Theoretical Propositions: Are You A Natural?

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.

A controversial topic still to this day is whether or not environmental and outside factors play a bigger role in a person’s development or genetics. Many psychologists have founded theories around childhood development, such as, Erikson, Bandura, who believe it’s the social interactions that really help to shape one’s growth. However, there are some who see both sides, such as, Freud, who provides evidence that it can be both, genes and nurture. Based on the information of many psychologist’s research, the most prominent make up of a person’s development, personality and behavior is based on nurture rather than nature.

Table 3-1 examines the correlations between selected characteristics for the identical twins separated at birth and the twins raised together. When compared to each other, they both have very similar brain wave activity, blood pressure and heart rate in the physiological characteristics. The Raven intelligence test was very similar, but the WAIS IQ displayed a bit of difference when compared to the other comparisons made. Personality wise, they typically had similar personalities at the same rate as twins raised together. Psychological interests were off a little bit, but still very similar. The twins that were separated at birth had less similar psychological interests compared to the twins

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).

Nature versus nurture is one of the most controversial topics of discussion among human beings. For many years, phycologist’s have been studying various people’s behavioral patterns in order to settle the debate. The argument of nature suggests that a person is born with a pre-conceived set of personality traits that determine the way they will act for the rest of their life. That is to say that all characteristics of a person, not just physical appearance, are passed down through genetics. The case with nurture states the idea that every person, no matter where they are from, is born with a blank slate. In other words, asserting that the behavior of someone is solely a result of their surroundings. This subject often comes up when a person

Holzinger, G. Klosch, and B. Saletu (2015) at the Institute for Consciousness and Dream Research involved an initial forty participants, thirty females and ten males, ranging in age from twenty to fifty-nine. All participants were volunteers recruited through unspecified media (Holzinger et al., 2015). The only pre-requirement, as stated in the advertisement, was for participants to be experiencing frequent nightmares at least twice a week (Holzinger 2014). In addition, participant’s nightmares had to fit the institutes definition as ‘recurrent awakening from sleep with recall of intensely disturbing dream mentation’s and were accompanied by dysphonic emotion’ (p. 355). Prior to acceptance to the study, all participants were required to go through a screening process to eliminate any person with additional sleep behavior disorders, excluding anyone experiencing sleepwalking or night terrors and anyone suffering from REM sleep behavior disorder, epileptic seizures, or psychotic symptoms. After passing all screenings, participants were randomly assigned to two groups; group A: Gestalt therapy group (GTG) and group B: Gestalt and lucid dreaming therapy group (LDG) where each group had twenty members.

In the study, 50 participants were asked to comment on how well they had slept the night before. The participants were told that most adults spend 20-25% of their sleep in rapid eye movement (REM) – deep sleep associated with dreaming. They were also told that those who spend more than 25% in REM sleep perform better on learning and memory tests compared to those who spend less than 20% of their sleep in REM. The participants were then hooked up to a machine to measure heart rate, pulse, and brain wave frequency to indicate the percentage of REM sleep they had the night before. But in actuality, the researchers only measured their brain wave frequency. They then randomly assigned participants to one of two groups: the “above average” sleep group or the “below

Bouchard and Lykken’s study has been criticized for many things. For one, other psychologists believe that the information published is not complete, and therefore their findings are not reliable. Another criticism is that Bouchard and Lykken do not consider many environmental factors that the twins experienced growing up, creating unreliable and biased research. The biggest issue people have with this study is the assumption Bouchard and Lykken made when they determine that the twins who grew up together had identical home environments. That the twins were not treated differently by their parents or their environment; that they had the same exact experiences growing up. This, the

There are a plethora of ideas and theories regarding the developmental psychology behind why people metamorphosize into different personalities and habits later in life. Developmental psychologists have developed several ways to try and determine where the determining factors are in peoples’ lives that cause the differences. Several of the theories tend to have overlaps in parts of the ideas such as the ideas of “nature vs nurture” and that of “social context.” These theories share the overlapping ideas that there are outside influences on the way a person turns out in life. While “nature vs nurture” states that there are outside influences, there is also a counterargument that the genetic make-up of a person is the determining factor for how that person develops later. Even still, there are some who also believe that both arguments of “nature vs nurture” have even attributes on the lives of people.

The nature vs nurture debate is one that naturalists and empiricists love to have. The naturalists are on the nature side of the debate; they believe that a person's development is primarily influenced by their genetic traits. The empiricists, on the other hand, side with the nurture part of the debate; they believed that a person's development is mostly influenced by the environment they are raised in. Most modern psychologist, however, don’t take such radical approaches. They instead accept that a person’s development is influenced by a mixture of both nature and nurture, although there is still debate over which plays a larger role (McLeod). In my life, both nature and nurture have played key roles in my development as a person and who I

To find out how sleep deprivation affects humans, Dement (1960) connected participants of his study to an electroencephalogram in his sleep laboratory. The participant got woken up any time they showed signs of entering REM sleep. I was found that REM sleep deprivation made test participants more aggressive and suffered from poor concentration than the control group. They also tried to enter REM sleep straight after going to sleep. They made 26 attempts to enter REM sleep by the seventh night. It is to conclude that REM sleep is necessary for proper brain functioning as the brain goes into REM rebound, when deprived of

Nature against nurture – that’s one of the most popular questions ever studied in psychology. Even today no one knows for sure what’s more valuable for our human development – nurture or nature. Many researches, experiments and discussions have been conducted to answer this question, but positive results are still unavailable. In this nature vs nurture essay you’ll find a brief history, significant characteristics of the nature versus nurture problem and fresh original thoughts on the

In Module 9 on the topic of Sleep and Dreams, was an interesting topic that was discussed in class as many people normally question why and how we dream. There isn’t a specific reason in how dreams are functioned but there are different interpretations and stereotypes that people think have meanings and others that don’t.

The point of this study was to see if humans are affected when partially deprived or suppressed of REM sleep. Eugene Aserinsky noticed that when a person was sleeping their eyes would start moving rapidly. Aserinsky confirmed this to be the REM sleep or dream sleep. For William Dement’s experiment he gathered 20 participants to stay overnight at the lab. The participants were allowed to sleep through Stage 1, which is the lightest sleep, but right as they began their REM sleep they were woken up. This was repeated several times and then the participants were sent home to get some regular sleep. When the participants came back the number of attempts to dream doubled. Dement concluded from this experiment was that humans need to dream because

Additionally, the study set two goals; 1) was to determine whether significant relationships could be found between PWB and objective dream content variables in a nonclinical population at fixed points in time, and 2) was to investigate the continuity between dream content and PWB over time.