the cat has just been brought into a strange house that she rummages all over it from garret to cellar. A familiar object is "taken for granted", and arouses little exploratory response.
Quite a group of conscious impulses and emotions goes with exploratory behavior. The feeling or impulse of curiosity is something that everybody knows; like other impulses, it is most strongly felt when the end in view cannot be immediately reached. When you are prevented by considerations of propriety or politeness from satisfying your curiosity, then it is that curiosity is most "gnawing". A very definite emotion that occurs on encountering something extremely novel and strange is what we know as "surprise", and somewhat akin to this is "wonder".
Exploration, though fundamentally a form of playful activity, has great practical value in making the child acquainted with the world. It contains the germ of seeking for knowledge. We shall have to recur to this instinct more than once, under the head of "attention" and again under "reasoning".
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Manipulation and exploration go hand in hand and might be considered as one tendency rather than two. The child wishes to get hold of an object, that arouses his curiosity, and he examines it while handling it. You cannot properly get acquainted with an object by simply looking at it, you need to manipulate it and make it perform; and you get little satisfaction from manipulating an object unless you can watch how it behaves.
Tendencies running counter to exploration and manipulation.
Just as playful activity in general is limited by the counter tendencies of fatigue and inertia, so the tendency to explore and handle the unfamiliar is held in check by counter tendencies which we may call "caution" and "contentment".
Watch an animal in the presence of a strange object. He looks at it, sniffs, and approaches it in a hesitating manner; suddenly he runs away for a short distance, then faces about and approaches again. You can see that he is almost evenly balanced between two contrary tendencies, one of which is curiosity, while the other is much like fear. It is not full-fledged fear, not so much a tendency to escape as an alertness to be ready to escape.
Watch a child just introduced to a strange person or an odd-looking toy. The child seems fascinated, and can scarcely take his eyes from the novel object, but at the same time he "feels strange", and cannot commit himself heartily to getting acquainted. There is quite a dose of caution in the child's make-up--more in some children than in others, to be sure--with the result that the child's curiosity gets him into much less trouble than might be expected. Whether caution is simply to be identified with fear or is a somewhat different native tendency, it is certainly a check upon curiosity.
By "contentment" we mean here a liking for the familiar, {157} which offsets to some extent the fascination of the novel. If you are perfectly contented, you are not inclined to go out exploring; and when you have had your fill of the new and strange, you like to get back to familiar surroundings, where you can rest in content. Just as playful behavior of all sorts decreases with increasing age, so the love for exploring decreases, and the elderly person clings to the familiar. But even children may insist in occupying their own particular chair, on eating from a particular plate, and on being sung to sleep always with the same old song. They are "little creatures of habit", not only in the sense that they readily form habits, but in the sense that they find satisfaction in familiar ways and things. Here we see the germ of a "conservative" tendency in human nature, which balances, to a greater or less extent, and may decidedly overbalance, the "radical" tendency of exploration.
Laughter.
We certainly must not omit this from our list of instincts, for, though it does not appear till some time after birth, it has all the earmarks of an instinctive response. If it were a learned movement, it could be made at will, whereas, as a matter of fact, few people are able to produce a convincing laugh except when genuinely amused, which means when the instinctive tendency to laugh is aroused by some appropriate stimulus. The emotion that goes with laughing may be called mirth or amusement, and it is a strongly impulsive state of mind, the impulse being simply to laugh, with no further end in view.
The most difficult question about laughter is to tell in general psychological terms what is the stimulus that arouses it. We have several ingenious theories of humor, which purport to tell; but they are based on adult humor, and we have as yet no comprehensive genetic study of laughter, tracing it up from its beginnings in the child. Laughing certainly belongs with the play instincts, and possibly the {158} stimulus is no more definite, at first, than that which arouses other playful activity. The baby seems to smile, at first, just from good spirits (euphoria). The stimuli that, a little later, arouse a burst of laughter have an element of what we may call "expected surprise" (as dropping a rattle and exploding with laughter when it bangs on the floor, and keeping this up time after time), and this element can still be detected in various forms of joke that are effective mirth-provokers in the adult. But why the child should laugh when tickled, at the same time trying to escape, is a poser. Many students of humor have subscribed to the theory that what makes us laugh is a sudden sense of our own superiority, thus attaching laughter to the self-assertive instinct, soon to be discussed. The laugh of victory, the laugh of defiance, the laugh of mockery, the sly or malicious laugh, support this theory, but can it be stretched to cover the laugh of good humor, the tickle laugh, or the baby's laugh in general? That seems very doubtful, and we must admit that we do not know the essential element in a laughter stimulus. One thing is fairly certain: that, while laughing is a native response, we learn what to laugh at, for the most part, just as we learn what to fear.
Fighting.
Hold the new-born infant's arms tightly against its sides, and you witness a very peculiar reaction: the body stiffens, the breath may be held till the face is "red with anger"; the child begins to cry and then to scream; the legs are moved up and down, and the arms, if they can be got free, make striking or slashing movements. In somewhat older children, any sort of restraint or interference with free movement may give a similar picture, except that the motor response is more efficient, consisting in struggling, striking, kicking, and biting. It is not so much pain as interference that gives this reaction. You get it if you take away a toy the child is playing with, or if you forbid {159} the child to do something he is bent on doing. In animals, the fighting response is made to restraint, to being attacked, or to being interfered with in the course of feeding, or mating, or in the instinctive care of the young. The mother lioness, or dog or cat or hen, is proverbially dangerous; any interference with the young leads to an attack by the mother. The human mother is no exception to this rule. In human adults, the tendency to fight is awakened by any interference with one's enterprises, by being insulted or got the better of or in any way set down in one's self-esteem.
In general, the stimulus to fighting is restraint or interference. Let any reaction-tendency be first aroused and then interfered with, and pugnacious behavior is the instinctive result.
The stimulus may be an inanimate object. You may see a child kick the door viciously when unable to open it; and grown-ups will sometimes tear, break or throw down angrily any article which they cannot make do as they wish. A bad workman quarrels with his tools. Undoubtedly, however, interference from other persons is the most effective stimulus.
The impulse so aroused is directed primarily towards getting rid of the restraint or interference, but also towards inflicting damage on the opponent; and with this impulse often goes the stirred-up organic and emotional state of anger. As brought out in the chapter on emotion, the organic state in anger is nearly or quite identical with that in fear of the active type; and the two states of the individual differ in respect to impulse rather than in respect to emotion. In fear, the impulse is to get away from the adversary, in anger to get at him. The emotion of anger is not always aroused in fighting, for sometimes there is a cold-blooded desire to damage the adversary.
The motor response, instinctively consisting of struggling, kicking, etc., as already described, becomes modified {160} by learning, and may take the form of scientific fistwork, or the form of angry talk, favored by adults. Or, the adversary may be damaged in his business, in his possessions, in his reputation, or in other indirect ways. The fighting spirit, the most stimulating of the emotions, gives energy to many human enterprises, good as well as bad. The successful reformer must needs be something of a fighter.
Thus far we have said nothing to justify our placing fighting here among the play instincts. Fighting against attack has survival value, fighting to protect the young has survival value, and, in general, the defensive sort of fighting has survival value, even though interference with play activity is just as apt to give this response as interference with more serious activities.
But there is more than this to the fighting instinct. The stimulus of interference is not always required. Consider dogs. The mere presence of another dog is often enough to start a scrap, and a good fighting dog will sally forth in search of a fight, and return considerably mauled up, which does not improve his chances for survival, to say the least. Fighting of this aggressive sort is a luxury rather than a necessity. It has play value rather than survival value. There can be no manner of doubt that pugnacious individuals, dogs or men, get more solid satisfaction from a good fight than from any other amusement. You see people "itching for a fight", and actually "trying to pick a quarrel", by provoking some other person who is strictly minding his own business and not interfering in the least. A battle of words usually starts in some such way, with no real reason, and a battle of words often develops into a battle of tooth and nail. Two women were brought before the judge for fighting, and the judge asked Mrs. Smith to tell how it started. "Well, it was this way, your honor. I met Mrs. Brown carrying a basket on her arm, and I says {161} to her, 'What have ye got in that basket?' says I. 'Eggs', says she. 'No!' says I. 'Yes!' says she. 'Ye lie!' says I. 'Ye lie!' says she. And a 'Whoop!' says I, and a 'Whoop!' says she; and that's the way it began, sir."
We have, then, to recognize aggressive fighting, in addition to defensive, and the aggressive sort certainly belongs among the play instincts.
The instincts that by acting counter to fighting hold it in check are several: laughter--a good laugh together allays hostility; or the parental instinct--a parent will stand treatment from his child that he would quickly resent from any one else; or self-assertion--"Too proud to fight!" But the most direct checks are afforded by inertia--"What's the use?"--and especially by fear and caution.
Fighting, both defensive and aggressive, has so close a connection with the more generalized self-assertive tendency that it might be included under that instinct. It may be regarded as a special form of self-assertive behavior, often complicated with the emotion of anger.
Self-assertion.
What then is this wonderful instinct of self-assertion, to which fighting and much of laughing are subordinate? "Assertiveness", "masterfulness", and the "mastery impulse" are alternative names. Of all the native tendencies, this is the one most frequently aroused, since there is scarcely a moment of waking (or dreaming) life when it is not more or less in action. It is so much a matter of course that we do not notice it in ourselves, and often not in other persons; and even clever psychological observers have seemed entirely blind to it, and given it no place in their list of instincts.
Self-assertion, like fighting, has two forms, the defensive and the aggressive, and in either case it may be a response to either people or things. That gives four varieties of self-assertive behavior, which may be labeled as follows:
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1. Defensive reaction to things, overcoming obstruction, putting through what has been undertaken--the success motive.
2. Defensive reaction to persons, resisting domination by them--the independence motive.
3. Aggressive reaction to things--seeking for power.
4. Aggressive reaction to persons--seeking to dominate. We will take these up in order, beginning with the most elemental.
1. Overcoming obstruction. The stimulus here is much the same as that which induces fighting, but the response is simpler, without anger and without the impulse to do damage. Take hold of a baby's foot and move it this way or that, and you will find that the muscles of the leg are offering resistance to this extraneous movement. Obstruct a movement that the baby is making, and additional force is put into the movement to overcome the obstruction. An adult behaves in a similar way. Let him be pushing a lawn-mower and encounter unexpected resistance from a stretch of tough grass; involuntarily he pushes harder and keeps on going--unless the obstruction is too great. Let him start to lift something that is heavier than he thinks; involuntarily he "strains" at the weight, which means that a complex instinctive response occurs, involving a rigid setting of the chest with holding of the breath, and increased muscular effort. This instinctive reaction may be powerful enough to cause rupture.
Other than purely physical resistance is overcome by other self-assertive responses. When the child's toy will not do what he wants it to do, he does not give up at once, but tries again and puts more effort into his manipulation. When, in school, he is learning to write, and finds difficulty in producing the desired marks, he bends over the desk, twists his foot round the leg of his chair, screws up his face, {163} and in other ways reveals the great effort he is making. An adult, engaged in some piece of mental work, and encountering a distraction, such as the sound of the phonograph downstairs, may, of course, give up and listen to the music, but, if he is very intent on what he is doing, he puts more energy into his work and overcomes the distraction. When he encounters a baffling problem of any sort, he does not like to give it up, even if it is as unimportant as a conundrum, but cudgels his brains for the solution. As a general proposition, and one of the most general propositions that psychology has to present, we may say that obstruction of any sort, encountered in carrying out any intention whatever, acts as a stimulus to the putting of additional energy into the action.
Anger is often aroused by obstruction, but anger does not develop a tenth as often, in the course of the day, as the plain overcoming reaction. The impulse is not to do damage, but to overcome the obstruction and do what we have set out to do. The emotional state might sometimes be called "determination", sometimes "zeal"; but the most elementary state belonging here is _effort_. The feeling of effort is, partly at least, a sensation complex resulting from stiffening the trunk and neck, knitting the brows, and other muscular strains that have practical utility in overcoming physical resistance and that are carried over to the overcoming of other sorts of resistance, where they have no obvious utility. Effort is a simpler emotion than anger, and occurs much more frequently.
2. Resisting domination by other persons. The child shows from an early age that he "has a will of his own", and "wants his own way" in opposition to the commands of other persons. There is an independent spirit in man that is native rather than acquired. The strength of this impulse differs, to be sure, in different individuals, some {164} children being more "contrary" and others more docile; but there probably never was a child without a good dose of disobedience in his make-up. In order to have a nice, obedient child, you have to "break" him like a colt, though you can use reason as well as force in breaking a child. This process of "breaking" gives a habit of obedience to certain persons and along certain lines; but, outside of these limits, the child's independence is still there and ready to be awakened by any attempt to dominate him. In youth, with the sense of power that comes from attaining adult stature and muscular strength, the independent spirit is strengthened, with the result that you seldom see a youth, or an adult, who can take orders without at least some inner opposition and resentment.
3. Seeking for power over things. The self-assertive response to things is not limited to overcoming the obstructions offered by things to the accomplishment of our purposes; but we derive so much positive satisfaction from overcoming obstruction and mastering things that we go out in search of things to master. The child's manipulation has an element of masterfulness in it, for he not only likes to see things perform, but he likes to be the one that makes them perform. If he has a horn, he is not satisfied till he can sound it himself. The man with his automobile is in the same case. When it balks, he is stimulated to overcome it; but when it runs smoothly for him, he has a sense of mastery and power that is highly gratifying. Chopping down a big tree, or moving a big rock with a crowbar, affords the same kind of gratification; and so does cutting with a sharp knife, or shooting with a good bow or gun, or operating any tool or machine that increases one's power. Quite apart from the utility of the result accomplished, any big achievement is a source of satisfaction to the one who has done it, because it gives play to aggressive self-assertion. Many {165} great achievements are motived as much by the zest for achievement as by calculation of the advantages to be secured.
4. Seeking to dominate other people. The individual not simply resists domination by other people, but he seeks to dominate them himself. Even the baby gives orders and demands obedience. Get a number of children together, and you will see more than one of them attempt to be the leader in their play. Some must necessarily be followers just now, but they will attempt to take the lead on another occasion. The "born leader" is perhaps one who has an exceptionally strong dose of masterfulness in his make-up, but he is, still more, one who has abilities, physical or mental, that give him the advantage in the universal struggle for leadership.
Besides giving orders and taking the lead, there are other ways in which the child finds satisfaction for his instinct to dominate. Showing off is one, bragging is one, doing all the talking is one; and, though in growing older and mixing with people the child becomes less naive in his manner of bragging and showing off, he continues even as an adult to reach the same end in more subtle ways. Going about to win applause or social recognition is a seeking for domination. Anything in which one can surpass another becomes a means of self-assertion. One may demonstrate his superiority in size, strength, beauty, skill, cleverness, virtue, good humor, coöperativeness, or even humility, and derive satisfaction from any such demonstration. The impulse to dominate assumes literally a thousand disguises, more rather than less.
_Rivalry_ and _emulation_, sometimes accorded a separate place in a list of the instincts, seem well enough provided for under the general head of self-assertion. They belong on the social side of assertive behavior, i.e., they are responses to other people and aim at the domination of other {166} people or against being dominated by them. But the struggle for mastery, in rivalry, does not take the form of a direct personal encounter. Compare wrestling with a contest in throwing the hammer. In wrestling the mastery impulse finds a direct outlet in subduing the opponent, while in throwing the hammer each contestant tries to beat the other indirectly, by surpassing him in a certain performance. This you would call rivalry, but wrestling is scarcely rivalry, because the struggle for mastery is so direct. Rivalry may seek to demonstrate superiority in some performance, or to win the favor of some person or social group, as in the case of rivals in love.
When we speak of "emulation", we have in mind the sort of behavior observed when one child says, "See what I can do!" and the other counters with, "Pooh! I can do that, too". Or, the first child wins applause by some performance, and we then notice the second child attempting the same. It is a case of resisting the indirect domination of another, by not letting him surpass us in performance or in social recognition.
_Thwarted self-assertion_ deserves special mention, as the basis for quite a number of queer emotional states. Shame, sulkiness, sullenness, peevishness, stubbornness, defiance, all go with wounded self-assertion under different conditions. Envy and jealousy belong here, too. Shyness and embarrassment go with self-assertion that is doubtful of winning recognition. Opposed to all these are self-confidence, the cheerful state of mind of one who seeks to master some person or thing and fully expects to do so, and elation, the joyful state of one who has mastered.
Submission.
Is there any counter-tendency that limits self-assertion and holds it in check? Inertia and fear of course have this effect, but is there any specific instinct precisely opposite to self-assertion? A difficult question, not {167} yet to be answered with any assurance; but there is some evidence of a native submissive or yielding tendency. Two forms may be distinguished: yielding to obstruction, and yielding to the domination of other persons.
Giving up, in the face of obstacles, is certainly common enough, but at first thought we should say that the individual was passive in the matter, and simply forced to yield, as a stone is brought to a stop when it strikes a wall. In reality, giving up is not quite so passive as this. There is no external force that can absolutely force us to give up, unless by clubbing us on the head or somehow putting our reactive mechanism out of commission. As long as our brain, nerves and muscles are able to act, no external force can absolutely compel us to cease struggling. Since, then, we do cease struggling before we are absolutely out of commission, our giving up is not a purely passive affair, but our own act, a kind of reaction; and no doubt a native reaction. Further, when struggling against a stubborn obstacle, we sometimes feel an _impulse to give up_, and giving up brings relief.
The ability to give up is not a mere element of weakness in our nature, but is a valuable asset in adapting ourselves to the environment. Adaptation is called for when the reaction first and most naturally made to a given situation does not meet the requirements of the situation. A too stubborn assertiveness means persistence in this unsuitable reaction, and no progress towards a successful issue; whereas giving up the first plan of attack, and trying something else instead, is the way towards success. Some people are too stubborn to be adaptable.
The docility of the child, who believes whatever is told him, has in it an element of submissiveness. There is submissiveness also in the receptive attitude appropriate in observation and forming opinions--the attitude of looking for the facts and accepting them as they are rather than seeking {168} to confirm one's own prepossessions. Bias is self-assertive, impartiality is submissive to some degree.
Yielding to the domination of other persons often occurs unwillingly, and then comes under the head of "thwarted self-assertion"; but the question is whether it ever occurs willingly and affords satisfaction to the individual who yields. We certainly yield with good grace to one who so far outclasses us that competition with him is unthinkable. An adult may arouse the submissive response in a child; and the social group, by virtue of its superior power and permanence, may arouse it in the individual adult. Hero worship seems a good example of willing submission, agreeable to the one who submits. There are persons who are "lost" without a hero, without some one to lean on, some one to tell them what to do and even what to believe. This looks much like the "filial" or "infantile" instinct that was mentioned before as a possibility, and the dependent spirit in an adult possibly represents a continuation of the infantile attitude into adult life.
Some behavior that looks submissive is really self-assertion in disguise. There are two forms of self-assertion that are specially likely to be taken for submission. Wounded or thwarted self-assertion is one. Shame and envy are like submission in this respect, that they involve an absence of self-confidence or self-assurance, but they do not afford the satisfaction of willing submission, nor the relief of giving up the struggle against obstacles. So far from being genuinely submissive, they are states in which the self is making a violent and insistent demand for justification or social recognition. The other form of self-assertion which looks like submission occurs when a person identifies himself with a superior individual or with a social group. He will then boast of the prowess of his hero or of the prestige of his group, whether it be his family, his school, {169} his town or his country. Now, boasting cannot by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as a sign of submissiveness; it is a sign of assertiveness, and nothing else. What has happened here is that the individual, having identified himself with his hero or his group, finds in their greatness a means of asserting himself as against other individuals who have not the good fortune to be so identified. This transferred self-assertion is a strong element in loyalty and public spirit, and plays a large and useful part in public affairs.
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EXERCISES
1. Make an outline of the chapter, in the form of a table, which shall show for each instinct: (a) the natural stimulus, (b) the native motor response, (c) the end-result that the instinct tends towards, in its adult as well as its native condition, and (d) the emotion, if any, that goes with the activity of the instinct.
2. An adult tendency or propensity may be simply an unmodified instinct, or it may be derived from instincts by combination, etc. Try to identify each of the following as an instinct, or to analyze it into two or more instincts:
(a) Love for adventure. (b) Patriotism. (c) A father's pride in his children. (d) Love for travel. (e) Insubordination. (f) Love for dancing.
3. Which of the instincts are most concerned in making people work?
4. Show how self-assertion finds gratification in the life-work of
an actor. a physician. a housekeeper. a teacher. a railroad engineer.
5. Arrange the following impulses and emotions in the order of the frequency of their occurrence in your ordinary day's work and play:
(a) Fear. (b) Anger. (c) Disgust (d) Curiosity. (e) Self-assertion. (f) Submission. (g) The tendency to protect or "mother" another.
6. How do "practical jokes" lend support to the view that laughter is primarily aroused by a sense of one's own superiority?
7. Get together a dozen jokes or funny stories, and see how many of them can be placed with the practical jokes in this respect.
8. Mention some laughter-stimuli that do not lend support to the theory mentioned in Exercise 6.
9. What instincts find outlet in (a) dress, (b) automobiling, (c) athletics, (d) social conversation?
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REFERENCES
McDougall's _Social Psychology_ gives, in Chapters III and IV, an inventory of the instinctive equipment of mankind, and in Chapter V attempts to analyze many complex human emotions and propensities into their native elements.
Thorndike, in his _Educational Psychology, Briefer Course_, 1914, Chapters, II-V, attempts a more precise analysis of stimulus and response.
Watson's _Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist_, 1919, attempts in Chapter VI to show that there are only three primary emotions, fear, rage and love; and in Chapter VII gives a critical review of the work on human instincts.
H. C. Warren, in Chapter VI of his _Human Psychology_, 1919, gives a brief survey of the reflexes and instincts.
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