Nature vs Nurture (Interactionist approach) Flashcards
(20 cards)
What is the Nature/ Nurture argument and how do most researchers approach it?
This is based on whether a person’s development is due to their genes or environmental influences
Most researchers accept behaviour to be the product between nature and nurture
What is the Nature approach to behaviour and what is founded in and by who?
Suggests that we are born with predispositions/ pre-programmed behaviours.
Founded in the nativist theory and was introduced by Rene Descartes.
What does nature believe behaviour is the product of? ( 2 factors )
Innate (biological/genetic) factors
Hereditary (genetic inheritance) factors —> process of traits being passed down generationally.
What are evolutionary explanations based on for the Nature approach?
Based on the principle that a behaviour that promotes survival will be naturally selected and passed down generationally
What is the Nurture approach, according to the empiricists? What does this consist of?
Behaviour is the product of environmental influences
The environment is seen as everything outside of the body which influences people, events and the physical world.
What is the Nurture approach founded in?
Provide an example that one of the founding members stated.
Founded in Empiricist theory that knowledge derives from learning + experience.
E.g John Locke viewed the mind as a ‘tabula rasa’ / blank slate on which experiences are written
What were the 2 factors (and their subdivisions) that comprise the diverse levels of the environment that play a role in nurture, identified by Lerner (1986) ?
- Prenatal factors, ie physical (mother smoking) or psychological (playing music to the developing foetus)
- Postnatally through the love the baby is shown (attachment) and the environment in which they’re raised in.
What is the Interactionist approach for Nature/nurture?
The debate focuses on how much each factor contributes to a behaviour and the interactions between Nature and the environment you grow/live in.
Explain how the monotropic theory of attachment shows an interaction with nature and nurture in giving babies the best outcome. (2 things)
Bowlby proposed that attachment is adaptive, meaning an infant is more likely to survive as adults attach to it and care/protect it.
He suggests babies have innate genetic behaviours that increase the likelihood of attachment, i.e social releasers.
Innate genes - Nature
These encourage care - Nurture
What is the other example of Nature/Nurture interacting alongside monotropy?
A diathesis-stress model
What is a diathesis-stress model? What type of illness is a good example of this and how (that we’ve studied) ?
A biological predisposition requires an environmental trigger for a behaviour to be displayed
E.g OCD. There are genes that can be inherited that will increase the likelihood of developing it, but that the person will need to experience a trigger (psychological traumatic event) to develop it.
What is a good example where technology has developed in the last 10 years into learning how genes interact with environment?
Epigenetics
What are epigenetics and how do they link to the Nature approach? ( 3 things )
- Track the activity in genes
- When on, they make specific proteins and when off they don’t make the protein.
These changes in gene activity can last a lifetime and can be passed down.
What was the study that Susser + Lin (1992) carried out in regards to genetic changes of Dutch people after surviving WW2? (2 things)
-The survivors had suffered extreme famine which changed the activity of their genes.
-When having children, the epigenetic changes were passed down generationally, with the children x2 more likely to develop conditions like schizophrenia, with some grandchildren being affected too.
What does the Susser + Lin (1992) study suggest about Nature + Nurture?
That they both play a role in human behaviour and that there are clear mechanisms for an interaction of the two.
How are Adoption / Twin Studies a good type of research to investigate the nature nurture interaction?
The researcher can control either the genes, the environment a child is raised in or both.
What do Adoption Studies enable a researcher to check? What did Rhee and Walkman (2002) do and find, regarding a meta-analysis? What does this suggest? (3 things)
-Adoption studies the researcher can check to see if the adopted child is more like their biological parent or their adoptive parent
-They conducted a meta-analysis + found that the genetic influences accounted for 41% of the variance in aggression. Suggests genes did play a role but that other factors, i.e environment must’ve contributed.
What do researchers compare in twin studies? What can researchers do from both sets and in most cases what are can be expected? (2 things)
- Compare dizygotic and monozygotic twins
- Identical twins share all genes and both types of twins should experience similar environments when growing up, researchers can determine the effect nature/nurture both have.
What is the main issue regarding twin/adoption studies? (2 things)
-They often rely on correlation, meaning the researcher cannot establish cause and effect.
-This weakens the control the researchers have over these natural experiments/ correlations, meaning it is hard to know how much each factor contributes.
What is the main strength to understanding the interaction between Nature/ Nurture? ( 2 points )
- Allows families to better protect children who may be at risk. E.g if a parent has OCD, their child may have a risk of carrying these genes. - - - Therefore, if they have a child, they can make sure it doesn’t have a stressful environment.
Helps to mitigate the effects of the genes
