Instinct - Behavioral Sciences

Behavioral Sciences

In Information Behavior: An Evolutionary Instinct (2010, pp. 35-42), Amanda Spink notes that "currently in the behavioral sciences instinct is generally understood as the innate part of behavior that emerges without any training or education in humans." She claims that the viewpoint that information behavior has an instinctive basis is grounded in the latest thinking on human behavior. Furthermore, she notes that "behaviors such as cooperation, sexual behavior, child rearing and aesthetics are seen as 'evolved psychological mechanisms' with an instinctive basis (Buss, 2008; Dickens & Cohen, 2003; Geary, 2004)." Spink adds that Stephen Pinker similarly asserts that language is instinctive in humans in his book, The Language Instinct, How the mind creates language, (1994).