Unit 6: Bases and Direction of Human Behaviour

Human behaviour is a complex phenomenon driven by a variety of internal and external factors. This unit explores the fundamental internal mechanisms that initiate and direct our actions, focusing on basic psychological concepts like needs, drives, instincts, and emotions, as well as the learned patterns of behaviour known as habits.

Bases of Human Behaviour: Needs, Drives, Instincts, and Emotions

Understanding the fundamental components that motivate and direct human actions is crucial for comprehending behaviour. These components work together to ensure survival, well-being, and social interaction.

Concept of Needs

A need is a state of deprivation or deficiency that, if not satisfied, will lead to an imbalance and drive an individual to act in a way that restores balance.

Needs are fundamental requirements for human survival and psychological well-being. They create a state of internal tension that individuals seek to resolve.

• Types of Needs:
  • Primary (Physiological) Needs: These are biological necessities for survival. They are innate and universal.
    • Examples: Food, water, shelter, sleep, air, sex (for species survival), excretion.
  • Secondary (Psychological/Social) Needs: These are learned or acquired needs that are not directly essential for survival but are important for psychological well-being and social interaction. They often arise from an individual's culture, experiences, and social environment.
    • Examples: Need for achievement, affiliation, power, recognition, security, love, self-esteem.
• Importance: Needs act as primary motivators, initiating behaviour aimed at their satisfaction. Unmet needs can lead to stress, frustration, and physiological or psychological distress.

Concept of Drives

A drive is an internal state of arousal or tension that is activated by physiological needs and motivates an organism to engage in activities that will satisfy the need and reduce the tension.

Drives are the psychological manifestations of physiological needs. When a need arises (e.g., lack of food), it creates a drive (e.g., hunger) which then motivates a specific behaviour (e.g., eating) to reduce that drive and satisfy the need.

• Relationship to Needs: Drives are intimately linked to needs. Needs are the deficiencies, while drives are the psychological states that compel action to address those deficiencies.
• Types of Drives:
  • Primary (Biological) Drives: Stem from physiological needs.
    • Examples: Hunger drive (from need for food), thirst drive (from need for water), sex drive (from need for reproduction), pain drive (from need for safety).
  • Secondary (Acquired) Drives: Are learned through experience and association with primary drives. They are often social or psychological in nature.
    • Examples: Drive for money (associated with satisfying primary needs), drive for success, drive for acceptance.
• Drive Reduction Theory: This theory proposes that organisms are born with certain physiological needs and that a negative state of tension is created when these needs are not satisfied. When the need is satisfied, the drive is reduced, and the organism returns to a state of homeostasis (balance).

Concept of Instinct

An instinct is an unlearned, complex, and fixed pattern of behaviour that is characteristic of a species and is automatically triggered by specific environmental stimuli.

Unlike learned behaviours, instincts are innate and genetically programmed. They are often crucial for survival and reproduction in many species.

• Characteristics of Instinctive Behaviour:
  • Unlearned: Not acquired through experience or training.
  • Species-specific: Typically observed in all members of a species.
  • Complex: More intricate than simple reflexes, involving a sequence of actions.
  • Automatic/Fixed Action Pattern: Once triggered, the entire sequence of behaviour usually runs to completion.
• Historical Context: Early psychological theories (e.g., William McDougall) proposed a wide range of human instincts to explain various behaviours. However, modern psychology views most complex human behaviours as a blend of biological predispositions and extensive learning, rather than pure instincts. While humans have reflexes, true complex instincts are less prevalent in humans compared to other animals.
• Examples:
  • Animal Kingdom: Bird migration, spider web building, salmon spawning, suckling in mammals.
  • Human Reflexes (often mistaken for instincts): Grasping reflex in infants, rooting reflex, startle (Moro) reflex. While these are innate, they are simpler than complex instinctive behaviours found in animals.

Concept of Emotion

An emotion is a complex psychological state that involves three distinct components: a subjective experience (feeling), a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response.

Emotions play a vital role in human behaviour, influencing our thoughts, decisions, and interactions. They are short-lived, intense reactions to specific events or thoughts.

• Components of Emotion:
  1. Subjective Experience (Feeling): The personal, conscious feeling of the emotion (e.g., feeling happy, sad, angry).
  2. Physiological Response: Bodily changes that occur in response to an emotion, often mediated by the autonomic nervous system (e.g., increased heart rate, sweating, changes in breathing, muscle tension).
  3. Behavioral/Expressive Response: The outward manifestation of the emotion through facial expressions, body language, voice tone, and overt actions (e.g., smiling, crying, shouting, fleeing).
• Basic Emotions: Psychologists often identify a set of basic, universal emotions that are recognized across cultures.
  • Examples: Joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust.
• Functions of Emotion:
  • Survival: Emotions like fear trigger fight-or-flight responses, aiding in survival.
  • Communication: Expressing emotions helps us communicate our internal states to others, fostering social bonds or warning of danger.
  • Decision-making: Emotions can influence our judgments and choices, sometimes acting as quick heuristics.
  • Motivation: Emotions can motivate us to achieve goals (e.g., joy motivates seeking pleasure, anger motivates confronting injustice).

Habits: Formation, Importance, and Dissolution

Habits are a significant aspect of human behaviour, shaping much of our daily lives, often unconsciously.

Habit - Its Importance

A habit is an acquired pattern of behaviour that has become nearly or completely involuntary and automatic through repetition.

Habits are learned behaviours that, with sufficient repetition, become automatic, requiring little conscious thought or effort. They are typically triggered by specific cues in our environment.

• Importance of Habits:
  • Efficiency and Energy Conservation: Habits allow us to perform routine tasks without expending much mental energy, freeing up cognitive resources for more complex decisions.
  • Reduces Decision Fatigue: By automating actions, habits reduce the number of choices we need to make daily, preventing mental exhaustion.
  • Skill Development: The repetition inherent in habit formation is crucial for mastering new skills, from playing an instrument to driving a car.
  • Predictability and Stability: Habits provide structure to our lives, creating a sense of predictability and comfort.
  • Impact on Well-being: Good habits (e.g., exercise, healthy eating) contribute positively to physical and mental health, while bad habits can be detrimental.

Formation of Habits

Habits are formed through a neurological loop often described as the 'Habit Loop'. This loop involves a trigger, a routine, and a reward.

1. Cue (Trigger): An environmental stimulus that signals the brain to initiate a behaviour. Cues can be places, times, emotions, other people, or preceding actions.
   • Example: Seeing your coffee machine in the morning.
2. Routine (Action): The behaviour itself, which can be physical, mental, or emotional.
   • Example: Brewing and drinking coffee.
3. Reward: The positive outcome or feeling that the routine provides, which reinforces the habit and makes the brain want to repeat it in the future. The reward satisfies a craving.
   • Example: The caffeine boost and enjoyable taste of coffee, feeling more alert.

Steps for Forming Good Habits:

• Start Small: Make the new habit so easy to start that you can't say no.
• Be Consistent: Perform the habit at the same time and in the same place each day to strengthen the cue-routine link.
• Identify Your Cue: Be aware of what triggers the habit.
• Make it Obvious: Place reminders or tools for your desired habit in plain sight.
• Make it Attractive: Find ways to make the habit enjoyable or associate it with something you already like.
• Make it Easy: Reduce friction; remove obstacles that prevent you from performing the habit.
• Make it Satisfying (Reward): Ensure there's an immediate positive feeling or outcome after performing the habit.
• Habit Stacking: Link a new habit to an existing one (e.g., "After I brush my teeth, I will do 10 push-ups").

Dissolution of Bad Habits

Breaking bad habits is often more challenging than forming new ones because the neural pathways for bad habits are already deeply ingrained. The key is to disrupt the existing habit loop.

Strategies for Dissolving Bad Habits:

1. Identify the Cue and Reward: Understand what triggers the bad habit and what satisfaction or relief it provides. This awareness is the first step to change.
   • Example: Stress (cue) leads to snacking (routine) for temporary comfort (reward).
2. Replace the Routine: Instead of trying to eliminate the routine directly, substitute the undesirable behaviour with a new, healthier routine that provides a similar reward or satisfies the underlying need.
   • Example: When stressed, instead of snacking, take a short walk or practice deep breathing.
3. Change Your Environment (Remove Cues): Modify your surroundings to make the bad habit less likely to be triggered. Remove temptations or make them harder to access.
   • Example: If you snack when bored, remove unhealthy snacks from your house or put them out of sight.
4. Increase Friction: Make the bad habit more difficult to perform. Add steps or barriers that discourage the routine.
   • Example: If you spend too much time on a specific app, delete it from your phone or move it to a hard-to-find folder.
5. Make it Unattractive / Unsatisfying (Change the Reward): Find ways to make the bad habit less appealing or less rewarding. This can involve self-imposed consequences or focusing on the long-term negative impacts.
   • Example: Track the negative financial impact of a spending habit.
6. Seek Support and Accountability: Share your goals with friends, family, or a mentor who can offer encouragement and hold you accountable.
7. Practice Mindfulness and Self-Awareness: Pay attention to your urges without acting on them immediately. Observe the feeling, acknowledge it, and let it pass.
8. Be Patient and Persistent: Breaking habits takes time and effort. Relapses are common; the key is to learn from them and get back on track without self-judgment.

Common Mistakes in Dissolving Bad Habits:

• Trying to quit cold turkey: Often leads to quick relapse. Gradual reduction or replacement is usually more effective.
• Underestimating the power of cues: Not addressing environmental triggers makes the habit harder to break.
• Not identifying the underlying reward: Without knowing what the habit truly provides, it's hard to find an effective replacement.
• Lack of a viable replacement: Simply stopping a habit without a new behaviour to fill the void can lead to frustration and a return to the old habit.
• Giving up after a slip-up: Viewing a single mistake as total failure can derail the entire process.