adoption studies

• Like twin studies, adoption studies are a way to investigate the effects of nature and nurture on behaviour. Nature refers to biological causes for behaviour, this means the influence of genes that have been inherited from biological parents. Nurture refers to the environmental causes of behaviour, this means the importance of upbringing, regardless of who the parents are. Adoption studies look at the impact of nurture on children who are raised by parents who are not their biological parents.
• Because there is no biological connection between the parent and an adopted child, if the adopted child grows up to share their adoptive parents’ traits, then these traits are probably produced by nurture. Adoption studies are made more valid if the researchers have information about the child’s biological parent. If the child grows up with traits that resemble the adoptive parents more than the biological parent, this is stronger evidence that these traits are due to nurture.
• + removes the environment as an extraneous variable, any similarity between parent and child must be due to biology.
• • children may often be adopted into families similar to their biological family e.g., same race or socio-economic status, therefore similarities with biological parents might actually be due to environment.