nature vs nurture issues and debate

• Baddeley's study aimed to show the roots in the nature side of the debate
• Baddeley's procedure


  1. Lab experiment using males and females from a volunteer sample

  2. Culture shouldn't affect the results as memory is universal
• Baddeley's study


  • Standardised procedures, adds credibility to the study showing memory is universal
• Baddeley's study

  • Low task validity, may not represent memory effectively and so can't accurately measure if behaviour is due to nature or nurture
• Everybody learns different things and have different experiences, links to the nurture side of the debate
• Baddeley's surprise trial


  Asked participants to randomly recall after a 15 min interference task
• Baddeley's surprise trial


  • High task validity as it is more like everyday memory
  • Didn't get consent for this trial, deception
• LTM encodes semantically - nature
• Baddeley's study had high control over extraneous variables such as any hearing difficulties
• Sherif et al's study aimed to investigate ingroup and outgroup behaviours and how this caused prejudice, investigates realistic conflict theory which is on the nature side of the debate
• Sherif et al's procedure


  Field study with two groups of 12 year old boys, showing the nature side of the debate as they are all from the same background
• Sherif et al's study

  • High ecological validity - reflective of real life behaviours when investigating nature vs nurture
• Sherif et al's study

  • Low generalisability, ethnocentric so may not represent prejudice in females
• Realistic conflict theory


  Prejudice occurs through competition
• At the end of stage 1 they were made aware of each other's presence which created prejudice e.g. they better not be swimming in our hole - shows nurture side of the explanation
• Sherif et al's study


  • Boys only watched for 12 hours a day so may not be fully valid
• Behaviour - prejudice could be an innate survival response - nature
• They showed hostility by burning flags, shouting comments, they did try to reduce this showing that nurture is also important
• Sherif et al's study

  • Ethnocentric sample so may not explain prejudice in other cultures
• Watson and Rayner's study suggested that we can learn through classical conditioning
• Watson and Rayner's procedure


  Lab experiment with 11 month old described as stable and they investigated his reactions - nurture side of debate
• Watson and Rayner's study

  • Little Albert died at age 6 due to hydrocephalus, low validity
• Certain phobias are due to nature not nurture, evolutionary approach says we can fear things due to natural selection, external stimuli may threaten our genetic material
• Watson and Rayner's procedure


  When researcher banged an iron rod little albert cried at the loud noise, UCS and UCR - nature
• Watson and Rayner's study


  • High validity, high control over extraneous variables e.g. hid behind black curtain when the simulations occurred, good cause and effect
  • Low generalisability - may have had a different response to the rest of the general population
• Raine et al's study looked at biological differences in the brains of NGRI's compared to controls
• Raine et al's procedure


  Lab experiment participants did a CPT while having a PET scan (pressing a button after seeing a target on a screen)
• Raine et al's study


  • Low task validity e.g. CPT of pressing buttons not like killing someone
• Raine et al studied the difference in glucose metabolism in the brain of NGRI's
• Raine et al's sample

  41 NGRI's matched with controls of the same age and sex
• Raine et al's study


  • Not matched on handedness which impacted brain activity - reduces the validity of the results
• Rosenhan's study focused on the possibility of mental illness being both nature/nurture
• Rosenhan's procedure

  Sent 8 pseudopatients into psychiatric hospitals to see if they would be found out as sane - mainly focused on nurture as it was looking at the effect of the environment
• Rosenhan's study

  • 9th patient not included in the sample because he had a positive experience in hospitals therefore questions validity
• Rosenhan's study showed that culture effects diagnosis - nurture
• Rosenhan's study

  • High generalisability as there was a wide range of hospitals used
  • Low generalisability as they were all American so ethnocentric
• The multistore model of memory relies on nature as it explains the process of encoding information as it enters our sensory register throughout 5 senses before moving to STM which encodes acoustically and then to the LTM which encodes semantically
• Multistore model of memory

  • Baddeley supports the ideas of encoding as participants recall was worse in the semantically similar condition compared to dissimilar (80% v 55%)
  • KF could still make LTM but STM was damaged - suggests nature as it is a biological process
• Sebastian and Hernandes Gil studied the digit span of 5-17 year olds and compared it to the digit span of elderly and Alzheimer's patients, everybody has a digit span and it is involved in mental processes - nature
• Sebastian and Hernandes Gil's study

  • Compared the findings to the 2010 study to look at elderly digit span and found high generalisability