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.