The Psychological Debate Of Nature Versus Nurture- Is Behavior Influenced By Innate Drives That We Are Born With

Personality and how we behave have been of much interest to psychologists for a long time now and because of this there have been many theories and theorists that have been developed. Personality is defined as consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within and individual (Fritzley, 2012, p. 10). There are six main approaches to personality psychology they include: biological approach, humanistic approach, behaviorist approach, trait approach, psychoanalytic approach and cognitive approach. Each approach shines a little light onto why we behave the way we do and how our personalities are formed, the approaches contain many different theories from

Nature or Nurture. Nature may be all of the genes and hereditary factors with which influence them to become who they are such as physical appearances and personality characteristics. Nurturing impacts people’s lives as well as how they are raised and all the environmental factors. In combination, these qualities can be the true identity of oneself. Many people may argue that nurture appears to a play huge factor in the two, but others may think otherwise. Not having both as a characteristic can have a negative effect on a person physically and mentally. The debate of nature versus nurture appears to be the oldest argument known to man, and it still remains to be unanswered. In the old-age argument nature versus nurture, nature may play a huge role in determining a person’s true identity.

One main goal of psychology has been established a model to describe and understand human personality. The five-factor model of personality is the most widely used model in describing personality types. The components of the Big Five are extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.

Is the question really Nature versus Nurture or is it Nature working with Nurture? These two forces work together to form a person throughout his or her life. Some scientists believe that personality is based on genetic predispositions, which is known as nature. Other scientists believe the way a person acts is from life experiences, the way a person is taught, and the environment in which a person grew up is known as nurture. In all honesty, the two go hand in hand. One side may pull a bit harder from time to time but the two never fully let go. According to John Watson, one of the strongest psychologists who propose environmental learning as a dominating side in the nature versus nurture debate once said that he can be able to train a baby randomly chosen in a group of 12 infants, to become any type of specialist Watson wants. He stated that he could train him to be such regardless of the child 's potentialities, talents and race. Lerner (2002) expressed a similar position that human behavior cannot be fully understood without mentioning the changing relationship between human and the contextual environment. Nature and nurture have influences towards many aspects such as, personality, intelligence and physical development.

Personality is looked at everyday purposely and accidently. Whether you are judging how your new professor for the semester will be, or if you are studying your best friend for a project, personality is studied abundantly. While there are many ways to define personality, there is not a worldwide definition around. Personality is the unique combination of patterns that influence behavior, thought, motivation, and emotion in a human being (boundless.com). That is one of many ways of defining personality. When examining personality, there are four main approachable theories including: The Psychodynamic Approach, The Trait Approach, The Social-Cognitive Approach, and The Humanistic Approach.

In psychology, it has long been debated whether nature or nurture influence human behaviours more extensively. This has captured the interest of many psychologists as determining an answer can improve society. For instance, if it is proven that nurture significantly impacts human development greater than nature, we can nurture children to abstain from violence and drugs, resulting in a decrease of crime in society. Nurture refers to the environmental factors and thus the experiences and upbringing of people were studied to see how it affected their development. For example, the Zimbardo Prison Study, Harlow’s Monkey Experiments, and Genie are all exceptional examples of how nurture affects cognitive development and behaviors. Conversely, nature refers to the genetic factors that affect human development. To support this argument that genetics play a more significant role in human behaviours and development, psychologists focused on studying siblings and children. More specifically, The Boy With No Penis, the Jim siblings, and Sandra Scarr’s observations were studied to further understand the heritability of certain behavioral traits and the undeterring quality of nature. By examining these experiments and studies, a possible answer can be reached.

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.

For many years, psychologists have been interested in studying human behavior and how our brains function. Psychological research has been mainly geared towards discovering parts of the brain, and the environment that influences our behavior as individuals. In other words, research aims to provide reasons why people behave the way they do, and what makes individuals different from each other. Much to the joy of experts in the field, major strides have been made in not only understanding, but also predicting human behavior. Concepts such as the influence of nature versus nurture on personal development, introversion or extroversion, and introspection have provided more insight into the way people think and interact with others and the environment.

In our society there are many controversial topics that are discussed amongst many of us. Sociology reveals those topics and shines a light on them. Without sociology, we wouldn 't be able to decipher what we think is “common sense”, from actual facts and evidence. After carefully studying an abundance of data from things such as experiments, statistics, and the macro perspective of experiences, only then can we find what we think may be the truth. A specific example of a controversial sociological topic is the debate of nature v. nurture. This debate has been going on for a very long time, and it really depends on who you talk to about it. What nature v. nurture refers to is that you are either the person you are because of heredity, or you are who you are because of society and are thus, a product of your environment. People 's experiences and own personal findings affect how they see this particular subject matter. If you were to ask John Locke, he would tell you that “a child 's mind is a (blank slate). They become what they are taught to be.” (Thio) Now this probably makes sense to you, at least to some degree. But to others this doesn 't make sense at all. Some people, whether conscious or unconscious of it, will blame almost anything on heredity. Things like “You got that attitude from your mother.” or “Your father used to say that same thing when he was your age.” The question is, was it really passed down to you, or did you learn it? Things like this are the entire

Could one argue that studying Freud, the neo Freudians, Skinner, Maslow, and others is irrelevant in view of research demonstrating that genetics and physiological or anatomical changes in the brain affect personality?

The ongoing debate of Nature vs Nurture is one of the oldest philosophical issues. The nature theory argues that all genes, and hereditary factors, influences an individual in terms of their physical appearance to their personality characteristics (Cherry, 2017). Conversely, the nurture theory argues that all environmental variables impact who individuals are, including early childhood experiences, how individuals were raised, social relationships, and surrounding culture (Cherry, 2017). However, people are born neither “good” nor “bad”, but they are a product of their social and psychological traits, influenced by their upbringing and environment. Today, the validity of biological and psychological explanation of criminality is no longer

In psychology, the Big Five personality traits are five broad domains or dimensions of personality that are used to describe human personality. The theory based on the Big Five factors is called the Five Factor Model (FFM)[1] The Big Five factors are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Gordon Allport firmly believed that traits were a part of our nervous systems and developed of at least 200 traits he believed were a part of it. Raymond Cattell was able to reduce the numbers to between 16 and 23 with something called factor analysis. After several groups researched, they were able to develop something called the Five-Factor Model. These Five were; neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The Humanistic Perspective is something that is still widely being researched and improved

Intelligence has been a cause of debate between psychological researchers for many years. This question of nature vs nurture can be examined in many ways. Although many psychologists argue for and against the nature nurture debate and agree that the many characteristics and personality traits are caused by nature and nurture both working together. Through the many developmental studies of famous researchers, it helps us assume that the influence of nurture outweighs that of nature. Plato and Aristotle, for instance, were both philosophers with different views on the issue. Plato believed that knowledge and behaviour were due to innate factors, meaning heredity, whilst Aristotle, also written by philosopher John Locke backed up the idea of tabula

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.