Instinctive drift or instinctual drift is the tendency of an organism to revert to instinctive behaviors that can interfere with the conditioned response. The concept originated with B. F. Skinner's former students Keller and Marian Breland when they tried to teach a raccoon to put money into a piggy bank. Instead the raccoon instinctively drifted to its instinctive behavior of putting money on ground or turning it over in its paws, as they would do with food.
Famous quotes containing the words instinctive and/or drift:
“Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.”
—Betty Rollin (b. 1936)
“But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)