Difference between reflex and instinctive action
If your throat scratches, you may break out in a cough. If you are sitting in a lively group, you may have the safe feeling that it would be better not to say anything more. The difference between the first-mentioned reflex and the instinctive action is, among other things, that the reflex is based on a direct stimulus-response scheme.
A reflex is a reaction that occurs involuntarily due to a certain stimulus, i.e. cannot be controlled by the will. Reflexes can be innate or learned - a famous example of the latter is the experiment with dogs by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov.
A reflex can also be learned
The smell of food involuntarily causes a dog to salivate. There is this reaction in humans too: Perhaps it has happened to you before that you came home hungry in the evening and the smell of a delicious dish that your neighbor was just cooking dragged himself through the stairwell - and your saliva began to flow stimulated.
- Neither you nor a dog can control or suppress such a response to a stimulus. However, another stimulus can trigger the reaction.
- The Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov found this in an experiment with dogs. In addition to the food stimulus, a bell rang, so that both stimuli were connected at some point. If the dogs heard the bell in the following years, then this stimulus was enough to trigger the salivation.
The difference in the act of instinct lies in the complexity
It is possible that you have already made a decision "on the basis of your gut instinct". Then you trusted your feelings or instincts rather than your mind.
Reflexes are not arbitrary. If you didn't, you'd have a few problems. It ...
- In animals, an instinctive act, as opposed to a mere reflex, occurs when they act out of an inner drive, whereby the behavior to be observed is innate. That the action or the behavior is innate and not learned, can be recognized by the fact that it can be observed in every specimen of the genus in question.
- In contrast to a mere reaction to a stimulus, the course of action is much more complex. In addition, it is not only triggered by the key stimulus, but is preceded by an undirected search for a stimulus. An example of this is the animal that instinctively looks for prey.
A person also has certain physical reflexes. An instinctive act can be present in him when he does something "from the gut".
