Nature Nurture

• Nature


  The view that behaviour is the product of innate biological or genetic factors
• Nurture


  The view that behaviour is the product of environmental influences
• Interactionist approach


  The view that both nature and nurture work together to shape human behaviour
• Example of nature


  Bowlby proposed that children come into the world biologically programmed to form attachments because this will help them survive. This suggests attachment behaviours are naturally selected, and passed on as a result of generic inheritance
• Example of nurture


  Behavioural psychologists explain attachment in terms of classical conditioning, where food is associated with the mother and through many repeated pairings, the mother becomes a conditioned stimulus who elicits a conditioned response in the child. Therefore, the child forms an attachment based on the pleasure experienced as a result of being fed