Nature V Nurture

• The historical debate outline nature vs nurture.

  The nature side of the debate is used by nativists such as Descarte argue that nature is more important than nurture.

  They highlight the importance of heredity and inherited predispositions such as genetics.
• An example of the nature side of the debate is the biological approach to schizophrenia which outlines the effects of genes in the form of concordance rates.

  This is shown with a 46 % concordance rate for monozygotic twins.
• The nurture side of the debate is used by empiricists like John Locke and behaviourists who highlight individuals as blank slates (tabula rasa) and state learning occurs through stimulus response links, for example the learning theory of attachment.
• However, this is a false debate and is argued with more current explanations that nature and nurture in fact interact.
• For example a form of interactionism is the diathesis stress model.

  This highlights a diathesis which is a vulnerability often a biological predisposition and a stress which is usually an environmental factor that triggers the vulnerability.

  For example in the case of schizophrenia, individuals inherit candidate genes which are triggered by stressors such as cannabis use which increases the risk of the development of schizophrenia by 7 times (Morkved).

  This therefore shows evidence and highlights the importance of looking at the nature nurture debate with an interactionist approach.
• A limitation of the diathesis stress model is it assumes there is only one cause of mental illness when in reality there may be multiple causes.
• Therefore, the diathesis stress model can be criticised due to its simplistic view on causation.
• Furthermore, the diathesis stress model does not take into account other factors such as social support or coping mechanisms which could potentially reduce the impact of the stressor.
• Another interactionist debate is the role of epigenetics.

  This is where your lifestyle leaves markers on your DNA which is then passed onto the next generation of people.

  Evidence from Susser and Lin showed that women who became pregnant in the Dutch Famine during ww2 went on to have low birth weight babies who were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia when they grew up compared to the general public.

  This therefore supports the view that life experiences can leave epigenetic markers that influence the health of their offspring.
• Another interactionist debate is constructivism.

  Plomin suggests that people create their own nurture by actively selecting their environments that are more appropriate to their nature.

  For example a naturally aggressive child may choose to spend more time and may feel more comfortable with those that elicit the same behaviours.

  Plomin refers to this as niche picking and it suggests that it's not appropriate to look at evidence of either the nature side or the nurture side.