Definition of "instinctive" []

• Of, relating to, or prompted by instinct. (adjective)
• Arising from impulse; spontaneous and unthinking: an instinctive mistrust of bureaucrats. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The actions of man which have been loosely described as instinctive belong for the most part to those classes of actions which we have already shown to be in no proper sense of the word instinctive, that is, those concerned in the appetites and in the functions of organic life."
• "To Jung must be given the credit of having recognized and demonstrated the existence in the human being of the natural tendency towards the high, of a genuine need, which he called instinctive, for spiritual satisfaction."
• ""The Kolbe," as it is casually known, measures what she refers to as an instinctive modus operandi, or conative skills, the traits each of us is born with."