Nature Vs Nurture Flashcards
(15 cards)
What is the nature-nurture debate and how is it approached today?
The nature-nurture debate seeks to answer the question of whether our behaviour is more influenced by nature or nurture. It is not really a ‘debate’ about one or the other because any behaviour/characteristic arises from a combination of both – even something as simple as eye colour is not completely determined by your genes (eye colour is about 80% heritable, Bräuer and Chopra 1978).
How do Bowlby and Kagan illustrate the interactionist approach?
For example, John Bowlby (1958) claimed that a baby’s attachment type is determined by the warmth and continuity of parental love (an environmental influence). Jerome Kagan (1984) proposed that a baby’s innate personality (temperament) also affects the attachment relationship. Thus, nature (the child’s temperament), in a real sense, creates nurture (the parents’ response), so environment and heredity interact.
Why is the nature-nurture debate considered interactionist?
For this reason, psychologists are now more likely to ask what the relative contribution of each influence is. Therefore, the nature-nurture debate is really about discussing how nature and nurture interact – an interactionist approach.
What is the diathesis-stress model?
The diathesis-stress model suggests behaviour is caused by a biological or environmental vulnerability (diathesis) which is only expressed when coupled with a biological or environmental trigger (stressor). For example, you studied biological explanations of OCD in Year 1. A person who inherits a genetic vulnerability for OCD may not develop the disorder. But, combined with a psychological trigger (e.g. a traumatic experience) this may result in the disorder appearing.
What is epigenetics and how does it influence behaviour?
Epigenetics refers to a change in our genetic activity without changing the genes themselves. It is a process that happens throughout life and is caused by interaction with the environment. Aspects of our lifestyle or events we encounter (from smoking and diet to trauma and war) leave ‘marks’ on our DNA (genes), which switch genes on or off. This explains why factors such as smoking have a lifelong influence even after you actually stop – they have changed the way your genes will be expressed.
How does epigenetics contribute to the nature-nurture debate?
Even more remarkably these epigenetic changes may go on and influence the genetic codes of our children, as well as their children. Epigenetics therefore introduces a third element into the nature-nurture debate – the life experience of previous generations.
What does nature refer to in the nature-nurture debate?
Nature refers to inherited influences, or heredity. Early nativists such as René Descartes (1596–1650) argued that all human characteristics – and even some aspects of knowledge – are innate. Psychological characteristics like intelligence or personality are determined by biological factors (genes), just as physical characteristics like eye colour or height are.
What does nurture refer to in the nature-nurture debate?
Nurture refers to the influence of experience and the environment. Empiricists including the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) argued that the mind is a blank slate at birth (in Latin, tabula rasa), which is then shaped by the environment. This view later became an important feature of the behaviourist approach.
What different levels of environment did Lerner identify?
Richard Lerner (1986) has identified different levels of the environment. This includes prenatal factors, such as how physical influences (smoking) or psychological influences (music) affect a foetus. More generally development is influenced postnatally in terms, for example, of the social conditions a child grows up in.
What is heritability and how is it measured?
The degree to which two people are similar on a particular trait can be represented by a correlation coefficient and is called concordance. Such concordance provides an estimate about the extent to which a trait is inherited – called heritability. Heritability is the proportion of differences between individuals in a population, with regards to a particular trait, that is due to genetic variation. A figure of .01 (or 1%) means genes contribute almost nothing to individual differences and 1.0 (or 100%) means genes are the only reason for individual differences.
What is the heritability of intelligence?
The general figure for heritability in IQ is about .5 across multiple studies in varying populations (Plomin 1994). This means that about half of a person’s intelligence is determined by genetic factors and the other half must be environmental.
AO3 Point 1: What is one strength of research into the nature-nurture debate?
Point: One strength of research into the nature-nurture debate is the use of adoption studies. Evidence: Adoption studies are useful because they separate the competing influences of nature and nurture. If adopted children are found to be more similar to their adoptive parents, this suggests the environment is the bigger influence. Whereas, if adopted children are more similar to their biological parents (no influence on their environment), then genetic factors are presumed to dominate. A meta-analysis of adoption studies by Soo Rhee and Irwin Waldman (2002) found that genetic influences accounted for 41% of the variance in aggression. Explain: This shows how research can separate the influences of nature and nurture. Link: –
AO3 Point 2: What is one counterpoint to adoption studies?
Point: However, research suggests that this approach may be misguided, that nature and nurture are not two entities that can simply be pulled apart. Evidence: According to Robert Plomin (1994), people create their own ‘nurture’ by actively selecting environments that are appropriate for their nature. Thus, a naturally aggressive child is likely to feel more comfortable with children who show similar behaviours and will ‘choose’ their environment accordingly. Then, their chosen companions further influence their development. Explain: Plomin refers to this as niche-picking. Link: This suggests that it does not make sense to look at evidence of either nature or nurture.
AO3 Point 3: What is one strength of the debate shown through epigenetics?
Point: Another strength of the debate is support for epigenetics. Evidence: One example of how environmental effects can span generations presumably through epigenetic effects comes from events of the Second World War. In 1944, the Nazis blocked the distribution of food to the Dutch people and 22,000 died of starvation, in what became called the Dutch Hunger Winter. Ezra Susser and Shang Lin (1992) report that women who became pregnant during the famine went on to have low birth weight babies. Explain: Whilst this may be unsurprising, what is more interesting is that these babies were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia when they grew up compared to more typical population rates. Link: This supports the view that the life experiences of previous generations can leave epigenetic ‘markers’ that influence the health of their offspring.
AO3 Point 4: How does the nature-nurture debate have real-world application?
Point: A further strength of the nature-nurture debate is that it has real-world application. Evidence: Research suggests that OCD is a highly heritable mental disorder. For example, Gerald Nestadt et al. (2010) put the heritability rate at .76. Such understanding can inform genetic counselling because it is important to understand that high heritability does not mean it is inevitable that the individual will go on to develop the disorder. Explain: This means that people who have a high genetic risk of OCD because of their family background can receive advice about the likelihood of developing the disorder and how they might prevent this (e.g. learn to manage stress). Link: This shows that the debate is not just a theoretical one but that it is important, at a practical level, to understand the interaction between nature and nurture.
