Learned vs. Unlearned

[Ready for Fall 2026]

Modified: 2026-07-29 9:53 PM CDST

• The study of learning has been one of the central foci of psychology since the turn of the twentieth century.
  • During the heyday of behaviorism, learning was psychology in America.
  • Although that emphasis has subsided somewhat today, a complete understanding of modern psychology requires us to know the research on learning.
  • Learned behaviors can be distinguished from unlearned behaviors only if we observe the development of those behaviors. They cannot be differentiated on a simple to complex dimension.
• Unlearned behaviors are "built-in" in some sense.
  • Either they unfold via the process of maturation, or they manifest themselves at some stage in life in all or nearly all members of the same species.
  • In other words, unlearned behaviors are more consistent in form and timing of development than learned behaviors.
  • Learned behaviors must be acquired.
  • Learned behaviors will exhibit a wider variability than unlearned, and will not be as universally distributed as unlearned behaviors.
  • Some examples of each (below) will help to clarify these distinctions.
• Example: Unlearned
  • The three-spined stickleback is a small, freshwater, European fish. It lives in small streams.
    • Males of this species build nests during the mating season and then defend the cylinder of water above the nest from other males.
    • Males develop red bellies during mating season, and that is the primary cue that other males use to distinguish males from females.
    • In fact, Tinbergen showed that even crude fish models with red bellies were attacked by resident males, but accurate models without red bellies were not.
    • Females do not develop red bellies.
    • When a female enters a male's territory, he engages in the "zig-zag" dance.
    • If a female is receptive, she will follow the male to his nest, lay her eggs inside, and leave.
    • The male will then fertilize the eggs, fan water through the nest with his tail to prevent rotting, and continue to defend the nest.
    • The point of this long-winded example is that ALL normal male sticklebacks will engage in this kind of behavior WITHOUT having to learn it.
    • (Papa stickleback does not have to explain to Junior stickleback about the birds and the bees.....) The above is an example of a complex unlearned situation.
• Example: Unlearned and Learned
  • The digger wasp demonstrates a situation in which there are both unlearned and learned components.
    • These digger wasps live near the coast in the Netherlands.
    • They hunt for caterpillars, stun them, lay eggs in them, and bury them in small burrows.
    • All of those behaviors mentioned above are unlearned, meaning that all normal digger wasps will engage in such behavior without having to learn it.
    • By the way, the caterpillars are put into a state or torpor or immobility by the sting. The young wasps hatch and then eat their way out of the live but immobile caterpillar.
    • The learned part of this example comes in navigating from the area in which the caterpillars are found to the various burrows each wasp maintains.
      • Each burrow is visited several times before it is finally sealed, and each wasp maintains several burrows.
      • The Baerends, Tinbergen's colleagues, were able to demonstrate that the wasps were navigating by learned cues.
        • They did so by moving the landmarks near burrows.
        • When the wasps returned, they landed where the burrow should have been.
        • Eventually, however, they learned the new location.
        • This example gives us an idea about a function of learning, namely, to help animals deal with environments that change.
        • The beach will change daily, but caterpillars have been the same for millions of years.
        • More recent research showed that plants being attacked by caterpillars emitted plant hormones that the wasps could detect, thus making their search easier.
• Example: Learned (nearly entirely)
  • The final example involves human and monkey parenting. An interesting question is, "How much of human parenting is learned?"
    • Unfortunately, we cannot run the experiment to answer that question for ethical reasons. (e.g.,. Take a number of children, raise them without parents....)
  • Harlow, however, was able to run just such an experiment with rhesus monkeys.
    • Harlow separated some mothers and their offspring shortly after birth.
    • Some monkey infants were reared in total isolation, others with "surrogate mothers," others with other monkey infants, and still others were not separated from their mothers.
    • The infants raised in total isolation were completely abnormal.
    • The infants reared with surrogate mothers fared somewhat better, and they developed an attachment to the soft, warm surrogate mother.
      • Later in life, the males reared in this condition could not become fathers because they were unable to copulate with females.
      • Females in this group did copulate successfully, but made horrible mothers.
    • Both males and females in the group that was reared with other monkeys could copulate and made adequate, if somewhat below average, parents.
    • In rhesus monkeys, then, parenting skills are learned.
  • Parenting skills are learned in humans as well.
    • Many of us have had experience with infants prior to giving birth to our own.
      • However, the experiences surrounding the birth and raising of the first child are the major time of learning for most parents.
      • Subsequent children are treated very differently because of those experiences. (Parents learned from having their first child.)
    • Interestingly, our society requires no demonstration of capacity to parent. But, society requires demonstration of capacity to drive an automobile.
      • Lykken and others have argued that some formal training in parenting should be required.
      • Informal avenues for training exist, such as LaMaze training and intervention programs for some parents.
      • The research on child abuse is instructive here.
      • Child abusers are much more likely to have been abused children themselves, giving rise to a cyclical hypothesis of child abuse.
      • Intervention programs aim to break that cycle.
  • So, understanding learning provides insight into much of human behavior because so much of human behavior is learned.