Nature-nurture debate Flashcards
What is the nature-nurture debate?
- concerned with the extent to which aspects of behaviour are a product of inherited or acquired characteristics
Why is it not a debate about one or the other?
- because any behaviour/ characteristic arises from a combination of both e.g.
Bowlby- baby’s attachment type is determined by the warmth & continuity of parental love (environmental influence) - Kagan a baby’s innate personality (temperament) also affects attachment relationship
nature creates nurture =interaction
How is the diathesis stress model an example of an interactionist theory?
- it suggests behaviour is caused by biological or environmental vulnerability (diathesis)
which is only expressed when coupled with a biological or environmental ‘trigger’ (stressor)
e.g. a person with a genetic vulnerability for OCD may not develop disorder> combined with a trigger (traumatic experience) may result in the disorder
What is epigenetics?
- refers to a change in our genetic activity without changing the genes themselves
- caused by interaction with the environment
Give an example of epigenetics occurring
-lifestyles or events e.g. smoking & diet to trauma leave ‘marks’ on our DNA which switch genes on and off
- this explains why factors such as smoking have a lifelong influence
- changed the way genes are expressed
What research shows how epigenetics can be passed on?
- Dias & Ressler (2014) gave mice electric shocks every time they were exposed to a smell of a chemical found in perfume
- mice showed a fear reaction to chemical, but so did mice’s children and grandchildren
- epigenetics introduce third element to debate- life experiences of previous generations
What is nurture?
- refers to inherited influences or heredity
What did early nativists argue?
- Descartes argued that all human characteristics- and even some aspects of knowledge are innate
-psychological characteristics like intelligence or personality are determined by biological factors ( genes) just as physical characteristics are
What is nurture?
- nurture refers to the influence of experience and the environment
What did Lerner identify?
- different levels of the environment
- prenatal factors, e.g. how physical influences (smoking) or psychological influences (music) affect a foetus
- postnatal factors influence development e.g. social condition child grows up
What do empiricists argues?
- John Locke argued that the mind is a blank state at birth ( tabula rasa) which is then shaped by the environment
-important feature of behaviourist approach
How can the degree to which two people are similar on a particular trait be represented?
- by a correlation coefficient and is called concordance
- concordance rates provide estimates about the extent to which a traits inherited - heritability
- What is heritability?
- this measures the proportion of differences between individuals in a population, with regards to a particular trait that is due to genetic variation
What does a figure of .01 and 1.0 mean?
.01- means genes contribute almost nothing to individual differences
1.0- means genes are the only reason for individual differences
What is a strength of research into the nature-nurture debate?
- use of adoption studies > they separate the competing influences of nature & nurture
- if adopted children are found to be more similar to their adoptive parents- suggests environment is the bigger influence
- if adopted children more similar to bio parents > genetics factors presumed to dominate
- meta- analysis of AS by Rhee & Waldman > genetic influences accounted for 41% of the variance in aggression
