The Nature-Nurture Debate Flashcards
what is the environment?
Everything that is outside our body, including people, events and the physical world. Any influence on behaviour which is non-genetic.
Nurture`
nurture refers to the influence of experience and the environment. Locke: The view that the mind is a ‘blank slate upon which experience writes upon’ is typical of an empiricist/ behaviourist approach e.g. John Locke.
Lerner identified different ‘levels’ of the environment, which ranged from pre-natal experiences (e.g. the mother’s physiological and psychological state during preganancy) to post-natal experiences (e.g. the socio-historical context within which the child grew up in).
what is nature?
Any influence on behaviour which is genetic e.g. the action of genes, neurochemistry, neurotransmitters and neurological structures. Early nativists such as Descartes argued that all human characteristics- and even some aspects of knowledge - are innate. Psychological characteristics such as intelligence or personality are determined by biological factors.
what does hereditary mean?
The process by which traits are passed from parents to their offspring, usually referring to genetic inheritance. The heritability coefficient can be used to quantify the extent to which a characteristic has a genetic basis. For example, intelligence appears to have a heritability coefficient of 0.5 (Plomin et al, 1994) and so the influences of nature and nurture are equal.
nature vs nurture debate
The argument as to whether a person’s development is mainly due to their genes or to environmental influences. Most researchers accept that behaviour is a product of the interaction between nature and nurture.
interactionist approach
With reference to the nature-nurture debate, this is the view
that the processes of nature and nurture work together rather than in opposition. They are linked in such a way that it does not make sense to separate the influences of the two. for example: Bowlby claimed that a babys attachment type is determined by the warmth and continuity of parental love (an environmental influence). Kagan proposed that a babys innate personality also affects the attachment relationship. thus, nature (a childs temperament), in real sense, creates nurture (the parents response), so environment and hereditary interact.
name the examples of the influences of nature on development
- genetic explanations
- evolutionary explanations
examples of the influences of nature- genetic explanations
The more closely related two individuals are, the more likely that they will develop the same behaviours. The concordance rate for a mental disorder such as schizophrenia is 40% for MZ twins and 7% for DZ twins. This illustrates how nature plays a part in contribution to the disorder. However, concordance rates for MZ twins are not 100%, despite being genetically identical. This suggests that nurture and the environment also plays a significant role in development.
examples of the influences of nature- evolutionary explanations
These are based on the principle that a behaviour which promotes survival will be naturally selected e.g. running away from fire or avoiding deep water. This is because such behaviours are adaptive, so the individual is more likely to survive to adulthood and reproduce. Bowlby proposed that attachment was adaptive as it
meant an infant was more likely to be protected due to displaying social releasers (innate, ‘cute’ behaviours which activates the adult mammalian attachment system) and features of infant-caregiver interactions (such as interactional synchrony and reciprocity). As such, the infant would be more likely to survive and reproduce as an adult.
examples of the influence of nurture- Behaviourism
Behaviourists assume that all behaviour can be explained in terms of experience alone. Skinner used the concepts of classical and operant conditioning to explain learning and suggests that attachment could be explained in terms of classical
conditioning where the food reduces the discomfort of hunger (negative reinforcement) and is therefore rewarding.
examples of influences of nurture- Social learning theory
Bandura proposed that behaviour is acquired indirectly through operant and classical conditioning but also by directly through vicarious reinforcement. He acknowledged that biology had a role to play e.g. the urge to act aggressively could be biological but the way a person learns to express anger is through environmental influences (such as through observing and imitating the methods of expression of anger displayed by the identified role models).
examples of influence of nurture- other explanations
The double blind theory of schizophrenia (Bateson et al, 1956) suggests that schizophrenia develops in children who frequently receive contradictory messages from parents and these conflicting messages prevents the child from developing an internal consistent construction of reality. This is because when the child behaves incorrectly, they are punished by a withdrawal of love from their parents, leading them to
believe that the world is dangerous (reflected in paranoid delusions) and confusing (reflected in disorganized thinking).
The Diathesis-stress model
suggests behaviour is caused by a biological or environmental vulnerability (diathesis) which is only expressed when coupled with a biological or environmental ‘trigger’ (stressor). for example, a person who inherits a genetic vulnerability for OCD may not develop a disorder. But combined with a psychological trigger (e.g traumatic experience) this may result in disorder appearing
epigenetics
refers to the change in our genetic activity without changing the genes themselves. it is a process that happens throughout life and is caused by interaction with our environment. aspects of our lifestyle or events we encounter (from smoking and diet to trauma and war) leave ‘marks’ on our DNA, which switch genes on or off. this explains why factors such as smoking have a longlife influence even after you actually stop- they have changed the way your genes will be expressed. these epigenetic changes may go on and influence the genetic codes of our children as well as their children. epigenetics therefore indroduces a thrid element into the nature-nurture debate- the life experience of previous generations
measuring nature and nurture
the degree to which two people are similar on a particular trait can be represented by a correlation coefficient called concordance. provides an estimate about the extent to which a trait is inherited- called heritability. a figure of differences between individuals in a population, with regards to a particular trait, that is due to genetic variation. a figure of 0.01 (1%) means genes contribute almost nothing to individual differences and 1.0 (100%) means genes are the only reason for individual differences. the general figure of heritability in IQ is about 0.5 across multiple studies in varying populations (Plomin). this means that half of a persons intelligence is determined by genetic factors and the other half must be environmental.
