Nature v Nurture

• The nature-nurture debate = Concerned with the extent to which aspects of behavior are a product of inherited or acquired characteristics.
• Heredity: The genetic transmission of both mental and physical characteristics from one generation to another.
• Environment: Any influence on human behavior that is non-genetic. This may range from parental influences in the womb through to cultural and historical influences at a societal level. It includes biological influences e.g. the food you eat may affect your mental development and physical growth.
• Interactionist approach: A way to explain the development of behavior in terms of a range of factors, including both biological and psychological ones. Most importantly such factors don't simply add together but combine in a way that cant be predicted by each one separately i.e. they interact.
• • John Bowlby (1958): Claimed a baby's attachment type is based on warmth and continuity of love by the parents (Environmental factor).
  • Jerome Kagan (1984): Proposed a baby's innate personality affects the attachment type (Genetic factor).
  • Interactionists would say that these factors work together, the child's personality affects how they are treated affecting their attachment type.
• Diathesis-stress model: Suggests behavior is caused by biological or environmental vulnerability which is only expressed when coupled with a biological or environmental 'trigger'. For example, a person may have the genetic vulnerability for OCD but may have to go through a psychological trigger such as a traumatic experience for the disorder to actually appear.
• Epigenetics:

  • Refers to a change in our genetic activity without changing the genes themselves.
  • This process happens throughout life and is caused by interaction with our environment.
  • For example, smoking leave 'marks' on out DNA causing genes to switch on or off. This is why it has such long term affects, they have changed the way your genes are being expressed.
  • This may then influence your children's genetic codes.
• Nature: Refers to inherited influences, everything is based on biological factors including personality and intelligence.
• Nurture: Refers to influence of experience and your environment. Some believe that the mink is a blank state that is shaped by the environment. Lerner (1986) identified different levels of the environment such as prenatal factors or the social environment a child grows up in.
• Measuring nature and nurture:

  • The degree to which two people are similar on a particular trait is represented by a correlation coefficient and is called concordance.
  • .01 means that genes contribute almost nothing to differences 1.0 means genes are the only reason for the differences
• Nature-nurture Evaluation (Strength)

  • The use of adoption studies are able to separate the competing influences.
  • If adopted children are more like their adoptive parents then nurture wins but if they are more like their biological parents then nature wins.
  • They are very useful in understanding which one has more influence.
• Nature-nurture Evaluation (limitation)

  • Nature and nurture can not simply be isolated like in adoption studies.
  • People may create their own nurture by selecting an environment that suits their nature.
  • This suggest they are both connected and can't be studied separately.
• Nature-Nurture Evaluation (strength)

  • There is support for epigenetics.
  • IN the war, Nazis blocked food from the Dutch people and many died of starvation, the women who went on to have babies during this time had low birth weight babies.
  • These babies were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia.
  • This supports the view that life experiences of previous generations can leave epigenetic markers that influence health of their offspring.
• Nature-nurture Evaluation (Strength)

  • It has real-world application
  • OCD is highly inheritable, this means that people with a higher likelihood of getting it will be able to seek advice before they develop it.
  • This shows how important the debate is, and how we need to understand the interaction between nature and nurture.