Intuitively it feels different but I am not able to explain it
In: Biology
Instinct is your natural innate feeling/gumption to doing something. It’s more about the innate type of response that we would have under certain conditions. It doesn’t necessarily have to be be in response to something.
EX:
“When in the wild, Billy’s instinct is to find wild mushrooms to eat”.
Reflex seems to be a more of a SUDDEN RESPONSE to some action/stimulus. You could say a reflex could be an instinctual (as often you don’t exactly think when you reflexively act): however reflex focuses more on the action of you doing something suddenly rather than explaining why you did it (like instinct usually does) due to some innate gumption.
EX
“When Billy dropped his wild mushrooms, he reflexively tried snatching them from the air. His instinct seemed to focus on his food rather than potentially falling while catching his mushrooms”
Hope this helped.
Reflex is about the speed at which you react, the speed at with your senses send signal to your brain, your brain to interpret it and make a decision and act. Example, someone shoot a ball at your face, if you have bad reflex you gonna get hit in the face, if you have good reflex you gonna get out of the way.
Instinct is about how your brain learn to interpret his surrendering automatically, based on your life experience and some of it is probably genetic. For example, it’s dark and you are alone in an alley, your brain recognise this situation as dangerous, you have limited view and all the movies you saw say that you gonna get attack in this situation, so your instinct kick in you are more alert, even if there is no evidence that you are indeed in danger, you still feel in danger.
Id say instinct is your natural response to something.
Reflex is your ability to respond, not necessarily the action.
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