Issues And Debates: Nature And Nurture

Question 1

What Is Nature?

Answer 1

• Belief that human characteristics are innate.
• Nativists argue that they are the result of heredity – the genetic transmission of mental and physical characteristics from one generation to the next.
• The heritability coefficient is used to assess heredity. It ranges from 0 – 1 and indicates the extent to which a characteristic has a genetic basis.
• A value of 1 means that the behaviour is entirely genetically determined.

Question 2

What Is Nurture?

Answer 2

• Nurture is the belief that human characteristics are a result of the environment.
• Empiricists argue that the mind is a blank slate and therefore learning and experience create behaviour.
• The ‘environment’ involves any influence on human behaviour that is non-genetic.
• This may range from pre-natal influences through to cultural and historical influences.

Question 3

The Relative Importance Of Heredity And Environment.

Answer 3

• Both heredity and environment are involved in the development of behaviour as there has never been a concordance rate that is 100%.
• Some argue that it makes little sense to try and separate the two.
• Psychologists therefore take an interactionist approach where heredity and the environment both interact.
• They try to work out the relative contribution of each influence in terms of what we think and what we do.
• E.g. diathesis stress model.

Question 4

What Is The Diathesis Stress Model?

Answer 4

• Diathesis stress model as an explanation for schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.
• The model suggests that psychopathology is caused by a biological or genetic vulnerability (the diathesis) which is only expressed when it is coupled with a trigger, either biological or environmental (the stressor).

Question 5

Evaluation: Criticising Nature.

Answer 5

• The extreme determinist stance that our inherited genetic make-up determines our characteristics and behaviours has led to controversy.
• Governments have attempted to link race, genetics and intelligence and this has been applied to eugenics policy such as the sterelisation of feeble-minded individuals in America.
• This means that the nature side of the nature-nurture debate can have negative implications.
• The nature aspect of human behaviour needs to be carefully considered to ensure that assumptions are not used incorrectly in society.

Question 6

Evaluation: Criticising Nature.

Answer 6

• The extreme determinist stance that our inherited genetic make-up determines our characteristics and behaviours has led to controversy.
• Governments have attempted to link race, genetics and intelligence and this has been applied to policies such as the 11+ exams.
• Cyril Burt wrongfully claimed that intelligence is innate, this led to the development of 11+ exams where many children were denied the same educational opportunities.
• The nature aspect of human behaviour needs to be carefully considered to ensure that assumptions are not used incorrectly in society.

Question 7

Evaluation: Supporting And Criticising Nurture.

Answer 7

• Behaviour shaping has had practical application in therapy.
• Desirable behaviours are selectively reinforced and undesirable behaviour are punished or ignored.
• However, if taken to the extreme, these assumptions may lead one to advocate a model of society that controls and manipulates its citizens using these techniques.
• This would be an ethical issue as some would argue that it removes individual’s free will.

Question 8

Evaluation: Criticising Nature.

Answer 8

• The premise of using twin studies is that the only differences between MZ and DZ twins is genetic similarity.
• However, environmental influences may mean that MZ twins are more similar; for example, they may be treated more similarly than DZ twins as they look the “same” and assumptions might be made that they are interested in the same things too.
• This means that the difference in concordance rates between MZ and DZ twins may actually be more due to nurture rather than nature

Question 9

Evaluation: Criticising Nature And Nurture.

Answer 9

• There is evidence to support that the interactionist approach is a more realist way of considering influences on behaviour.
• PKU (phenylketonuria) is caused by the inheritance of two recessive genes. If the child is diagnosed early, they are placed on a low protein diet for the first 12 years, which helps to revert this potentially lifelong disorder.
• Therefore, the disorder PKU (nature) is not expressed, because of an altered environment showing how nature and nurture interact to impact on behaviour.

Question 9

Evaluation: Criticising Nature And Nurture.

Answer 9

• There is evidence to support the diathesis-stress model as a more appropriate explanation of behaviour than the nature nurture approach.
• A Finnish Adoption Study compared 155 adopted children whose biological mothers had schizophrenia, with a matched group of children with no family history of schizophrenia.
• They found that the group with schizophrenic mothers had a 10% rate of schizophrenia, but they also discovered that all the reported cases of schizophrenia occurred in families rated as ‘disturbed’.
• When the family environment was rated as ‘healthy’, even in the high-risk sample (mother with schizophrenia), the occurrence of schizophrenia was well below the general population rates.
• This research provides evidence that schizophrenia is best explained by looking at an interaction between genetic inheritance and environmental triggers.