Nature-Nurture

• Nativism

  The belief that behaviour and cognition are innate
• Empiricism

  The belief that behaviour and cognition result from experience and learning - we are born 'tabula rasa' (blank slate)
• Relative contribution

  The modern nature-nurture debate focuses on how much each influences us, not which one influences us
• Heritable

  A behaviour that can be biologically 'passed down' from parent to offspring
• Interactionism

  Nature and nurture interact with and shape each other, so we cannot separate their influence
• The nature debate began with nativists like Descartes, believing human characteristics are innate (heredity)
• Heredity is assessed using the heritability coefficient, it determines how genetically determine a behaviour or characteristic is

  A number measure between 0 and 1, eg IQ=0.5
• Examples of nature - Genetic OCD/SCZ, Evolutionary attachment, Genetic criminality/atavistic form, innate cognition, biopsychology
• The nurture debate began with empiricists like Locke, believing the mind is a blank slate at brith and behaviour is the result of experience, the environment and learning
• Nurture - Levels of the environment (Lerner 1986)

  • Prenatal conditions
  • Social conditions (post-natal)
  • Cultural (Post-natal)
• Examples of Nurture - learning theory of attachment, two-process model of phobias, psychological explanations for SCZ, Differential association theory
• Interactionism is the view that factors (nature and nurture) are so interlinked that it does not make sense to separate them, and instead we should appreciate the way in which they interact and shape each other

  Focuses on the relative contributions of both

  Example - Diathesis Stress Model - a person might be predisposed to some behaviour, that will only emerge in the presence of triggers