AO1 - Nature-Nurture Debate

• Nature (genes):

  • Nativist psychologists believe in the importance of heredity (nature) - this is the idea that human behaviour/characteristics (mental and physical) are innate and passed on from one generation to the next via genes
• One example of human behaviour due to nature is Bowlby's monotropic theory

  • This states that infants come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments through behaviours such as social releasers because this will help them to survive, therefore attachment is innate
• Nurture (environment):

  • Empiricists, such as Skinner, argue that the mind is a 'blank slate' at birth and our behaviour is shaped by out environment, learning and experience
• One example of human behaviour due to nurture is attachment in terms of classical conditioning

  • This is where the food (UCS) is associated with the mother (NS) and through repeated pairings, the mother becomes a CS which produces a CR of pleasure - therefore attachment is a learned behaviour
• It is very difficult to answer the nature-nurture debate as environmental influences in a child's life begins as soon as it is born. For example, it is often very difficult to tell whether high concordance rates in monozygotic twins (OCD - 87%) are the result of shared genetics or shared upbringing (they are often treated very similarly)
• The nature-nurture debate has changed in recent years - instead of trying to decide whether a behaviour/what we think or do is due to nature or nurture, psychologists are now more concerned with the relative contribution of each
• The interactionist approach:

  • This takes a stance between the extreme nature and extreme nurture debate - it argues that both genetics and the environment play a part in human behaviour (diathesis-stress model)
  • For example, genetics give us a predisposition to certain behaviours, however our genetics are then influences by the environment - Diathesis-stress model explains that an individual may be born with a PCM1 gene which makes them vulnerable to sz but may not develop sz unless they experience a stressful life event, e.g. family dysfunction