Nature Vs. Nurture Theory

One of the oldest debates in psychology is nature versus nurture. Nature is the inborn, innate character of an organism. (Spencer A. Rathus pg. 56) Nurture is the sum total of the environmental factors that affect an organism from conception onward. (Spencer A. Rathus pg. 56) Basically nature is what you have from heredity and nurture is you environmental influences.

The concepts of Nature vs Nurture, are major concepts in social science. Nature is the hereditary pattern of physical features in a human being 's development. These features include, but are not limited to, our personality, usual and unusual appearances and the general measurements of how humans hold the attributes of being sociable, hostile behavior, their emotions, and the usage of alcohol and drugs. On the other hand Nurture is slightly different. Nurture is the influence of the environment that plays upon the behavior and characteristics in a human. The idea of nurture is that humans will grow up to form their personality on the way they are raised and life experiences. Culture is defined by the people in the environment, however, the environment helps shape and form human personalities in order to forge a culture. Culture is created by religions/beliefs, clothing/foods, language/social habits as well as the humanistic discipline; such as music, paintings, literature, and many more. Culture is generated by humankind, because humans hold their belief systems and patterns that was passed down by generations; by humans passing down what they have learned from their families this begins to create a culture. Personality plays a central role in both nature vs nurture and culture. Furthermore, personality is stated “the total organization of inherited and acquired characteristics of an individual as evidenced by the individual 's behavior (Hunt 119). Personality is either

Susan Evers and Sharon McKendrick, the famous identical twins from the movie The Parent Trap, were separated at a young age by their divorcing parents. Sharon grew up in Boston to a socialite mother while Susan grew up in California on her father’s ranch. Sharon had structure while Susan’s life was very laid back. They looked the same and liked many of the same things, yet their personalities were very different. What is responsible for these differences? Is it simply that they are two different people with different interests and preferences? Or did the environments that they grew up in play a part in making who they are? In the nature vs. nurture controversy, nature proclaims that our genetic make-up plays the primary role in human

The debate over nature vs. nurture has been researched and studied today and as well in the past amongst many different scholars with different views. Nature defines the characteristics that we are born with, like our genetics, stable personality traits, and physical conditions. While on the other hand, nurture is when our environment determines who a person is and who they will become; the experiences that mold and change us throughout our lives are all examples of nurture. Today, within many types of research it has been proven that a person is not born as a killer, instead, they are nurtured into one considering the way their parents raise them, what they are taught at school, and their culture. (Examination of the Psychology of Serial Killers,

During the ages of early childhood, particularly from birth till elementary school, a child requires the utmost care and attention possible. Quite literally, a baby is born in the world as a seed and needs nothing more than unconditional nurturing in order to grow and develop at a steady pace. In the case of psychiatrist Bruce Perry’s “The Coldest Heart”, Leon is a teenager who comes from a tight-knit, affectionate family yet unlike his older brother Frank, Leon was never exposed to such care and attention. Instead, he spent his childhood in a state of neglect and darkness- an apparent yet uncalled for trigger to his juvenile, criminal behavior that shaped him to become what Dr. Perry considers being a “classic sociopath” (Perry, 114).

One of the oldest, most prominent topics of academic debate is the Nature vs. Nurture argument. Nature vs. Nurture is a largely psychological term, in which the Nature aspect places more significance on genetics and personality; our innate predisposition to various circumstances tell us a great deal more about who we are. On the other side, the Nurture aspect places more focus on our environment and stresses the salience of the majority of what we do in our daily lives have been “learned” We see a wide array of examples of this specific argument in literature, popular culture, and even in our everyday lives. While no one can deny that both sides have extremely valid points, it would be very naive to assume that one had more of a dominant factor;

Nightly on the news, you see stories about multiple instances of violence: killings, shootings, murders and such. In the school settings, kids get bullied on the playground or even in the classroom. All of these are forms of aggression, but does anyone stop and think why we are that way? The answer is found in the classic debate in Psychology, Nature vs. Nurture. Aggression is caused by learned behavior, not through genetics.

Through history, the idea of nature vs. nurture has been a hotly debated issue. Nature, or genetics is often believed to be the most important aspect of a persons’ upbringing, as nature is something intrinsic to any one person. However, many debate that nurture, or the care and encouragement of any human life, trumps nature. The earliest evidence and rebuttals of these theories have been honed and developed over time by specific psychologists and educational theorists – all who hoped to prove their own ideas as fact at one time in history.

Nature theories suggest that the knowledge humans have about the world is innate. Therefore, human development is largely determined by heredity. Conversely, nurture theories suggest that it is the environment which shapes and influences

Pulling from the biological perspective, genetics is the study of heredity. Through these means, this paper explores the role that biological factors play in sex differences in mental health. In order to understand the effects of genes on an individual, the mediated effects of the environment are also taken into consideration. A major argument in the field of genetics is the nature vs. nurture debate regarding the role of genes and the environment that constitute the fate of an individual. Some research has found support for sex differences in depression accounted by differences in inheritance of depression, a benefit from twin studies (Rice, Harold, & Thapar, 2002). If depression runs in the biological family, then the chances of developing depression are much higher in that individual, regardless of sex.

Some people are more successful than others because they have practiced and prepared more, but some are successful because they were born that way. Proponents of the nature theory would argue that a person gains success from genetic predispositions. However, nurture theory proponents would argue that a person gains success from hard work and practice. In actuality, what probably controls an individual’s destiny is a combination of both the nature and nurture theory because of the choices people have. Individuals control their own destinies to a partial extent because as human beings, we cannot determine each and every incident in our lives.

Numerous people, like Galton, have tried to find where these two terms separate in their means of influence, whereas for others “who used the terms, nurture was rarely, if ever, seen as separable from nature; instead, it was referred to as helping and assisting, or as responding to, nature; nurture was more of a verb than a noun.” (Plonka, 2016) Similar to many things in the world, ideas that state that something works solely by itself is harder to believe than if it were to work with another component of the world around it. Those who believe that nature and nurture work together in sync to influence an organism believe that they show “a crucial biological phenomenon of mutual influences of both hereditary and environmental factors in the trait formation.” (Plonka, 2016) Nature alone cannot determine a person alone, yet nurture only has limited influence as

Nature is the natural mental and physical way a person should act by the way their genes are formed, however nurture changes nature by changing one's environment to change the natural behavior one posses. Nurture is more dominant feature for people's psychological development due to the environment one's in. Nurture is dominant because the environment can change a person's gene features allowing their to cancel out the negative personality they naturally have in their genes. Nature is very deceptive because someone's destiny to be a crazy psychopath can become the opposite in the future, this is the result from environmental, someone raised positively will shape

Nature v. Nurture is the long lasting debate about whether people inherit their personality traits from their parents or if they are developed through their environment. Neither position has been proven because it is hard to find solid, irrefutable, scientific evidence to support either one. Nature v. Nurture can deal with many aspects of a person’s personality, such as intelligence and how a person was able to be as smart as they are. Intelligence is something that can be inherited, just as people inherited their physical characteristics. However, some feel that children are raised to be intelligent, and that kids cannot inherit something that is not visible or tangible. Maternal twins are a good study of Nature v. Nurture, because

For more than a century, researchers and psychologists, such as Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and many others, have been trying to understand how people are transformed by their environment. Researchers have mainly argued whether it is in fact our environment or rather genetics, our biological pre-wiring, which has influenced human behavior. This concept ultimately facilitated what is now known as the Nature versus Nurture debate. The Nature aspect states that human behavior is predetermined by our inherited genes or is the product of our innate behavior. The Nurture side of the disagreement postulates that human behavior stems from acquired attributes through individual learning and experiences. Correspondingly, the Object Relations Theory in psychoanalytic psychology supports the position that a person’s natural environment (i.e. family, peers, acquaintances, society) forms human development. The Object Relations theory stresses that it is the relationships between people, more specially family, often between mother and child, that crafts the human psyche.