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The Nature-Nurture Debate - Coggle Diagram
The Nature-Nurture Debate
Nature
refers to inherited influences or hereditary
early nativists such as Rene Descartes argues that all human characteristics are innate
psychological characteristics like intelligence or personality are determined by biological factors just as physical characteristics like eye and hair colour
Nurture
Refers to the influence of experience and environment
Empiricists argues that the mind is a blank slate at birth which is shaped by the environment. Later became important feature of the behaviourist approach
Richard Lerner has identified different levels of environment
prenatal factors such as how physical influences(smoking) or psychological influences(music) affects a foetus
more generally development is influence's by postnatal e.g social conditions a child grows up in
Measuring nature and nurture
When two people have similar trait they can be represented by a correlation coefficient and is called concordance. Such concordance provides an estimate about the extent to which a trait is inherited - called heritability
heritability measures how well differences in people's gene account for differences in people's traits.#. a figure of 0.1 means genes contribute to nothing to individual differences and 1.0 means genes are the only reason for individual differences
general figure for IQ is 0.5 across multiple populations which means half is genetic factors and half is environment
The Interactionist Approach
Nature and nurture approach is more about discussing how nature and nurture interact. As its not a debate about one or another because any behaviour/characteristics from a combination of both
eye colour is not completely determined by genes as 0.8 heritability
Example is john bowlby claimed that baby attachment is is determined by warmth and parent love(environment). jerome kagan proposed that babies innate personality (temperament) also effects attachment. So nature creates nurture
Adoption Studies
If adopted children are found to be more similar to adaptive parents then suggests the environment is bigger influence. whereas if more similar to their biological parents, then genetic factors are more prominent
A meta-analysis of adoption studies by Soo Rhee and Irwin Waldman found that genetic influences accounted for 41% of the variance in aggression
Epigenetics
Nazis blocked the distribution of foods to the Dutch people. Ezra Susser and shang lin report that women who were pregnant during the famine went to have weight loss babies and that the babies were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia
supports the view that life experiences of previous generations can leave a epigenetics markers
Real World Applications
suggests that ocd is highly heritable mental disorder