I&D - The nature-nurture debate

Question 1

Environment

Answer 1

Everything that is outside the body, which includes people, events and the physical world.

Question 2

Heredity

Answer 2

The process by which traits are passed from parents to their offspring, usually referring to genetic inheritance.

Question 3

Interactionist approach

Answer 3

With reference to the nature-nurture debate, the view that the processes of nature and nurture work together rather than in opposition.

Question 4

Nature

Answer 4

Behaviour is seen to be a product of innate (biological or genetic) factors.

Question 5

Nature-nurture debate

Answer 5

The argument as to whether a person’s development is mainly due to their genes or to environmental influences.

Question 6

Nurture

Answer 6

Behaviour is a product of environmental influences.

Question 7

What are the nature arguments in the nature-nurture debate?

Answer 7

Genetic explanations.

Evolutionary explanations.

Question 8

What are the nurture arguments in the nature-nurture debate?

Answer 8

Behaviourism.
Social learning theory.
Other explanations - the environment.

Question 9

Describe genetic explanations as an example of the influence of nature in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 9

Family, twin and adoption studies show that the closer two individuals are genetically, the more likely that both of them will develop the same behaviours. For example, schizophrenia, addiction and criminal behaviours.

For example, he concordance rate for a mental disorder such as schizophrenia is about 40% for MZ twins (who have identical genes) and 7% for DZ twins (who, on average, share 50% of their genes). Joseph, 2004. This close similarity for individuals with the same genes shows that nature has a major contribution to the disorder.

Question 10

Give a practical example showing how genetic explanations influence behaviour in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 10

For example, he concordance rate for a mental disorder such as schizophrenia is about 40% for MZ twins (who have identical genes) and 7% for DZ twins (who, on average, share 50% of their genes). Joseph, 2004. This close similarity for individuals with the same genes shows that nature has a major contribution to the disorder.

High SERT and low COMT activity leads to OCD.

Question 11

Describe evolutionary explanations as an example of the influence of nature in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 11

Any evolutionary explanation is based on the principle that a behaviour or characteristic that promotes survival and reproduction will be naturally selected. This is because such behaviours/characteristics are adaptive and thus the genes for that behaviour/characteristic will be passed on to subsequent generations.

Question 12

What are evolutionary explanations based on?

Answer 12

Any evolutionary explanation is based on the principle that a behaviour or characteristic that promotes survival and reproduction will be naturally selected.

Question 13

Give a practical example showing how evolutionary explanations influence behaviour in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 13

For example, Bowlby (1969) proposed that attachment was adaptive because it meant an infant was more likely to be protected and therefore more likely to survive. In addition, attachment promotes close relationships which would foster successful reproduction. Therefore, attachment behaviours are naturally selected, which can only be done through genetic mechanisms.

Question 14

What view was adopted by the behaviourists?

Answer 14

The view that the newborn infant is a tabula rosa, a blank state on which experience is written, adopted from the 17th century view from the philosopher John Locke.

Question 15

Describe behaviourism as an example of the influence of nurture influences behaviour in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 15

Behaviourists assume that all behaviour can be explained in terms of experience alone. B.F. Skinner used the concepts of classical and operant conditioning to explain learning.

For example, behaviourists suggested that attachment could be explained in terms of classical conditioning (food is the mother who feeds the baby) or operant conditioning (food reduces the discomfort of hunger and is therefore rewarding).

Question 16

Give a practical example showing how behaviourism influences behaviour in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 16

For example, behaviourists suggested that attachment could be explained in terms of classical conditioning (food is the mother who feeds the baby) or operant conditioning (food reduces the discomfort of hunger and is therefore rewarding).

Phobics must have an original trauma.

Question 17

Describe social learning theory as an example of the influence of nurture influences behaviour in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 17

Bandura’s view was less extreme than behaviourists but he too proposed that behaviour is acquired through learning, adding the new dimension of indirect (vicarious) reinforcement.

But Bandura did also allow that biology had a role to play; for example he acknowledged that the urge to behave aggressively might be biological, but the important point was the way a person learns to express anger is acquired through environmental influences (direct and indirect reinforcement).

Question 18

Give a practical example showing how social learning theory influences behaviour in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 18

Bandura acknowledged that the urge to behave aggressively might be biological, but the important point was the way a person learns to express anger is acquired through environmental influences (direct and indirect reinforcement).

Phobics may learn extreme fear from parent models.

Question 19

Describe the environment as an example of the influence of nurture influences behaviour in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 19

Our families/friends/school causes behavioural outcomes.

Question 20

Give a practical example showing how the environment influences behaviour in the nature-nurture debate

Answer 20

Beck’s negative triad. Repeated failure leads to withdrawal and hopelessness.

The double blind theory of schizophrenia (Bateson et al., 1956) suggests that schizophrenia develops in children who frequently receive contradictory messages from their parents; for example, if a mother tells her son that she loves him, yet at the same time turns her head away in disgust. Such conflicting messages about her feelings prevent the child developing an internally consistent construction of reality, which may lead to symptoms of schizophrenia.

Question 21

What evidence is there for nature in the nature-nurture debate?

Answer 21

• Concordance rates (e.g. OCD).
• Neural correlates.
• Drug therapies.
• Eugenics.

Question 22

What evidence is there for nurture in the nature-nurture debate?

Answer 22

• Token economy.
• Rutter et als. ERA study.
• Flooding/systematic desensitisation.

Question 23

What evidence is there for both nature and nurture together in the nature-nurture debate?

Answer 23

The diathesis-stress model.

Question 24

How is there a subtext relating to politics underlying the nature-nurture debate?

Answer 24

The contrasting concepts of human nature have tended to correlate with contrasting political ideals.

On one side, ‘nature’ has been linked with 20th century eugenics (enforced selective breeding) as advocated, for example, by the Nazis. If nature determines behaviour, then the human stock can be improved by selective breeding. Many countries (particularly the US) have practised selective breeding by sterilising thousands of people deemed ‘feeble-minded’.

On the other side, the ‘environment is all’ idea is popular with people who believe that any human trait can be altered with the appropriate changes in social institutions. This has led to equally brutal regimes under leaders such as Stalin (in the former Soviet Union) and Pol Pot (in Cambodia) who believed that you could engineer the behaviour of others through conditioning so that they behaved as you wished them to behave.

Such political agendas mean that arguments for or against nature (or nurture) may be as much founded on political beliefs as on scientific evidence (Pinker, 2003).