Originally posted by Grand-Moff-Gav
What's the difference between an emotion and an instinct?
depends on the level you want to understand emotion at, but here goes:
Emotion: either the activation of affective systems in response to stimuli or the interpretation of those affective activations by higher cortical areas.
Instinct: A drive from biology that affects behaviour. Traditionally, "instincts" can be thought of as "stimuli" that create "behaviour", only originating internally rather than externally, but that paradigm is somewhat outdated.
Originally posted by inimalist
depends on the level you want to understand emotion at, but here goes:Emotion: either the activation of affective systems in response to stimuli or the interpretation of those affective activations by higher cortical areas.
Instinct: A drive from biology that affects behaviour. Traditionally, "instincts" can be thought of as "stimuli" that create "behaviour", only originating internally rather than externally, but that paradigm is somewhat outdated.
Is fear then not an instinct?
Originally posted by Grand-Moff-Gav
Is fear then not an instinct?
interesting point. My answer would be no, as the behaviour produced in response to the emotion would involve a different process than the emotion itself.
For instance, joy or lust would have similar qualities that might make someone behave in a particular way, but it would be action in response to the emotional feeling.
It might get more muddled if we use the second definition of emotion, where emotions are the cognitive interpretation and not simply the neurological response to stimuli, as that interpretation is going to be largely based on what behaviours your motor system is deciding you are going to want to do (language=hatred).
As that last sentence illustrated, there is probably going to be a lot of difficulty drawing a strict line between where a response to stimuli ends and where internally motivated behaviour begins, if such a line even exists.
Also, fear is, normally, in response to frightening contexts in the environment. Running from a fearful situation is instinctual, imho, though not the fear itself.
I guess this leaves the question open to whether it is possible to instinctually be afraid of something or irrational phobias...
What's the difference between an emotion and an instinct?
btw, emotions can be instinctual but not viseversa imo.
Well, just like everything else, emotions have evolved. What determines the evolution of emotions? Is it environment, society, genetic memory or a bit of everything? I wonder what the emotional capacity of cro-magnon man was. Just like instincts, i think it took a long time for emotions to develop in Humans. A developmental process, like instincts, that is still changing and growing.
I agree with that but i also think genetic memory plays a role in determining in a persons emotions as well
Genetic memory?
~Sado
Originally posted by Sado22
evolutionary psychology now suggests (and has proven?) that just like physical traits are passed on via genes, so is the memory of a speicy. this "memory" passes on the new generation as a coded information.~Sado
It's virtually impossible for psychology to "prove" anything. When it's something that takes longer to happen than psychology has existed assuming anything can be proved seems slightly absurd since it can't possibly have been tested. So I assume either someone has seriously misunderstood the idea of memory or the idea of evolution.
Originally posted by Sado22
evolutionary psychology now suggests (and has proven?) that just like physical traits are passed on via genes, so is the memory of a speicy. this "memory" passes on the new generation as a coded information.~Sado
science doesn't prove things
behavioural genetics has evidenced what you are talking about, evolutionary psychology does NOT identify genetic traits that are passed from parent to child, but rather is concerned with why overt human behaviour may have had survival benefit.
I understand now how you are using the term, it just seems needlessly confusing. The term you are looking for is either inheritance, genetic drift or genetic predisposition.
Epigenetics may work more as "memory", as the genes display themselves over generations based on the environmental conditions of the parents, however, even then, the term "memory" is very loaded.
For someone trying to put forth a "psychological" argument, the use of "memory" in such a way seems odd. Memory has very specific meaning in psychology, one that does not apply to genes at all, with the possible exception of comparing Long-term potentiation with epigenetic phenomena.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
So I assume either someone has seriously misunderstood the idea of memory or the idea of evolution.
evolutionary psych IS a valid form of study, though each paper has at least 3 paragraphs of caveats in its intro about how evolutionary studies of behaviour are immensely difficult.
The most recent one I can think of off the top of my head is some memory work done by Nairne. He showed a memory bias for items remembered in survival context vs other context, and also expanded it to show a bias for Savannah rather than city survival.
It is an almost entirely new field, and will challenge what is an almost entirely structuralist zeitgeist of cognitive psychology, so there are lots of problems and controversies, but evolutionary psych has a lot of promise. Its methods do need work though.
It's virtually impossible for psychology to "prove" anything. When it's something that takes longer to happen than psychology has existed assuming anything can be proved seems slightly absurd since it can't possibly have been tested. So I assume either someone has seriously misunderstood the idea of memory or the idea of evolution.
The most recent one I can think of off the top of my head is some memory work done by Nairne. He showed a memory bias for items remembered in survival context vs other context, and also expanded it to show a bias for Savannah rather than city survival.
behavioural genetics has evidenced what you are talking about, evolutionary psychology does NOT identify genetic traits that are passed from parent to child, but rather is concerned with why overt human behaviour may have had survival benefit.
~Sado