adjective
definition
Related to or prompted by instinct.
definition
Driven by impulse, spontaneous and without thinking.
Examples of instinctive in a Sentence
It was instinctive after so many years.
One hand shot out in an instinctive search for anything to stop her fall.
The nature of instinctive imitation needs working out iii further detail.
It was his size – combined with a prey's instinctive sixth sense warning it of a predator – that caused people to move away from him.
Their petting grew more frenzied, more instinctive, and far from the languid, sensuous control he had intended to use with her.
He treated the Levellers with some severity and showed his instinctive dislike to revolutionary proposals.
Prince Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.
Indeed it may be said that only on the occasion of their initial performance are they purely instinctive; all subsequent performance being in some degree modified by the experience afforded by previous behaviour of like nature and the results it affords.
Here the instinctive factor probably predominates over that which is experiential.
Furthermore, the observations on American wasps render it probable that the earlier accounts of the instinctive behaviour of such wasps are exaggerated.
Granted that instinctive modes of behaviour are hereditary and definite within the limits of congenital variation, the question of their manner of genesis is narrowed to a clear issue.
The characteristic feature of the imitative act, at the instinctive level, is that the presentation to sight or hearing calls forth a mode of behaviour of like nature to, or producing like results to, that which affords the stimulus.
But behind these was the practice of the greater churches; and behind that again was not only the lead of a few distinguished individuals, but the instinctive judgment of the main body of the faithful.
She made baby sounds as she nursed – sounds that aroused an instinctive reaction.
The Church as a whole took but little interest in apologetics and polemics, nay, had at times even an instinctive feeling that in these controversies that which she held holy might easily suffer loss.
Y of finding and applying a criterion of the presence or absence of consciousness, it is none the less desirable, in the interests of psychology, to state that truly instinctive acts (as defined) are accompanied by consciousness.
By using the term instinctive in both its strict and its wider significance, Wasmann includes under it the whole range of animal behaviour.
Such response is instinctive.
This feeling had been instinctive, and it found expression in several ways, each one of them partial, when taken alone, but obtaining their full effect in combination.
Convinced from the first of his disinterestedness and sincerity, and impressed by his penetrating shrewdness and his instinctive faculty of always seizing the main point and sticking to it, his hearers soon felt an absolute confidence in the deputy from Zala county.
Not unreasonably; for if half his patriotism sprang from an instinctive hatred of oppression, the other half was disappointed egotism.
With the instinctive feeling that darkness adds a horror to death, they preferred to use them for light.
This, at any rate, is Hobbes's cardinal doctrine in moral psychology, that each man's appetites or desires are naturally directed either to the preservation of his life, or to that heightening of it which he feels as pleasure.2 Hobbes does not distinguish instinctive from deliberate pleasureseeking; and he confidently resolves the most apparently unselfish emotions into phases of self-regard.
Max Muller says (speaking of the Greeks), " their poets had an instinctive aversion to everything excessive or monstrous, yet they would relate of their gods what would make the most savage of Red Indians creep and shudder " - stories, that is, of the cannibalism of Demeter, of the mutilation of Uranus, the cannibalism of Cronus, who swallowed his own children, and the like.
Some people seem to take an instinctive dislike to having attributes in an XML document whose content is 20 lines long.
Tony Blair's instinctive grasp of these class interests underlies his zealous advocacy of US imperialism.
Our emotions are not instinctive - we have to learn to feel.
This toy is so instinctive and perfect for the age group.
This experiment was partially successful, but the instinctive dislike of bees to anything of a fibrous nature caused them completely to spoil their work of comb-building in the endeavour to tear or gnaw away the linen threads whenever they got in touch with them.
He had no difficulties in respect of the teaching and practice of his church, being in truth an ardent Ultramontane in doctrine, as was all but inevitable in his time and circumstances, and his great merit was the instinctive tact which showed him that the system of monasticism could never be the leaven of secular life, but that something more homely, simple, and everyday in character was needed for the new time.
She made baby sounds as she nursed – sounds that aroused an instinctive reaction.
Yet the modest behavior was instinctive - if not an irresistible urge.
It was his size – combined with a prey's instinctive sixth sense warning it of a predator – that caused people to move away from him.
What they have in common is an instinctive sympathy for the characters.
Vibes once told me that how he read people was purely instinctive.
The African people have an almost instinctive flair for music.
But the panic and the insecurity are merely instinctive and transient.
Over the years this has become almost instinctive, knowing how film will respond to its various guises.
It seems instinctive to make things simple rather than complicated.
The worrying thing, he suggests, is that the instinctive sense of personal liberty has been lost in the British people.
The Cyclops is totally mindless and instinctive, the lowest depths of mental deficiency capable of post-natal existence.
I suspect that some people who read his resignation statement and some of you reading this blog have an instinctive mistrust of Labor Students.
By bestowing two successive nicknames - first ' Tarzan ' and then ' Hezza ' - the public displayed its instinctive rapport with him.
Blender Those more familiar with the interface used by Blender, the popular open-source 3D modeling package may be interested in instinctive Blender.
When allure is in motion, it reveals an instinctive body language and becomes naturally seductive.
The pixel bestiary commences an instinctive dance to the throb and pulse of the quivering heap as a state of wild transfiguration is achieved.
But this, like many other vestiges of our past, is an instinctive reaction.
In their water play, they gain an instinctive understanding of the freedom and flow that being nearly weightless offers.
This sentiment of justice is at first confused, uncertain and almost instinctive - is, as it were, a divine and religious inspiration instilled by Heaven into the primitive tribes of the earth.
To suppose that all mythical stories are fables invented by the philosophers is to write history backwards avid confound the instinctive, impersonal, poetic wisdom of the earliest times with the civilized, rational and abstract occult wisdom of our own day.