ABSTRACT
Old-fashioned psychology had a ready explanation for behaviors by conveniently calling them instincts. Thus, there were religious instincts, antisocial instincts, instinctive attitudes, and so forth. In the twentieth century, such pseudoscientific explanations have been gradually discarded because psychologists generally have recognized the importance of the life history or reactional biography of the individual. This chapter calls attention to the manner in which behavior does or does not become acquired, depending upon the circumstances surrounding the particular organism, and also the role of maturation in understanding how organisms act as they do.
