From the author: about how fundamental science helps us, ordinary people. The psyche is amazing and diverse! Reading literature, I am amazed at how many interesting features are hidden behind some banal little things in life. Well, it would seem that we have all heard since childhood the story of how an insidious cuckoo throws its children into other people’s nests. Has anyone ever wondered why birds feed someone else's chick? (I didn’t) But Lorenz, apparently, thought about it (about the cuckoo will be below). And explained the behavior of animals. Now if only I could explain human behavior)))) K. Lorenz, describing the instincts of animals, highlights various interesting features, I especially liked two of them. About superoptimal stimuli: the male marigold butterfly more readily pursues objects that are colored noticeably darker than the natural color of the female and are 3 - 4 times larger than her size. He pursues this artificial “giant”, even if there is a living miniature female nearby! the seagull prefers to “hatch” a model of an egg 10 times larger than its own egg, leaving the latter without attention. Superstimuli often serve animals in natural conditions, for example: huge “eyes” on the wings of some butterflies, scaring off feathered predators, a large open beak of a cuckoo, which makes the songbird feed it more readily than its own chicks (that's it!). That is, evolution demonstrates some greed. The more potentially successful an object (male, cub) is, the higher the likelihood of the animal concentrating on this object. Success is often measured by its size. For laughs, a parallel can be drawn with how men fall in love with the makeup of a femme fatale, mistaking it for real beauty. Well, or how women focus on the size of a car, thinking that it reflects the size of a person. Attention! further there will be wonderful pictures! About internal stimulation, leading to an expansion of the list of objects perceived as stimuli for the implementation of instinct (the sensitivity threshold decreases). An interesting experiment studied the effect of displaying in pigeons. The feathered males were isolated from the females for different periods of time. The longer the experimenter “tormented” the birds, the more objects initiated the mating of the pigeons. According to the degree of frustration of the need: females exclusively of their own species; after a couple of days - females of a different species (the pigeon had not been interested in this before), after a week - just a stuffed female, then - a crumpled piece of fabric. After a few weeks, the pigeon was mating, turning to an empty corner. Analogies with a person are unnecessary, but useful. Leaving aside the sexual need, you can think that this is why “strange” actions of children can arise from the same mechanism. If you have not praised your child for a long time (the need for success, for acceptance is frustrated), then: - first he will bring a drawing, for which he was praised before - then he will bring a drawing that he has not drawn before (if he continues to not be praised) - he will bring a drawing with new, wild content - he will rush in with a drawing in a book with lipstick - he will draw a broken vase on the TV with toothpaste... from life. I couldn’t resist , there will be two pictures: Summarizing this piece of theoretical entertaining facts. There is a lot in the psyche, especially in its animal forms, that gives reason to think about the human psyche. I didn’t want to hint at the edge of the line that a person is constrained by instincts, on the contrary! The evolution of the psyche has allowed us to perform actions not provided for by innate scripts. Lorenz describes how his favorite bird, which showed sympathy and devotion to the scientist, attacked him out of instinct when he performed actions reminiscent of “attacking a chick.” I think many readers who keep cats know firsthand about such instinctive impulses of their pets. “But cats are just cats,” the song sang. People are the next stage in the development of the psyche from a human point of view. We'll talk about this stage next time) Parallels with people are comic, any coincidences are accidental. PS: )))))