nature-nurture debate

• Nature-nurture debate

  Concerned with the extent to which aspects of behaviour are a product of inherited or acquired characteristics
• Heredity

  The genetic transmission of both mental and physical characteristics from one generation to another
• Environment

  Any influence on human behaviour that is non-genetic. This may range from prenatal influences in the womb through to cultural and historical influences at a societal level. It includes biological influences, e.g. the food you eat may affect your mental development and physical growth
• Interactionist approach

  A way to explain the development of behaviour in terms of a range of factors, including both biological and psychological ones. Most importantly such factors don't simply add together but combine in a way that can't be predicted by each one separately i.e. they interact
• nature-nurture: the interactionist approach

  • Bowlby - claimed baby's attachment type is determined by the warmth and continuity of parental love
  • Kagan - proposed that a baby's innate personality also affects the attachment relationship
  • nature (temperament) creates nurture (parents response) so environment and heredity interact
• nature-nurture: diathesis-stress model

  • suggests behaviour is caused by a biological or environmental vulnerability (diathesis) which is only expressed when coupled with a biological or environmental trigger (stressor)
  • OCD - a person who inherits a genetic vulnerability for OCD combined with a psychological trigger may result in the disorder appearing
• nature-nurture: epigenetics

  • refers to a change in our genetic activity without changing the genes themselves
  • caused by interaction with the environment
  • aspects of our lifestyle or events we encounter (smoking) leave marks on our DNA
  • switch genes on or off - changes the way they are expressed
  • influence the genetic codes of our children and future generations
• Nature

  • early nativists
  • Descartes
  • human characteristics and some aspects of knowledge are innate and so the result of heredity
• heredity:

  • to access heredity we use the heritability coefficient
  • numerical figure between 0 and 1.0 which indicates the extent to which characteristic has a genetic basis
  • 1 = entirely genetically determined
• nurture:

  • empiricists
  • Locke - mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) at birth upon which learning and experience writes
  • this is the result of our environment alone and no knowledge is innate
  • behaviourist approach
  • Plomin - general figure for IQ = 0.5 (genetic + environment important factor)
• Support from nature:

  The flight or fight response as a response to stressors -

  • the hypothalamus responds to stressors by sending signals to the sympathetic branch which releases adrenaline causing a reaction
  • innate response that is passed down showing that characteristics like flight and fight is caused by our genes
• support for nurture:

  Behaviourist: Skinner's operant conditioning

  • behaviour that is rewarded is likely to be repeated while behaviour that is punished is prone to happen less
  • reinforcement shapes behaviour
• approaches - nature-nurture

  A) biological

  B) psychodynamic

  C) cognitive

  D) humanistic

  E) behaviourist

  
• heredity and environment - AO3

  • impossible to answer
  • environmental influence begins the moment they are born - or even before birth
  • closely intertwined
  • twin studies = difficult to tell if high concordance rates are result of shared gentics or shared upbringing
• epigenetics AO3 support

  Dias and Ressler - gave male lab mice electric shocks each time they were exposed to a chemical in perfume

  • mice developed fear response to scent
  • the children of mice feared the smell even without exposure to electric shocks
  • learnt, environment response has been inherited
• diathesis-stress AO3 support

  Pikka and Tienari - finnish adoptees that were most likely to develop schizophrenia had biological relatives with a history of the disorder and dysfunctional relationships with families

  biological - diathesis

  relationship - stressor
• Nature AO3 danger taking one stance

  P: lead to extreme circumstances like the eugenics movement

  E: Nativists suggest that 'anatomy is destiny' as our inherited genetic make-up determines all our behaviour and characteristics and the environment has little to no impact

  E: Eugenics movement = get ride of inferior genes

  Holocaust - extreme number of deaths

  L: This shows it is dangerous to take a nature stance and assume genes determine someone's characteristics - need interactionist
• Nurture AO3 danger taking one stance

  P: lead to extreme circumstances like conversion therapy

  E: empiricists suggest that any behaviour can be changed by altering environmental conditions - behaviour shaping

  E: conversion therapy = electric shocks to members of the LGBTQ+ community when they are aroused by gay ideology to change behaviour - discriminatory towards gay people as suggests being gay is a choice

  L: dangerous to take nurture stance and assume environment determines someones characteristics fully