Which behavior is a learned behavior?

Science shows that we have both innate or inborn behaviors and behaviors that are learned. Some behaviors have components of both innate and learned behaviors. Innate behaviors are like instincts, responses to cues without prior learning experience. For example, human babies are born with the sucking reflex, which enables them to nurse at birth. This is an innate behavior.

Learned behaviors are developed as a result of experiences. If a child watches a parent flip a light switch and notices that the room illuminates afterward, the child may learn that flipping a light switch will brighten the room and begin to perform this behavior when they want light. Learned behaviors can be through observation as in this example.

Learned behaviors can also be experiential. From the moment that we’re born we begin having experiences that inform what we know about the environment, about others, and about the world around us. If we help a parent with chores, we may receive praise, and through that experience learn that praise is good, and continue to seek it out.

Often, mental health professionals and research psychologists are concerned with how we learn and what we’ve learned through experience and observation because these can clearly influence our later attitudes and behaviors in life. The memory of past experience can influence how a new situation is experienced or viewed.

For example, in the popular theory of attachment, if we cry for or ask for help as children and don’t receive it, our attachment style can be impacted. That attachment we have with our caregivers influences how we explore the world and view relationships throughout life. Our style of attachment is also influenced by later relationship experiences throughout adulthood.

People are constantly having experiences and adding to the information they already have, which informs what they know about things and influences behavior. Based on what is already known, new information and experiences may be assimilated into new learning or rejected as incompatible with existing information.

Learned behaviors are varied. We learn how to respond to conflicts, how to view and behave in relationships, how to drive, how to cook, and much more. We may learn to cook, but we are born with the instinct to swallow. Learned and innate behaviors build on one another and are necessary to our survival and growth.