Ashley Audette

Professor Gelfer
Psychology 1010
12 February 2015
Nature vs. Nurture

Nature vs. nurture has been a long-standing dispute in the psychological and
social worlds. In Psychology: An Introduction (2011), we learn that nature is that which
is genetic and nurture refers to all environmental influences after conception. Nurture is
the issue of the degree to which environment and heredity influence behavior and
development. In this issue nature can be defined as, behaviors due to heredity. Which
means behaviors are based on the genetic makeup of an individual and is an influence of
the individuals' growth and development throughout life. On the other hand nurture are
causes of behaviors that are environmental. Which means the influence is from, parents,
siblings, family, friends, society and all other experiences to which the individual is
exposed. It is to say that genes and our environments alone are not enough influence to
our psychological characteristics; they also work together in complex ways known as
gene-environment correlation and gene-environment interaction.
Gene-environment correlation is defined as people who have experiences that
influence the same trait. These genes and environment can be correlated in two ways. The
first way is passive gene-environment correlation; peoples behavior and mental
processes often become linked by the influence of genes and environment or correlated
passively. Active gene-environment correlation is the second way that genes and
environment correlate through the actions of an individual. In result, the genes that
increase the likelihood of antisocial behavior can also increase the risk for it.

There are multiple approaches to psychology based on nature and nurture. The
biological approach focuses on the genetic, hormonal, and neurochemical explanations of
behavior. Psychoanalysis is the innate drive of sex and aggression, of which is influenced
by environment and the social upbringing during childhood, which is genetic. Cognitive
Psychology deals with the innate mental structures such as schemas, perception, memory,
and constantly changed by the environment. Humanistic psychology is the view that
human beings possess an innate tendency to improve and determine their lives by the
decisions they make. Lastly, behaviorism is the viewpoint that behavior is learned from
the environment through conditioning.
There are those scientists who believe that we act on instinct alone based solely
on our genetic makeup. Those who have an extreme position for nature are known as
nativists. This is the basic assumption that the characteristics of the human species are
product of evolution and that the individual differences are due to each persons own
genetic coding. It is known that many physical characteristics are biologically determined
by genetic inheritance. For example, the color of your eyes, whether your hair is curly or
straight, the color of your skin, and certain diseases such as Huntingdons chorea, are all
result of the genes we inherit. It appears that other physical characteristics, if not
determined, are still influenced by your genes. In my own opinion, human nature
differences may occur based on the developments of chromosomes in our bodies and that
of cultural and environmental influences can be the fact that people differ biologically or
mentally. Nativists will also argue that maturity regulates the emergence of attachment in
infancy, language acquisition, and cognitive development as a whole.

There are many ways to promote human diversity by our genes and the
environment working together in complex ways. A few of those ways are that our
genetics can influence behavior and mental processes. Our genes on chromosomes in the
cells of our body provide the genetic mechanism of inheritance. There are differences in
the environment also plays an important role as result of genetic variations. Sex and
gender is considered to understand our human diversity. For example, there are there are
physical and mental differences between men and women. Although, these gender
differences are more related to their identitymasculinity and femininity, rather than to
biologics.
On the other side of the spectrum, the environmentalists, also known as
empiricists, assume that at birth the human mind is a blank state and that it is gradually
filled as a result of experience. Nurture, how you are brought up is that which governs
the psychosocially significant aspects of child development and the concept of maturation
applies only biologically. Freuds Theory of Aggression as being an innate drive, called
Thanatos, is an example of extreme nature positions in psychology. However, Banduras
(1977) Social Learning Theory states that aggression is learnt from the environment
through observation and imitation.
As we have seen, there are simply just too many facts on both sides of the
argument to accept either of the extreme positions that are inconsistent with an all or
nothing view. Instead of asking which factor is due to our development, it is more
accurate to question, How much of our development is due to nature and nurture?
Francis Galton, a relative of Charles Darwin, first raised this question in the late 19th
century. Galton was convinced that our intellectual ability was mostly inherited and the

probability for a genius to run in families was the outcome of a natural superiority. In
1883, Galton himself suggested that human society could be improved by better
breeding.
We can see why the nature-nurture debate has become such a vigorous contested
issue. What begins as an attempt to understand the causes of behavioral differences then
develops into a politically motivated dispute about power in society. This dispute doesnt
only apply to the debate over I.Q., it is equally relevant to the psychology of sex and
gender where the question of how much of the alleged differences in male and female
behavior is due to biology and how much to culture is just as controversial. The reality is
that nature and culture interact in a host of qualitatively different ways.
The Human Genome project which determined the entire sequence of human
DNA was a breakthrough for scientist and medicine. This project raised interest in tracing
types of behavior to particular strands of DNA located on specific chromosomes. If these
funded projects keep advancing without being abused, then there will be a more general
understanding of the fact that biology interacts with the cultural context and the personal
choices that people make about how they want to live. Also, with the advances in
neuroscience in combination of new studies on neuroplasticity, it has been found that the
brain makes new neuro connections despite genetic influences. Genetic dispositions lay
the groundwork but environment creates new connections everyday. The answer is both
nature and nurture play a role in producing our human behavior and it should no longer
be debates but studied in combination.

Works Sited:
Bandura, A. Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
Eliopoulos, Charlotte. Invitation to Holistic Health. Third Edition. Burlington:
Jones and Bartlett Learning, 2014. Print.
Lahey, Benjamin B. Psychology: An Introduction. Eleventh ed. New York: McGraw-Hill
Higher Education, 2011.
McLeod, Saul. "Nature Nurture in Psychology | Simply Psychology." Nature Nurture in
Psychology, 2007. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.