nature vs nurture

• nature: biological innate factors govern behaviour

  • inheritance
  • genes
  • DNA
  • transmission from parent to children
• nurture: born as a 'blank slate' - tabula rosa. it is something you pick up during your childhood as a process of environmental factors

  • parenting
  • observation - operant and classical conditioning
• heritability coefficient: a scale that is used to measure contribution from each side - ranges from 0-1 which indicates the extent to which characteristics have a gender basis

  • value of 1 means trait is 100% genetically determined, 0.5 means equally important and contributing
• interactionalists approach: development of the nature/nurture debate - focuses on explaining the behaviour due to an interaction between nature and nurture

  • niche-picking
  • epigenetics
  • diathesis
• evaluation:

  strengths:

  • ecological validity, diagnosis and medical influence to help determine cause of illness - drug therapy for nature and talking therapy for nurture
  • nurture; bandura bobo doll study, helps to show importance of observation and imitation. nature; same gender imitation
  • twin studies; higher concordance rates in MZ than DZ in OCD
• evaluation:

  weakness:

  • niche-picking shows it is more beneficial to study interaction between nature and nurture rather than studying them together - interactionist
  • deterministic, environmental and biological - negative implication on society
  • reductionist, focus on basic units and fail to consider the complexity of human behaviour