The Nature Nurture Debate

Question 1

What is the nature nurture debate concerned with?

Answer 1

The extent to which aspects of behaviour are a product of inherited (nature) or acquired characteristics (nurture)

Question 2

What is meant by the term heredity?

Answer 2

The way in which characteristics and traits are passed on from parents to their offspring. These may be both mental and physical characteristics.

Question 3

What is nature?

Answer 3

The view that behaviour is the product of innate biological or genetic factors.

Question 4

What do early nativists such as Descartes argue?

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

What is nurture?

Answer 5

Refers to the influence of experience and environment.

Question 6

What do Empiricists including the philosopher John Locke argue?

Answer 6

Argued that the mind is a blank slate at birth which is shaped by the environment. This view later became an important feature of the behaviourist approach.

Question 7

What do psychologists mean by the term environment? What is its impact on behaviour?

Answer 7

Refers to the circumstances, objects or conditions in which one is surrounded by. Environment shapes behaviour.

Question 8

What is the heritability coefficient for IQ and what does this suggest about intelligence?

Answer 8

.5 (inherit half from mother and half from father)
Shows there must be something else because it’s only .5
If it was 100% genes/nature, it would be a coefficient of 1. So, environment must also affect it.

Question 9

Explain how the interactionist approach works

Answer 9

Believes we should study how nature and nurture interactTH and influence us.

Question 10

The interactionist approach can be supported by constructivism. What does constructivism mean?

Answer 10

Individuals making their own environment / creating their own nurture.

Question 11

What is the diathesis-stress model?

Answer 11

Suggests behaviour is caused by a biological or environmental vulnerability (diathesis) which is only expressed when coupled with a biological or environmental trigger (stressor).

Question 12

Give one example of a nature theory in psychology

Answer 12

• Bowlby proposed that children come into the world biologically programmed to form attachments because this will help them to survive. This suggests attachment behaviours are naturally selected and passed on as a result of genetic inheritance (heredity mechanisms).
• many psychological disorders e.g. schizophrenia is said to have a genetic component (genetic inheritance)
• research has found concordance rates of 40% in mz twins and 7% in dz twins, suggesting nature is a powerful contributing factor in schizophrenia.

Question 13

Give one example of a nurture theory in psychology

Answer 13

Behavioural psychologists explain attachment in terms of classical conditioning, where food (UCS) is associated with the mother (NS), and through many repeated pairings, the mother becomes a CS who elicits a CR of pleasure in the child. Therefore, the child forms an attachment based on the pleasure experienced as a result of being fed.
Behaviour = attachment
Cause = classical conditioning
[learning from the environment]

Question 14

Give an example of the diathesis-stress model in psychology

Answer 14

Biological explanations of OCD. A person who inherits a genetic vulnerability of OCD may not develop the disorder. But, combined with a psychological trigger (e.g. a traumatic experience) this may result in the disorder appearing.

Question 15

What does the nature nurture debate seek to answer?

Answer 15

Whether our behaviour is more influenced by nature or nurture.

Question 16

Give an example of the nature nurture debate in psychology

Answer 16

John Bowlby claimed a baby’s attachment type is determined by the warmth and continuity of parental love (an environmental influence).

Jerome Jagan proposed that a baby’s innate personality (temperament) also affects the attachment relationship. Thus, nature (the child’s temperament) creates nurture (the parent’s response), so environment and heredity interact.

Question 17

Define epigenetics

Answer 17

A change in our genetic activity without changing our genetic code. This is caused by an interaction with the environment. 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 stop - they have changed the way your genes will be expressed.
Epigenetic changes may go on and influence the genetic codes of our children, as well as their children. Epigenetics introduces a third element into the nature-nurture debate = the life experience of previous generations.

Question 18

Explain phobias in terms of the nature-nurture debate

Answer 18

Nature - evolutionary approach suggests we have evolved to develop phobias through our evolutionary past so we have an innate predisposition for developing fears. E.g. snakes even though we are not facing these on a day to day basis. This can be explained by our ancestors who had to deal with these issues and had developed adaptive traits to combat these (and passed these on)

Nurture - classical conditioning e.g. Little Albert

Question 19

Explain phobias in terms of the nature-nurture debate

Answer 19

Nature - evolutionary approach suggests we have evolved to develop phobias through our evolutionary past so we have an innate predisposition for developing fears. E.g. snakes even though we are not facing these on a day to day basis. This can be explained by our ancestors who had to deal with these issues and had developed adaptive traits to combat these (and passed these on)

Nurture - classical conditioning e.g. Little Albert