nature and nurture A03 Flashcards
adoption studies
P) One strength of research into the nature nurture debate is the use of adoption studies.
E) Adoption studies are useful because they separate the competing influences of nature and nurture. If adopted children are found to be more similar to their adoptive parents, this suggests the environment is the bigger influence. Whereas, if adopted children are more similar to their biological parents (no influence on their environment) then genetic factors are presumed to dominate.
E) A meta-analysis of adoption studies by Soo Rhee and Irwin Waldman (2002) found that genetic influences accounted for 42% of the variance in aggression
L) This shows how research can separate the influences of nature and nurture.
adoption studies counterpoint
However, research suggests that this approach may be misguided, that nature and nurture are not two entities that can simply be pulled apart. According to Robert Plomin 1994) people create their own nurture by actively selecting environments that are appropriate for their nature. Thus, a naturally aggressive child is likely to feel more comfortable with children who show similar behaviours and will choose their environment accordingly. Then, their chosen companions further influence their development. Plomin refers to this as niche-picking.
This suggests that it does not make sense to look at evidence of either nature or nurture
Epigenetics
P) Another strength of the debate is support for epigenetics.
E) One example of how environmental effects can span generations presumably through epigenetic effects comes from events of the Second World War. In 1944, the Nazis blocked the distribution of food to the Dutch people and 22,000 died of starvation, in what became called the Dutch Hunger Winter.
E) Ezra Susser and Shang Lin
1992) report that women who became pregnant during the famine went on to have low birth weight babies. Whilst this may be unsurprising, what is more interesting is that these babies were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia when they grew up compared to more typical population rates.
L) This supports the view that the life experiences of previous generations can leave epigenetic markers’ that influence the health of their offspring.
real-world application
P) A further strength of the nature-nurture debate is that it has real-world application.
E) Research suggests that OCD is a highly heritable mental disorder. For exampie Gerald Nestadt et al. (2010) put the heritability rate at .76. Such understanding can inform genetic counselling because it is important to understand that high heritability does not mean it is inevitable that the individual will go on to develop the disorder.
E) This means that people who have a high genetic risk of OCD because of their family background can receive advice about the likeliheod of developing the disorder and how they might prevent this (e.g. learn to manage stress).
L) This shows that the debate is not just a theoretical one but that it is important, at a
practical level, to understand the interaction between nature and nurture
