Abstract
WHAT IS RIGID BEHAVIOR?
For well over a century, biologists and psychologists have been arguing about the origins of behavior. Is behavior fixed and innate? Is it only determined by the genetic composition of the individual or is it flexible and shaped by the individual's environment? This heated argument, also known as the “nature versus nurture” debate, is yet unsettled (Ridley 2003), although the common consensus (at least among biologists, Bolhuis 2013) is that the dichotomy between innate and learned behaviors is false and that the development of behavior is a complex process involving continual interactions between the characteristics of an individual and its environment (Lehrman 1953).
The relevant aspect of this debate for our purposes is that some behaviors are mostly fixed, and do not change, regardless of the environment the individual is in, compared to other behaviors that are much more plastic. Furthermore, even plastic behaviors are constrained within limits, and these limits may vary depending on the behavior and the environment. We term the display of fixed behaviors in the face of a changing environment as “behavioral rigidity.” There are three main causes for behavioral rigidity: fixed or “instinctive” behaviors for which the individual displays no learning or that cannot be changed due to physical or physiological constraints, imprinted behaviors that are plastic only during the early period of an organism's life and afterwards become fixed, and behaviors that are flexible, but this flexibility is too slow to keep up with environmental change.
For well over a century, biologists and psychologists have been arguing about the origins of behavior. Is behavior fixed and innate? Is it only determined by the genetic composition of the individual or is it flexible and shaped by the individual's environment? This heated argument, also known as the “nature versus nurture” debate, is yet unsettled (Ridley 2003), although the common consensus (at least among biologists, Bolhuis 2013) is that the dichotomy between innate and learned behaviors is false and that the development of behavior is a complex process involving continual interactions between the characteristics of an individual and its environment (Lehrman 1953).
The relevant aspect of this debate for our purposes is that some behaviors are mostly fixed, and do not change, regardless of the environment the individual is in, compared to other behaviors that are much more plastic. Furthermore, even plastic behaviors are constrained within limits, and these limits may vary depending on the behavior and the environment. We term the display of fixed behaviors in the face of a changing environment as “behavioral rigidity.” There are three main causes for behavioral rigidity: fixed or “instinctive” behaviors for which the individual displays no learning or that cannot be changed due to physical or physiological constraints, imprinted behaviors that are plastic only during the early period of an organism's life and afterwards become fixed, and behaviors that are flexible, but this flexibility is too slow to keep up with environmental change.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Conservation Behavior |
| Subtitle of host publication | Applying Behavioral Ecology to Wildlife Conservation and Management |
| Editors | Oded Berger-Tal, DavidEditors Saltz |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Pages | 95–120 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781139627078 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2016 |
Publication series
| Name | Conservation Biology |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |