Are Personality Traits Primarily Inherited Or Influenced By Environment

One of the oldest debates in the history of Psychology is about Nature versus Nurture. Today, we know that both play a significant role in human’s life. Some people believe that it is genes which affects our way of life and some people believes that it is none other but our environment that greatly influences our lifestyle and some believe that both has tremendous impact on one’s way of life. Indeed in certain cases both our nature (our genes) and our environment roughly play an equal role in human life.

Throughout the history of human existence, there have always been many questions that have plagued man for centuries. Some of these questions are “what is the meaning of life” or “which came first, the chicken or the egg.” Within the last 400 years a new question has surfaced and has caused an enormous controversy which takes our minds to much further levels. The controversy is whether inherited genes or the environment influences and affects our personality, intelligence, behavior, development and abilities. This controversy is most often recognized as the “Nature vs. Nurture” conflict. Some people believe that it is strictly genes that affect our ways of live and how we are, while others believe that it is the environment that affects

The biggest controversy in psychology today is whether genetics or one’s environment plays a role in the behavior of the individual. Psychologists have researched and developed different theories to explain the reason for the way humans think and behave. The behavior of individuals is either inherited or learned. In my opinion, I believe that nurture plays a big role in the individual’s behavior. Kendra Cherry states, “Nurture refers to all the environmental variables that impact who we are, including our early childhood experiences, how we were raised, our social relationships, and our surrounding culture” (1). People have become who there are because of the environment they were exposed to in their childhood years. The behavior of people is influenced be the environment that surrounds them and can changed many times through one’s lifetime. People have different personalities a person’s

“Trying to separate out nature and nurture as explanations for behavior, as in classic genetic studies of twins and families, is now said to be both impossible and unproductive” (Levitt, 1). Social scientists have declared the nature-nurture debate to be unnecessary. Similarly, scientists feel that such debate is not only unhelpful, but also outdated. From geneticists’ perspective, nurture and nature interact to influence

The nature vs nurture issue has been a controversial argument among psychologist for decades. This argument exposes two different views. One of them emphasizes that our personality depends solely on genetics (nature). On the other hand, the second view suggests that humans “develop through experience” (Myers 2013, SG 6) (nurture).

“You inherit your environment just as much as your genes.” (Rich, 2015) In 1869, the phrase “nature vs. nurture was coined by an English polymath named Francis Galton. There are two sides to this debate, each with their own pros and con’s. Nature is the side that argues that the DNA and genotype humans are born with determines who they are and what personality and traits they will have throughout their lifetime. Whereas the nurture side of the debate argues that humans are born with sponges as minds, and through interactions and experiences while we grow, the knowledge and understanding of life is gained and this is how our personalities are sculpted. Many people have studied this debate through multiple schools of thoughts; each with their own arguments to which side they believe prevails. Yet, to this day, there is no proof to say which side of the debate if correct. Based on the psychological, sociological, and epigenetic schools of though, it can be validated that when it comes to the nature vs. nurture debate, nurture will always prevail and remain most relevant.

Hereditary along with environment is a personality development that is a heated debated in the area for several of years. So when it comes to nature versus nurture the personal experience that a person goes through is basically determining what is causing the individual the differences in their physical and behavioral traits as well. Then the frequent personality that is of the heritable trait that has been researched just in twins along with adoptions as well. Then for a bit of a twist when identical twins were studied they found out that they were far more similar when it came to their personalities and then when they looked at just random people that were just selected in pairs of two.

The concept of Nature v. Nurture is one that describes the different aspects of the environment and genetics that make up someone’s personality. On one side, Nature is the abilities and other traits inherited from someone’s parent that predetermines how they will mature over the years. An example of this would be that many believe that children are born smart and that they inherit their intelligence from their parents. While on the other, Nurture is the environmental influences that sculpt how someone acts. For example, one will react to certain situations they are in based on past experiences. This concept plays a vital role in the research because even though the twins had grown-up in two completely different

These researchers have concluded that there is a strong correlation between the environment and the social behaviors and mental behaviors of a human being in the future. The most critical of these time periods are the childhood of the child and the social groups that the person has been emerged around in the adolescent ages. One of the most widely used studies is the Twin Study where two twins with a very similar genetic makeup are raised in different environments to see how much change there is in their behavior. These twins almost share 100% of their genes however, it has been shown that the only behavior that has been affected is their personality. Yet the personality has been observed to be different by 54% compared between twins who are raised in different environments (DANIEL GOLEMAN 1986). Showing that nurture is a lot more in control of how one acts and how they are more influenced by their environment. It becomes dangerous when one’s environment can begin to affect their behavior, as they can stray for the worst and make situations like past serial killers come true. Personality being affected by the environment can not be prevented, however, the type of environment that will influence future personalities can be changed and made for the better. They can be improved upon to prevent any future serial killers from being

Being brain dead means that the brain no longer functions. People that are brain dead can still have a heartbeat and they can still breathe they just do so through a life sustaining machine. Brain dead people will die without these machines, they never get better. Life support is what helps keep your body alive when some functions that your body can’t live without start to fail. Life support helps to keep the body functioning until it can function again on it’s own, but sometimes the body’s functions cannot be fixed.The question is should a pregnant brain dead woman be kept on life support until her baby is developed enough to be born?

Who a person’s parents or relatives are is already predetermined at conception. The traits that a child’s family have are going to be his/her traits simply because of genetics. According to the above study done on Croatian twins, genetic factors account for “stability in personality” from seventy-five to one hundred percent (Bratko and Butkovic 155). The researchers used genetic models to look into the differences between twins. They broke genetics into two sources in this study: additive genetic influences and nonadditive genetic influences. Bratko and Butkovic insinuated that, based on the findings of this project, heredity was mostly attributed to the steadiness of personality in the pairs of twins. In the novel Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley, a quote was attributed to Ralph Greenspan from his research on romance between fruit flies. He likened personality to this

As many people have begun to pay attention to formation of personality, the debate over nature vs. nurture has raged for a long time and this issue is still controversial. However, as shown the

Have you ever noticed that you might act like your parents? Or maybe that your personality has changed over your lifetime? People have been debating about the nature versus nurture debate for a long time, and some think nature or genetics plays the bigger role in shaping personality, but some say nurture or society does. Nature and nurture both play a big part in determining what our personality will be. Identical twins have many differences. Your personality can change through your life because of the way you were raised. Studies show that nurture is much more dominant than nature is. Nurture is much more dominant in shaping personality than nature.

There is a debate occurring in the world of psychology revolving around the way people’s behavior is based on either nature or nurture. Both of these, again, deal with psychology and are both aspects of behavior that are products by one of two realms. One being inherited through genetics and the other

Some psychological models assert that a proportion of our personality is inborn and permanent (Hollander, 1971), that a psychological core at the center of our personality gives us enduring, inner characteristics. Hans Eysenck (1965) suggests that our motivation and emotion are related to biological differences in brain function and proposed that 75% of our personality is based on genetic influence and 25% on environmental influence. Research by Peter Whybrow (1999) on identical twins separated at birth examined how their different environments shaped their personalities. He found that around 40% of personality should be credited to genetics, with 60% determined by outside factors.