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Tendency of an animal to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour

Instinctive drift, alternately known as instinctual drift, is the tendency of an animal to revert to unconscious and automatic behaviour that interferes with learned behaviour from operant conditioning. Instinctive drift was coined by Keller and Marian Breland, former students of B. F. Skinner at the University of Minnesota, describing the phenomenon as "a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory." Instinctive drift is a phenomenon where such conditioning erodes and an animal reverts to its natural behaviour.

B. F. Skinner was an American behaviourist inspired by John Watson's philosophy of behaviorism. Skinner was captivated with systematically controlling behaviour to result in desirable or beneficial outcomes. This passion led Skinner to become the father of operant conditioning. The mere existence of the instinctive drift phenomenon challenged Skinner's initial beliefs on operant conditioning and reinforcement. Through these practices, animals shape their behaviour and are motivated to perform said learned behaviour to optimally benefit from rewards or to avoid punishment. Through operant conditioning, the presence of instinctive drift was discovered.

The term instinctive drift was coined by married couple Keller and Marian Breland Bailey, former psychology graduate students of B. F. Skinner at the University of Minnesota. Keller and Marian were recruited to work with B. F. Skinner on a project to train pigeons to pilot bombs towards targets to aid with World War II efforts. Over time, the pigs stopped depositing the coins and instead began to drop it in the dirt, push it down with their noses, drag it back out, and fling it into the air. A common question asked today by many experts in various fields is if behaviour is due to life experiences or if it is predisposed in DNA. Instinctive drift centers around the nature of behaviour more so than learning being the sole cause of a behaviour. Species are obviously capable of learning behaviours, this is not denied in instinctive drift. Evolution is commonly classified as change occurring over a period of time. Evolution of traits and behaviours occur over time and it is by means of evolution and natural selection that adaptive traits and behaviours are passed on to the next generation and maladaptive traits are weaned out. It is the adaptive traits of species over time that is exhibited in instinctive drift and that species revert to that interferes with operant conditioning. Much knowledge on the topic of evolution and natural selection can be credited to Charles Darwin. Darwin developed and proposed the theory of evolution and it was through this knowledge that other subjects could be better understood, such as instinctive drift.