Nature vs Nurture

• Nativist

  • someone who supports the role of nature and believes that cognition and behaviour are innate
• Empiricist

  • someone who supports the role of nature and believes that behaviour and cognition result from experience and learning
• Relative Contribution


  • the debate nowadays is on how much influences us, not which one
• Heritability Coefficient

  • this is a number between 0 and 1 which represents the extent to which a trait is inherited (with q meaning that it is entirely genetic)
• Political Implications - underlying debate

  • nature - Nazi party - eugenics and selective breeding and sterilisation of those considered "feeble minded"
  • nurture - Stalin - brutal regime social institutions to bring about large-scale control, conditioning behaviour to what is seen as ideal, led to industrialisation, forced famine and ethnic cleansing
• Nature debate

  • Innate
  • Abilities are determined by genes
  • Our personality is determined by genes
  • Physical/artistic/musical ability - subject to genetics and heredity
  • Genetic explanations are an example of nature as focus of research
  • Evolutionary explanations are another example or research that places emphasis on anture
  • A behaviour characteristic that promoted survival and reproduction will be naturally selected
• Research supporting nature

  • Twin and adoption studies have shown that the closer the genetics, the more likely they are to display the same behaviours
  • The concordance rate for a mental disorder is about 40% for MZ twins and 7% DZ twins
• Evolutionary Explanation of Attachment (nature)

  • Bowlby
  • Attachment is adapted for survival and attachment behaviours are therefore naturally selected through genetics
• Nurture debate

  • developed through experience
  • abilities are determined by environmental factors
  • our personality is determined by experience
  • physical/artistic/musical ability - subject to exposure and training
  • the environment influences our behaviour
  • Richard Lerner (1986) - attempted to break down the broad concept of the environment, and stated that there are levels of influence. The social conditions a child grows up in, and the historical and cultural context they are part of
• Theoretical example of nurture

  • Behaviourism - behaviour is determined by experience alone and is acquired through learning - classical and operant conditioning (explanation of attachment)
  • Social Learning Theory - Bandura stated that behaviour is acquired through learning, with a third dimension of vicarious reinforcement
  • He also believed that a person's biology may impact urges to behave in a particular way (aggression) but concludes that a person learns how to express anger through environmental influences
• Epigenetics

  • epigenetic changes refer to the changes in our genetic activity or expression without changing the underlying genetic code
  • this happens due to the environmental influence (e.g. stress, nutrition, smoking, pollution etc.)
  • therefore, epigenetics complicates the picture: genes influence our behaviour, but experience can influence genes
• Epigenetics - Dias and Ressler (2014)

  • confirmed the power of epigenetics using mice. Using shocks, they conditioned a fear response to the cell of a chemical called acetephenone. Despite no exposure to conditioned, the rats' children and grandchildren also displayed fear of the smell
  • explains why cloning doesn't produce identical copies
• Supporting evidence for the complex relationship between nature and nurture

  • Neural plasticity - hippocampus - Maguire et al taxi drivers
  • Sandra Scarr and Kathleen McCartney (1983) - proposed a theory of gene environment interaction
  • Indirect - parents genes influence how they treat their children
  • Passive - the child's genes influence the experience they have or can access
  • active/niche picking (constructivism) - the child creates its own environment by actively choosing experiences and people