What are instincts? And how much of our behavior do you believe is instinctual versus something else? I'm not sure what else there is. You could argue with really is it any, it's kind of what I've been hinting at. Steve Pink wrote a wonderful book called Language Instinct where he talks about that processYou were talking about before, baby, and her dog is instinctual. It's not the product of learning our culture. It just comes naturally to us.
Do psychologists know anything? Psychologist Paul Bloom says yes--but not the things that you might think. Bloom discusses his book Psych with EconTalk's Russ Roberts and what the field of psychology can teach us about human intelligence, consciousness, and unhelpful instincts. They also discuss just how far psychology is from a true understanding of the human mind, and why, according to Bloom, that might not be such a bad thing.