An innate behavior in humans would be crying and breathing. As soon as you’re born you cry and breathe it just happens. There is nothing that really triggers the start of breathing or crying. This is all known as innate behaviors.

Reflexes, Taxes and Kineses First, we will look at the most simple forms of innate behavior: reflex, taxis and kinesis.

Humans are the most intelligent species, and they have very few innate behaviors. The only innate behaviors in humans are reflexes. A reflex is a response that always occurs when a certain stimulus is present.

Humans all have three main survival instincts: Self-Preservation, Sexual, and Social.

Migration is an innate behavior characterized as the long-range seasonal movement of animals; it is an evolved, adapted response to variation in resource availability.

There are two kinds of behavior: innate and learned. Innate behavior comes from an animal’s heredity. For example, migrating birds use innate behavior to know when to begin their migration and the route that they should follow. Learned behavior comes from watching other animals and from life experiences.

Kinesis and taxis Some organisms have innate behaviors in which they change their movement in response to a stimulus, such as high temperature or a tasty food source. In kinesis, an organism changes its movement in a non-directional way—e.g., speeding up or slowing down—in response to a cue.

Natural selection will favor behavior that enhances survival and reproduction. Innate behaviors can never be altered by natural selection. If a behavior is less than optimal, it will eventually become optimal through natural selection.

Innate behavior, or instinct, is important because there is no risk of an incorrect behavior being learned. They are “hard wired” into the system. On the other hand, learned behaviors, although riskier, are flexible, dynamic, and can be altered according to changes in the environment.

The only innate behaviors in humans are reflexes. A reflex is a response that always occurs when a certain stimulus is present. For example, a human infant will grasp an object, such as a finger, that is placed in its palm. The infant has no control over this reaction because it is innate.

In many cases, behaviors have both an innate component and a learned component. Behavior is shaped by natural selection. Many behaviors directly increase an organism’s fitness, that is, they help it survive and reproduce.

Evolutionary psychology assumes that human behaviour is being shaped, indeed determined, by processes of natural selection: those modes of behaviour that favour the replication of the genome will preferentially survive.

Learned behaviors do not directly affect natural selection because they do not improve the chances that an individual will survive and reproduce. As organisms learn to survive in their environment, their genes change. They then pass these genes to their offspring, and the traits become more common within a population.

No learning does not play a role in innate behavior. Innate behavior is based on instincts. These behaviors depend on patterns of the nervous system activity that develop through complex interactions b/w genes and the environment. Learning is changes in behavior as a result of experience.

Examples of this include a dog shaking after it gets wet, a sea turtle seeking out the ocean after hatching, or a bird migrating before the winter season. In humans, many reflexes are examples of instinctive behaviors.

Examples of instinctive behaviors in humans include many of the primitive reflexes, such as rooting and suckling, behaviors which are present in mammals.

Learned behavior comes from watching other animals and from life experiences. By watching their mother, baby ducks learn how to avoid danger and to know what is good to eat. This is an example of learned behavior.

Animals may learn behaviors in a variety of ways. Some ways in which animals learn are relatively simple. Others are very complex….Types of learning include the following:

• Habituation.
• Sensitization.
• Classical conditioning.
• Operant conditioning.
• Observational learning.
• Play.
• Insight learning.

Learned behavior is something an animal discovers through trial, error and observation. Most learned behavior comes from the teaching of the animal’s parent or through experimentation with its environment.

(Conditioning is another word for learning.) By pairing a new stimulus with a familiar one, an animal can be conditioned to respond to the new stimulus. The conditioned response is typically a reflex – a behavior that requires no thought.

A learned behavior is something that you are taught or have learned to do. We do learn somethings from our parents but other things such as skateboarding we might learn by ourselves. Some examples are, playing an instrument, playing sports, style, cooking.

List of Words that Describe Behavior

• Active: always busy with something.
• Ambitious: strongly wants to succeed.
• Cautious: being very careful.
• Conscientious: taking time to do things right.
• Creative: someone who can make up things easily or think of new things.
• Curious: always wanting to know things.
• Logical: using clear and sound reasoning.

Behavior is determined by a combination of inherited traits, experience, and the environment. Some behavior, called innate, comes from your genes, but other behavior is learned, either from interacting with the world or by being taught.

The Behavioral Approach. Human behavior is learned, thus all behavior can be unlearned and newbehaviors learned in its place. Behaviorism is concerned primarily with theobservable and measurable aspects of human behavior. Therefore when behaviorsbecome unacceptable, they can be unlearned.