ID: Nature Vs Nurture

Question 1

What is the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 1

Aspects of behaviour r products of inherited characteristics + how they interact

Question 2

What is Nature?

Answer 2

Behaviour seen as a product of innate due to heredity/bio influences

Question 3

Nurture

Answer 3

Behaviour = product of environmental influences (physical +social world)

Question 4

Define Heritability

Answer 4

Proportion of differences between individuals in pop (due to traits)

Question 5

Define Heredity

Answer 5

Genetic transmission of mental and physical characteristics passed from one gen to another

Question 6

How can you measure Nat/nurt?

Answer 6

Concordance rates (fam/twin/adoption studies(similar behaviours)

Question 7

What theory can cause schizophrenia due to contradictory messages?

Answer 7

Double bind theory

Question 8

What is the percentage of the risk of diagnosed schizophrenia of the general population?

Answer 8

1%

Question 9

What did gottesman and shields find in their study of 40 families?

Answer 9

The risk of schizophrenia increased to 46% for those whose parents had schizophrenia

Question 10

What is the interactionist approach?

Answer 10

Process of nature and nurture working together

Question 11

give an example of interactionist approach (Bowlby/kaggan)

Answer 11

Bowlby - baby’s att type determined by parental love (nurture)
Jerome kaggan - baby’s temperament affects relation (nature)
nature creates nurture - temperament = parents response

Question 12

What is the diathesis stress model?

Answer 12

behaviour caused by bio/environmental vulnerability but only expressed by a trigger. e.g (person with low agression gene) may have experienced childhood trauma.

Question 13

define epigenetics

Answer 13

The way our genes are marked, without our genes actually changing ( the way their switched on and off

Question 14

give a strength of the nat/nurt debate

Answer 14

-the usefulness of adoption studies
-separate competing influences of nat/nurt
-kids similar/not sim to adopted + bio parents
- suggesting environment or bio may be stronger influence
-Rhee + waldman - meta analysis of adoption studies, found that genetic influences accounted for 41% of the variance in aggression

Question 15

give a limitation/ counter of adoption studies as a strength of the nat/nurt debate

Answer 15

misguided approach as nat and nurt can not be simply pulled apart
-according to Plomin, people pick own nurture by selecting nature by actively seeking environments they may feel comfortable in.
-e.g. aggressive child may feel more comfortable around kids who show similar behaviours
-plomin refers to this as nice-picking
-suggests looking at evidence for nat/nurt may not be useful

Question 16

give one strength nat/nurt debate

Answer 16

-support for epigenetics
-Dutch hunger winter - susser and lin reported pregnant women during famine had low birth weight babies and twice as likely to develop schizophrenia when grew up.
-supports view that life experiences of previous generations can have epigenetic markers that influence the health of their offspring.

Question 17

Give another support of deabte

Answer 17

Real world application
-research suggests that OCD is a highly heritable mental disorder
-Nesdalt put heritability rate at 76
-high heritability doesn’t mean inevitable that patient will have disorder
- people who have high genetic risk of OCD ca n receive advice about likelihood of developing disorder and how to prevent
-debate is important at practical level to understand interaction