nature and nurture

• Research suggests that nature and nurture cannot be separated and that one usually affects the other
• Example


  • Plomin suggests that, if a child has genes that make them more aggressive, they are more likely to make friends who are equally aggressive and evoke aggressive responses in others. This shows that nature affects nurture.
• This is a weakness as it suggests that genes (nature) influences our relationships (nurture)
• Example


  • Maguire et al. found that taxi drivers' brains (the hippocampi) grew because of the environment they were working in. By being a taxi driver, this altered the plasticity of the brain. This shows that nurture affects nature.
• This contradictory evidence shows that the debate is far from straight forward and actually taking an eclectic stance (i.e. the Interactionist approach) is more sensible
• The extreme positions taken by nativists and empiricists have had an impact in social and political circles
• Nativist thinking


  • Segregation of particular groups of people
  • Hitler and the Nazis wanting to selectively breed a 'master race' (Aryanism) and breed out those with 'inferior characteristics'
  • Discrimination of those with mental illness and low IQ (which included some ethnic minorities such as African-Americans)
• This extreme determinist stance has led to controversy such as eugenic policies (policies that increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics)
• Empiricist thinking


  • Behaviour shaping in therapy, whereby desirable behaviours are selectively reinforced and undesirable behaviours are punished
  • In aversion therapy, therapists believed that they could 'cure' people from being gay by giving them electric shocks whilst looking at indecent images of the same sex
• This is a weakness because this extreme determinist stance has led to controversy such as eugenic policies