Nature and Nurture AO3

Cards (5)

  • +real world application: Nestadt put the heritability rate at 0.76 for OCD:so its highly heritable. Such understanding can inform genetic counseling. People who have a high genetic risk of OCD due to their family background can receive education about inheritance, management and prevention of the disorder. This shown that the debate isn't just theoretical but also important at a practical level, to understand the interaction between nature & nurture.
  • +Support for epigenetics. When the Nazis blocked the distribution of food to the Dutch, 27,000 died of starvation. Susser and Lin found that women who became pregnant during this time had low birth weight babies who were 2x as likely to develop schizophrenia. This suggests life experiences of previous generations can leave epigenetic matters that influence the health of their offspring.
  • +Adoption studies: adopted children are more similar to their adoptive parent, it suggests environmental influence. It’s similar to biological parents, it suggests genetic influence. Rhee and Waldman found in a meta analyses of adoption studies that genetic influences accounted for 11% of variance in aggression. This shows how research can seperate nature and nurture influences.
  • -However, children can select their own nurture by selecting environments appropriate to their nature, a naturally aggressive child will chose aggressive friends and become more aggressive (niche picking, Plomin). This suggest that it doesn't make sense to look at evidence of either nurture or nature.
  • The extreme naturist stance is determinist and has led to controversy eg, linking ethnicity, genetics and intelligence and eugenic policies. Empiricists suggest that any behaviour can be changed by altering environmental conditions eg. aversion therapy. This may lead to a society that controls and manipulates its citizens. This shows that both conditions, taken to extremes, may have dangerous consequences for society so a moderate, interactionist position is preferred.