Against Evolutionary Determinism
Against Evolutionary Determinism
The Role of Ontogeny in Behavior
During the 1950s and 1960s, researchers in Europe and the United States showed the difficulties inherent in the original ethological goal of studying animal behavior by first identifying an animal's instincts. This chapter reviews some of their major objections. Daniel Lehrman criticized the explanatory value of the concept of instinct and the impossibility of isolating innate behavior with deprivation experiments. Comparative psychologists Frank Beach, T. C. Schneirla, and Jay Rosenblatt stressed that isolation experiments cannot separate innate and learned behaviors. British animal researcher Robert Hinde exposed the weaknesses in Konrad Lorenz's hydraulic model of instinctual energy and the concept of drive.
Keywords: Daniel Lehrman, instinct, innate behavior, Robert Hinde, Frank Beach, T. C. Schneirla, Jay Rosenblatt, ethology, Konrad Lorenz, learned behaviors
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