Developmental psychology.pdf

290 Motivation and Emotion
Robin also showed reflexes in reacting to danger. In adverse seas he pulled the
tiller to one side, ducked the boom, and regained his balance. He even used the term
instinct incorrectly in this context. Fighting a long, severe storm off the coast of Madagascar,
he reported that "the instinct of survival" took over, enabling him to stay
awake and to keep his boat's stern to the sea. But even an instinct for survival appears
unlikely in human beings, for people lie down to die in the snow, shoot themselves, and
certainly take unwarranted risks rather regularly, as demonstrated by Robin himself.
A true survival instinct presumably would prevent us from engaging in these behaviors.
We do have various reflexes that promote survival, however. These include
gasping for air, withdrawing from a precipice, blinking the eye in response to dust, and
so forth.
Influence of Learning Instead, Robin's success at sea depended upon learned
behaviors and inborn reflexes. He apparently underestimated the importance of highlevel
learning in his accomplishment, except on his trip to Samoa. That part of the
journey resulted in a demasting, an emergency that Robin said called for "seamanship."
And seamanship is learned. Otherwise, we would all know to put our bow or stern to
the sea in heavy weather and, with a little bit of luck and no direct training, we could
all accomplish his round-the-world feat.
Learning was clearly involved not only in Robin's ability to sail but also in his
interest in doing so. His father bought him his first boat when he was 10 years old,
and Robin sailed it every afternoon after school. Then, when he was 13, his father took
him on an 11,000-mile voyage. On that trip, Robin said, he learned to handle himself
like a "veteran sailor" (Graham, 1972; Figure 11.5).
Species-Specific Behavior There were some instinctive reactions in Robin's cats,
such as mating and catching a mouse, but even at the animal level the concept of
instinct is not particularly helpful to our understanding of the response. We say that
the mother rat has a maternal instinct and therefore takes care of her babies, but we
also say that she takes care of her babies because she has a maternal instinct. This
reasoning is circular and use of the term accomplishes little.
Many contemporary psychologists and ecologists prefer instead to speak of
species-specific behavior, which means that certain complex behaviors are found only
in certain animals. One advantage of this term is that it includes no implication about
how the behavior occurs. It simply indicates that certain species react in certain ways
with members of their own kind, and these fixed reactions pertain to cooperative and
competitive behaviors. Earlier we noted that rats always mate with one another in the
Figure 11.5
Using Navigational Aids.
Determining one's position at sea by
obtaining information on the sun or
stars involves complex learned
behavior.
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