What is instinctive drift or the Breland Effect?

• A. The learned behavior drifts toward the instinctive behavior. Wherever an animal has a strong instinctive behavior, the organism will drift toward the instinctive behavior to the detriment of the conditioned behavior.
• B. It occurs when animals forget trained tasks due to boredom.
• C. It occurs when dogs only respond to human cues.
• D. It describes the suppression of instinct by training.

Answer: (A)

Instinctive drift is the tendency for learned, conditioned behaviors to shift toward an animal’s natural, instinctive actions. The Breland Effect shows that, even with reinforcement, an animal’s innate responses can reappear and take over the trained behavior, especially when the instinct is strong or the task conflicts with it. This explains why trained tasks can degrade or look more like natural behaviors over time. It’s not about forgetting due to boredom, nor about responding only to human cues, nor about simply suppressing instinct by training—the animal’s biology reasserts itself and the behavior drifts toward what comes most naturally.