1402 



HORMONAL REGULATION OF BEHAVIOR 



from other creatures in a myriad of ways. 

 The theologians of our time, no less than the 

 Greek philosophers of the fourth century 

 B.C. have held to a view that infrahuman 

 creatures function instinctively, reserving 

 intellect, reasoning, and will power for Man 

 alone. But as Beach (1955) has written: 

 "prescientific concepts of instinct were not 

 deduced from the facts of nature ; they were 

 necessitated by the demands of philosophic 

 systems based on supernatural conceptions 

 of nature." 



It would be foolish to quibble here about 

 the place of Man in Nature; it is assumed, a 

 priori, the Man belongs in the system of bio- 

 logic continuities. It is also assumed that a 

 student of behavior, even as a student of 

 biochemistry or anatomy, can expect to ob- 

 serve differences both between species and 

 within a species. These differences do not 

 in themselves contradict the assumption of a 

 system of continuities. 



The concept of instinct, quite apart from 

 having served to set the other animals apart 

 from man, has been used also as a means of 

 explaining and understanding behavioral 

 phenomena which emerged so spontaneously 

 and with such predictability that they 

 seemed to have arisen preformed from some 

 inner source. At the same time the terms 

 innate, constitutional, and genetically de- 

 termined attained explanatory significance 

 in some quarters. Although the instinctive 

 explanation of behavior still enjoys cur- 

 rency, the concept has not gone unchal- 

 lenged (Beach and Jaynes, 1954, 1955). Ex- 

 perimental and clinical psychology embrace 

 a theory of instincts ; psychoanalytic theory 

 of personality relies heavily on instinctive 

 explanations and commonly regards psycho- 

 logic disorder as due to some disorganiza- 

 tion of instinctual life. There is, however, an 

 accumulating body of evidence which 

 strongly suggests that the usual instinctual 

 explanation of behavior is a gross over- 

 simplification; as an adequate foundation 

 for a science of behavior the traditional 

 form of the concept of instinct has proven 

 less than adequate. 



One factor in this inadequacy is the re- 

 grettable alliance of the term innate wuth 

 the concept of instinct. Innate and instinc- 

 tive have come to be equated in common 

 usage in a way that excludes the influence of 



experience and learning. The more rigorous 

 scientific viewpoint holds that a distinction 

 between learned and unlearned behavior is 

 not only impossible to dichotomize in any 

 meaningful way but is, in any case, not a 

 very useful distinction. For as Beach (1955) 

 has pointed out: "the final form of any re- 

 sponse is affected by a multiplicity of vari- 

 ables only two of which are genetical and 

 experiential factors." Thus in considering 

 any behavior pattern one is obliged to take 

 cognizance of the interplay between two 

 broad categories of variables: (1) those 

 variables which are intrinsic to the organ- 

 ism, and (2) those variables which are ex- 

 trinsic. Much of the present volume deals 

 in detail with the intrinsic variables which 

 one must consider in studying sexual behav- 

 ior. In his chapter on hormones. Young 

 takes into account one of these intrinsic 

 variables, gonadal hormones, and the in- 

 fluence on reproductive behavior in infra- 

 human species. Cultural influence is an im- 

 portant extrinsic variable dealt with in the 

 chapter by Mead. 



A. ANIMAL STUDIES AND HUMAN 

 SEX BEHAVIOR 



Social behavior in man, including sexual 

 behavior, is undeniably complex and fre- 

 quently baffling. It is not a new observation 

 that many of the social attitudes and be- 

 havior patterns in man are acquired through 

 one or another process of learning during an 

 individual's lifetime. It is relatively recent, 

 however, that scientifically sound evidence 

 has been collected which spotlights the ear- 

 liest months and years of life as a highly 

 critical learning period of inexorable im- 

 portance to later psychologic functioning. 

 As yet the bulk of the experimental evidence 

 for this has come from animal experimenta- 

 tion; experimentation in humans has of 

 necessity been limited to chance occurrences 

 and the "experiments of Nature." 



In the area of social perception and social 

 responses some of the most important work 

 in recent years has been done by the Euro- 

 pean zoologists who have elected to be called 

 ethologists. These experimentalists, notably 

 Lorenz and Tinbergen, have devoted much 

 attention to the observation that, in many 

 animal species, virtually all social behavior 

 is based on, or is an elaboration of, spe- 



