Is there a biological process in which they are somehow handed down like genetic factors, or are there other elements in play besides modeling, which clearly doesn’t happen all the time?
In: 1
Millions of years of evolution.
If you go ziplining, your brain knows you’re hooked into a harness, and (most likely) no harm is going to come to you, but when you try to take that first step off the platform into midair with nothing but the earth hundreds of feet below you, your primordial instincts — your “lizard brain” — the part of you that has been with you since caveman days — tells you not to do it, because it doesn’t look or feel safe, even though it is.
That’s instinct — self-preservation instinct to be precise. There are many types of instincts that Man has developed over the millenia; this is just one example.
Typically, and I have seen widely varying definitions, instinct is things that you are born with, i.e. genetic factors. Genetics influences behavior and that behavior can be reinforced by natural (or deliberate) selection.
The method is likely something like this.
Imagine that you were running an experiment. You had a bunch of experimental animals in a room. You also had a bright yellow wall of the room that was electrified enough to kill any animal that touched it.
Then, every time the animals had young, you took the young and separated them from the parent so the parent could not teach them about the yellow wall. You then raised them to adulthood and put them in a similar room and repeated the experiments.
If nothing in genetics can make them like or avoid yellow walls, then nothing happens. However, if some of them have even a small tendency to avoid the yellow wall for some reason that is genetic, then you will kill off those who don’t have that tendency. Since variation is inevitable, eventually you will have some who avoid yellow more and some who avoid yellow less. Over time, the general population will hate yellow.
The same thing happens, for example, with brightly colored small creatures like insects and frogs. They tend to be poisonous, and so predators who eat them will die. Those who have genetics that makes them less likely to eat the poisonous creatures will live to have young. Over time, they will instinctively avoid the brightly colored creatures.
In most cases, instinct is the part that is built-in and is genetic, while other behaviors are learned and layered over the top.
If you were actually 5, I’d say:
If you faced life’s dangers and it doesn’t work, you don’t survive
If you face the dangers and it works, you survive
Like how being bad means trouble, and being good means reward
Not surviving means you die and won’t grow up to have babies
Surviving means you would likely grow up and have your own babies
They would be a lot like you, and do more of what makes them survive
So the way people do things after a while would be the things that worked
Like learning to be good instead of bad to get more reward and less trouble
Being afraid of scary things that can hurt you
Or doing the right things to be good and get rewards
They are automatic, they happen on their own no matter what you want
Like how falling down hurts, you can’t make pain not happen
Or how laughing feels good. It happens on its own, automatically
So
Instinct is your body’s way of knowing on its own how to do what works
So you can survive and go on and maybe have babies of your own
Latest Answers