The Nature-Nurture Debate Flashcards
What did early nativist Rene Descartes argue?
That human characteristics and even some aspects of knowledge are hereditary
What did empiricist John Locke argue?
That the mind is a blank slate at birth upon which learning and experience writes. This is as a result of the environment.
What is the heritability coefficient?
It is a number from 0-1 indicating the extent to which a certain characteristic is hereditary. IQ in 0.5, depression 0.4 and height 0.9.
What is the nurture side of the debate?
It is a broad concept, so Lerner identified levels of environment There is pre-natal, the mothers’ physical and psychological state during pregnancy, and post-natal such as social conditions and cultural/historical context they are a part of.
What is the interactionist approach?
A combination of nature and nurture - in Attachment we see that a child’s innate temperament will influence its behaviour, and a mother’s response to that temperament will influence its future behaviour.
What is the diathesis-stress model?
Models of mental illness emphasis nature/nurture combine. It suggests that schizophrenia is caused by a biological vulnerability, which is expressed by an environmental trigger. Tienari found that Finnish adoptees are most likely to develop schizophrenia if they had biological relatives with history and dysfunctional family relationships.
What are epigenetics?
A change in our genetic activity without a change in our genetic code. Aspects of our lifestyle, like smoking, diet, pollution or war, leave epigenetic marks on our DNA. These tell our bodies which genes to ignore and which to use, influencing our children’s genome also. It therefore introduces a third element into the nature-nurture debate - life experience of previous generations.
What was Dias and Ressler’s study into epigenetics?
They gave male lab mice shocks every time they were exposed to a perfume, and the mice showed a fear reaction whenever they detected the smell. The rat’s children and grandchildren also feared the smell, despite not ever having been shocked.
What is the limitation - implications of nativism and empiricism?
An extreme determinist stance has led to controversy such as that which attempted to link race, genetics and intelligence, and therefore eugenic policies.
Behaviour shaping, as proposed by empiricists, has a practical application. Desirable behaviours are reinforced and undesirable ones extinguished. This may lead to a society which controls and manipulates citizens using this technique.
What is the strength - shared and unshared environments?
Research attempting to use concordance rates is complicated by the fact that siblings raised in the same family may have not experienced the same upbringing. Dunn and Plomin suggest that different children with different temperaments would be shaped differently by shared life events, therefore as if they have unshared environments. This explains how MZ twins don’t have 100% concordance, supporting the interactionist approach.
What is the limitation - constructivism?
People create their own nurture by selecting activities that are appropriate for their nature. For example, naturally aggressive children are likely to feel more comfortable around other aggressive children and this will affect their behaviour. This is niche-picking and niche-building - evidence that it is impossible and illogical to try and fully separate nature and nurture.
