Nature vs. nurture

What is nature vs. nurture?
The nature versus nurture debate is a debate concerning the relative importance of an individual’s innate qualities (” nature’’) versus personal experiences (” nurture”) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.

Example

Nature is your genes. The physical and personality traits determined by your genes stay the same irrespective of where you were born and raised.

Factors

Nature factors are biological and family factors such as the way someone behaves.

What is nurture?

Nurture refers to all environmental influences after conception, i. e. experience. Evidence suggests that family environmental factors may have an effect upon childhood IQ, accounting for up to a quarter of variance.

Example

Nurture refers to how you were brought up. Someone could be born with genes to give them a normal height, but be malnourished in childhood, resulting in stunted growth and a failure to develop as expected.

Factors

Nurture factors that trigger an individual to do certain things such as commit a crime are influenced by social and environmental factors. Nurture means the way you were brought up. Sociologists say that some people were brought up to be kind and considerate where others were brought up to be tough. Children are made to be the people that are by others around them who tell them what is right and wrong and this affects the way that they act.

A persons personality may not have come from their mother, father or siblings, the environment where they grew up would have a lasting effect or influence on the way that they talk, behave and respond to the things around you for example; if a child was brought up in an environment where people didn’t respect one another, argued a lot and had a lot of fights, this child may become the same as they would want to be able to protect themselves against older people who would treat them like this. However if a child grew up on a calm estate where everyone got along and respected one another, the child would do so to and they would be polite and respectful themselves.

The nurture theory holds that genetic influence over abstract traits may exist; however the environment factors are the real origins of our behaviour. This includes the use of conditioning in order to induce a new behaviour to a child, or alter an unlikely behaviour being shown by the child. According to John Watson, one of the strongest psychologists who propose environmental learning as a dominating side in the nature vs. nurture debate, once any type of specialist Watson wants. He stated that he could train him to be such regardless of the child’s potentials, talents and race.

Although this is true that fraternal twins raised apart have remarkable similarities in most respects, still the intervention of the environment have caused several differences in the way they behave. Some physiologists regard the mind as a blank slate at birth and therefore all knowledge and understanding is ascertained through life experience. The social learning theory suggests that we learn through observation and imitation. Operant and classical conditioning techniques demonstrate that behaviour can be easily influenced by the environment.

Environmental psychologists have conducted a wealth of research that demonstrates the influence of the environment on people’s performance, social behaviour and health. For example; a man who has been to prison many times for aggressive behaviour, has a child with his partner, as the child grows up, that child may show more anger than other children because of seeing it with his father.