Competing Instincts

Posts

Willpower

It’s been a while since the original posts last year but I’m back to it now with many more related topics I’d like to write about – but all in good time. For me it’s often an hour or so between home and work in the car and I usually listen to audiobooks to both entertain and sometimes educate. At the moment I’m listening to The Willpower Instinct as we all like to be more productive to, amongst various goals, improve our social status (as outlined in earlier posts). I highly recommend this book as it outlines many ways to enhance your quality of life by overcoming counterproductive habits of thinking as discovered through scientific studies. If I write many more posts in the coming months you can rightly suspect it’s working for me! Other productivity related audiobooks I’ve listened to recently and recommend include Your Brain at Work and Mastery .

Are left-wing people (liberals) more compassionate than right-wing people (conservatives)?

Quite a few differences in personality, typical behaviour and beliefs have been identified between people with left-wing and those with right-wing political views. Many have been highlighted in the recent book The Republican Brain which, despite the title and bias of the author, highlights strengths and weaknesses of those from both ends of the political spectrum and also suggests our society needs people from both ends of the political spectrum (or at least people with the personality traits that are typical from each end). One difference that was not mentioned but which I'd like to propose is that left-leaning people have a stronger innate sense of compassion than right-leaning people. This could be viewed as an attack on conservatives but I’m more of the view that no amount of susceptibility to feeling compassion is right or wrong – people simply differ. Left-leaning people will view right-leaning people as lacking in compassion at times while those of the right often view th

The drive or instinct to increase the respect other people have for us

I would firstly like to expand on how I believe instincts work to influence our behaviour. Initially, we feel an urge or drive to behave or think in a certain way. For example, to say something we think is funny that might make another person laugh. If successful, we then feel good, at least partly because that person’s respect for us might have improved slightly. Thus, satisfying the instinct provides the reward of feeling good or at least feeling that we did something good (for us). My belief at the moment is that this need to increase respect is one of the strongest in most people. It competes with other instincts at all times however and, while not always prevailing, often seems to win. For example, this might explain why soldiers perform acts of bravery despite great risk to their life (and thus going against their survival instinct). I suspect it is to increase the respect they receive from not only their fellow soldiers but also everyone else, including their enemies. Another

How do we explain human behaviour?

Why do we do what we do from moment to moment and can it be explained? For most of my life I have tried to understand why people behave the way they do and why different people behave differently given the same apparent options. I suspect all people, at least subconsciously, try to understand human behaviour to better get along in life, but it has perhaps been more explicit in my thinking for a long time. I’d like to record here and in subsequent posts my thoughts on this and anything related to help focus the development of my ideas. I also hope that other people will read these ideas over time and potentially contribute their own thoughts by way of comment. To start I’d like to propose the idea (hypothesis) that underlying the motivation for all our behaviour are many simple instincts or drives (I will use a broad definition for the word 'instinct' that includes 'drives'). If, as I will assume, this is the case then what are they and can distinct instincts be i