Nature Nurture debate Flashcards
The debate
The extent to which our behaviour is due to our environment or our biology.
Nativism
Rene Descartes- the idea human characteristics is innate
Empiricism
John Locke- the mind is a tabula rosa. What we become is a result of our environment
Heritability
The degree to which something is inherited can be described with a hereditary coefficient (0-1.0 scale)
Plomin concluded IQ was 0.5 (large meta analysis)
Levels of environment
Lerner- our environment can operate at different levels.
Methods to investigate nature nurture
Family, twin and adoption studies
Family studies
Looks at shared DNA and shared traits
useful to gather many pps
doesn’t isolate nature/ nurture
Twin studies
Compares MZ and DZ twins
they are each others control
they share an environment
adoption studies
compares child with both parents
best way to split nature/ nurture
no control for prenatal environment.
Constructivism
Nature creates nurture
Atavism
Epigenetics
Nurture creates nature
Dias and Ressler- taught rates to fear a scent with electrocution and children showed the same response.
Diathesis stress model
There can be a genetic risk but there needs to be an environmental stressor
Caspi et al
Implications
Could suggest people are innately better than others and we could change someone completely based on their environment (e.g conversion therapy)
Shared and unshared environments
You can share the same environment with completely different experiences which could explain the not 100% concordance in MZ twins.
Gene-environment interaction
Scarr and McCartney
Passive, evocative, active interaction
