The instinct theory of motivation is a psychological perspective that suggests that human behavior is primarily driven by innate, biological instincts. These instincts are thought to be hardwired into our brains through evolution and guide our actions to meet specific biological needs. While the instinct theory has fallen out of favor in contemporary psychology, it played a significant role in shaping our understanding of motivation and behavior.
The instinct theory of motivation posits that human behavior is largely determined by instincts, which are inborn patterns of behavior that are essential for survival and reproduction. According to this theory, these instincts are hardwired into our genetic makeup and serve as the driving force behind our actions and choices.
Instincts are typically characterized by their automatic and involuntary nature. They are thought to be universal among all members of a species and are not learned through experience or culture. Instead, instincts are considered an inherent part of our biological heritage, passed down through generations via genetic inheritance.
The concept of instincts has a long history in the field of psychology and philosophy. It can be traced back to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, who proposed that all living organisms possess innate tendencies or “natures” that guide their behavior. However, the formal development of the instinct theory as a psychological concept occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Key Proponents of the Instinct Theory
Several notable psychologists and scientists contributed to the development and popularization of the instinct theory:
William James: Often regarded as one of the founders of modern psychology, William James proposed the idea of instincts in his influential work “The Principles of Psychology” (1890). He suggested that instincts are innate tendencies that lead individuals to engage in specific behaviors without the need for learning.
William McDougall: British psychologist William McDougall expanded on James’s ideas and developed a comprehensive theory of instincts. In his book “An Introduction to Social Psychology” (1908), McDougall outlined various human instincts, including the instinct of self-preservation, reproduction, curiosity, and gregariousness.
Sigmund Freud: While primarily known for his psychoanalytic theory, Sigmund Freud also discussed instincts in his work. He proposed that human behavior is driven by two fundamental instincts: the life instinct (Eros), which promotes survival and reproduction, and the death instinct (Thanatos), which represents destructive and self-destructive tendencies.
Examples of Proposed Instincts
Throughout the history of psychology, various instincts have been proposed to explain human behavior. Some of these proposed instincts include:
Survival Instinct: This instinct drives individuals to seek food, water, shelter, and safety to ensure their survival.
Reproductive Instinct: The instinct to reproduce and pass on one’s genes to the next generation is often considered a fundamental human drive.
Aggression Instinct: Some theorists have suggested that humans possess an instinct for aggression or self-defense, which can be activated in response to threats.
Curiosity Instinct: The curiosity instinct is thought to motivate individuals to explore their environment, acquire knowledge, and solve problems.
Parental Instinct: The instinct to care for and protect one’s offspring is believed to be crucial for the survival and well-being of the species.
Criticisms of the Instinct Theory
While the instinct theory of motivation offered valuable insights into human behavior, it also faced significant criticisms and limitations, leading to its decline in prominence. Some of the key criticisms include:
Lack of Empirical Evidence: Critics argued that the concept of instincts lacked empirical evidence to support its claims. Many behaviors attributed to instincts could be explained by learning, culture, and socialization.
Limited Explanatory Power: Instincts were often described in broad and vague terms, making them less useful in explaining specific behaviors. Critics found that the theory lacked precision and failed to account for the diversity of human actions.
Cultural Variation: Human behavior exhibits significant cultural variation, which the instinct theory struggled to explain. The theory’s reliance on universal instincts could not account for the wide range of cultural practices and norms.
Overemphasis on Biology: The instinct theory placed excessive emphasis on biological determinism and neglected the role of cognition, emotions, and social factors in shaping behavior.
Reductionism: Some critics viewed the instinct theory as overly reductionist, reducing complex human behaviors to simplistic and innate drives.
The Decline of the Instinct Theory
Despite its initial popularity, the instinct theory gradually declined in influence within the field of psychology. Several factors contributed to its decline:
The Rise of Behaviorism: The behaviorist movement, led by figures such as John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, shifted the focus of psychology away from internal mental processes and instincts. Behaviorism emphasized observable behaviors and the role of learning in shaping behavior.
Empirical Challenges: The lack of empirical evidence supporting specific instincts and the difficulty of empirically testing instinctual behaviors weakened the theory’s scientific credibility.
Cognitive Revolution: The emergence of cognitive psychology in the mid-20th century placed greater emphasis on mental processes, such as perception, memory, and problem-solving, and de-emphasized innate instincts as explanations for behavior.
Modern Perspectives on Motivation
Contemporary psychology recognizes that human motivation is a complex interplay of various factors, including biological, psychological, and social influences. While the instinct theory has been largely replaced by more comprehensive and nuanced theories of motivation, such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-determination theory, and achievement motivation theory, the concept of innate drives still has relevance in understanding some aspects of human behavior.
Relevance of Instincts in Modern Psychology
While the instinct theory may have faded from prominence, certain elements of the concept of instincts remain relevant in modern psychology:
Evolutionary Psychology: Evolutionary psychology explores how natural selection has shaped human behaviors and instincts over time. It suggests that some behaviors, such as parental care and mate selection, can be understood as adaptations to enhance reproductive success.
Basic Biological Drives: Fundamental biological drives, such as the need for food, water, and safety, are still recognized as primary motivators of human behavior. These needs are often incorporated into contemporary theories of motivation.
Cross-Cultural Universals: Some psychologists study cross-cultural universals in behavior and cognition, seeking to identify commonalities in human behavior that may have evolutionary origins.
Instinctual Behaviors in Animals: The concept of instincts remains relevant in the study of animal behavior, where innate patterns of behavior are well-documented and often associated with survival and reproduction.
Conclusion
The instinct theory of motivation, while historically significant, has been largely supplanted by more nuanced and empirically grounded theories of motivation in modern psychology. However, the concept of innate drives and behaviors still has relevance in understanding certain aspects of human behavior, particularly within the context of evolutionary psychology. While instincts may not provide a comprehensive explanation for all human actions, they remain a valuable part of the broader tapestry of human motivation and behavior.
Convergent thinking occurs when the solution to a problem can be found by applying established rules and logical reasoning. Whereas divergent thinking is an unstructured problem-solving method where participants are encouraged to develop many innovative ideas or solutions to a given problem. Where convergent thinking might work for larger, mature organizations where divergent thinking is more suited for startups and innovative companies.
The concept of cognitive biases was introduced and popularized by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Biases are seen as systematic errors and flaws that make humans deviate from the standards of rationality, thus making us inept at making good decisions under uncertainty.
Second-order thinking is a means of assessing the implications of our decisions by considering future consequences. Second-order thinking is a mental model that considers all future possibilities. It encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they can prepare for every and eventuality. It also discourages the tendency for individuals to default to the most obvious choice.
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving, can at times, create a big impact.
Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a task overestimate their ability to perform that task well. Consumers or businesses that do not possess the requisite knowledge make bad decisions. What’s more, knowledge gaps prevent the person or business from seeing their mistakes.
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
The Lindy Effect is a theory about the ageing of non-perishable things, like technology or ideas. Popularized by author Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the Lindy Effect states that non-perishable things like technology age – linearly – in reverse. Therefore, the older an idea or a technology, the same will be its life expectancy.
Antifragility was first coined as a term by author, and options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragility is a characteristic of systems that thrive as a result of stressors, volatility, and randomness. Therefore, Antifragile is the opposite of fragile. Where a fragile thing breaks up to volatility; a robust thing resists volatility. An antifragile thing gets stronger from volatility (provided the level of stressors and randomness doesn’t pass a certain threshold).
Systems thinking is a holistic means of investigating the factors and interactions that could contribute to a potential outcome. It is about thinking non-linearly, and understanding the second-order consequences of actions and input into the system.
Vertical thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that favors a selective, analytical, structured, and sequential mindset. The focus of vertical thinking is to arrive at a reasoned, defined solution.
Maslow’s Hammer, otherwise known as the law of the instrument or the Einstellung effect, is a cognitive bias causing an over-reliance on a familiar tool. This can be expressed as the tendency to overuse a known tool (perhaps a hammer) to solve issues that might require a different tool. This problem is persistent in the business world where perhaps known tools or frameworks might be used in the wrong context (like business plans used as planning tools instead of only investors’ pitches).
The Peter Principle was first described by Canadian sociologist Lawrence J. Peter in his 1969 book The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states that people are continually promoted within an organization until they reach their level of incompetence.
The straw man fallacy describes an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s stance to make rebuttal more convenient. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal logical fallacy, defined as a flaw in the structure of an argument that renders it invalid.
The Streisand Effect is a paradoxical phenomenon where the act of suppressing information to reduce visibility causes it to become more visible. In 2003, Streisand attempted to suppress aerial photographs of her Californian home by suing photographer Kenneth Adelman for an invasion of privacy. Adelman, who Streisand assumed was paparazzi, was instead taking photographs to document and study coastal erosion. In her quest for more privacy, Streisand’s efforts had the opposite effect.
As highlighted by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer in the paper “Heuristic Decision Making,” the term heuristic is of Greek origin, meaning “serving to find out or discover.” More precisely, a heuristic is a fast and accurate way to make decisions in the real world, which is driven by uncertainty.
The recognition heuristic is a psychological model of judgment and decision making. It is part of a suite of simple and economical heuristics proposed by psychologists Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer. The recognition heuristic argues that inferences are made about an object based on whether it is recognized or not.
The representativeness heuristic was first described by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The representativeness heuristic judges the probability of an event according to the degree to which that event resembles a broader class. When queried, most will choose the first option because the description of John matches the stereotype we may hold for an archaeologist.
The take-the-best heuristic is a decision-making shortcut that helps an individual choose between several alternatives. The take-the-best (TTB) heuristic decides between two or more alternatives based on a single good attribute, otherwise known as a cue. In the process, less desirable attributes are ignored.
The bundling bias is a cognitive bias in e-commerce where a consumer tends not to use all of the products bought as a group, or bundle. Bundling occurs when individual products or services are sold together as a bundle. Common examples are tickets and experiences. The bundling bias dictates that consumers are less likely to use each item in the bundle. This means that the value of the bundle and indeed the value of each item in the bundle is decreased.
The Barnum Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals believe that generic information – which applies to most people – is specifically tailored for themselves.
First-principles thinking – sometimes called reasoning from first principles – is used to reverse-engineer complex problems and encourage creativity. It involves breaking down problems into basic elements and reassembling them from the ground up. Elon Musk is among the strongest proponents of this way of thinking.
The ladder of inference is a conscious or subconscious thinking process where an individual moves from a fact to a decision or action. The ladder of inference was created by academic Chris Argyris to illustrate how people form and then use mental models to make decisions.
Goodhart’s Law is named after British monetary policy theorist and economist Charles Goodhart. Speaking at a conference in Sydney in 1975, Goodhart said that “any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.” Goodhart’s Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
The Six Thinking Hats model was created by psychologist Edward de Bono in 1986, who noted that personality type was a key driver of how people approached problem-solving. For example, optimists view situations differently from pessimists. Analytical individuals may generate ideas that a more emotional person would not, and vice versa.
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event differently from how it occurred. The Mandela effect was first described in relation to Fiona Broome, who believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s. While Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and died 23 years later, Broome remembered news coverage of his death in prison and even a speech from his widow. Of course, neither event occurred in reality. But Broome was later to discover that she was not the only one with the same recollection of events.
The bandwagon effect tells us that the more a belief or idea has been adopted by more people within a group, the more the individual adoption of that idea might increase within the same group. This is the psychological effect that leads to herd mentality. What in marketing can be associated with social proof.
Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years. This observation was made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 and it become a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry and has had far-reaching implications for technology as a whole.
Disruptive innovation as a term was first described by Clayton M. Christensen, an American academic and business consultant whom The Economist called “the most influential management thinker of his time.” Disruptive innovation describes the process by which a product or service takes hold at the bottom of a market and eventually displaces established competitors, products, firms, or alliances.
Value migration was first described by author Adrian Slywotzky in his 1996 book Value Migration – How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Value migration is the transferal of value-creating forces from outdated business models to something better able to satisfy consumer demands.
The bye-now effect describes the tendency for consumers to think of the word “buy” when they read the word “bye”. In a study that tracked diners at a name-your-own-price restaurant, each diner was asked to read one of two phrases before ordering their meal. The first phrase, “so long”, resulted in diners paying an average of $32 per meal. But when diners recited the phrase “bye bye” before ordering, the average price per meal rose to $45.
Groupthink occurs when well-intentioned individuals make non-optimal or irrational decisions based on a belief that dissent is impossible or on a motivation to conform. Groupthink occurs when members of a group reach a consensus without critical reasoning or evaluation of the alternatives and their consequences.
A stereotype is a fixed and over-generalized belief about a particular group or class of people. These beliefs are based on the false assumption that certain characteristics are common to every individual residing in that group. Many stereotypes have a long and sometimes controversial history and are a direct consequence of various political, social, or economic events. Stereotyping is the process of making assumptions about a person or group of people based on various attributes, including gender, race, religion, or physical traits.
Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy’s Law was named after aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy. During his time working at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949, Murphy cursed a technician who had improperly wired an electrical component and said, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.”
The law of unintended consequences was first mentioned by British philosopher John Locke when writing to parliament about the unintended effects of interest rate rises. However, it was popularized in 1936 by American sociologist Robert K. Merton who looked at unexpected, unanticipated, and unintended consequences and their impact on society.
Fundamental attribution error is a bias people display when judging the behavior of others. The tendency is to over-emphasize personal characteristics and under-emphasize environmental and situational factors.
Outcome bias describes a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome and not on the process by which the decision was reached. In other words, the quality of a decision is only determined once the outcome is known. Outcome bias occurs when a decision is based on the outcome of previous events without regard for how those events developed.
Hindsight bias is the tendency for people to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were. The result of a presidential election, for example, seems more obvious when the winner is announced. The same can also be said for the avid sports fan who predicted the correct outcome of a match regardless of whether their team won or lost. Hindsight bias, therefore, is the tendency for an individual to convince themselves that they accurately predicted an event before it happened.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
