Nature-Nurture Blog

The nature vs. nurture debate within psychology is a product of either inherited (genetic) or acquired (learned) characteristics. 

• Nature refers to all of the genes and hereditary factors that influence who we are—from our physical appearance to our personality characteristics.

• Nurture refers to all the environmental variables that impact who we are, including our early childhood experiences, how we were raised, our social relationships, and our surrounding culture.

The nature-nurture debate is concerned with the relative contribution that both influences make to human behavior.

1) High Blood Pressure & Obesity 

An example of this debate is whether high blood pressure and obesity is a health risk that is passed genetically from parent to child.

Nurture proponents point to the poor eating habits that cause obesity and the limited ability to regulate personal habits that lead to high blood pressure.

2) Personality

The development of personality is often part of nature versus nurture debate. People want to know how children develop their personalities. Is personality an influence of the parent through genetics or learned traits from their environment. Nurture advocates would suggest that growing up under the direct presence of the mother it was a learned personality, not genetically passed.

3) Occupation

A person's ability to perform in a certain occupation also leads to a nature versus nurture debate. If a child follows in a parent's footsteps in a given career, someone might suggest a natural inclination toward the craft. Others might point to the nurturing that took place in the home as the child was being raised by that particular parent. This easily could have been the product of a learned behavior

4) Homosexuality

Another example and one of the most debated topics on nature versus nurture today relates to homosexuality. Nature proponents believe that homosexuality is genetic or outside of a person's control. Nurture proponents believe that homosexuality is a choice or a behavior influenced by environmental factors.

5) Intelligence

Those who would argue that nature is large to thank for the individual’s ability to achieve greatness might point to his or her parents and use their level of intelligence as a reason for why he or she is so successful.Those who would argue that a child's intelligence was affected by nurture would look at the child's educational background as well as how his or her parents raised her.

I do not believe that any one-factor out rules in determining how our lives will turn out. I think that the person I am, the person you are, the people our children will be, is determined by many different things. I think, however, that those things can be broadly put into three categories. I think that nurture has more to do with how people act then nature. Some people live in different environments causing them to act differently. Different circumstances mean different behavior. Even though how you are born and what genetics were passed down does affect you, nurture affects you much more because anyone can raise their child a certain way. If you raise your child to be an honest person, they will most likely always try to be honest, because that’s what they have always known. Even if you decided not to raise your child a certain way, they would get ideas from people around them to do what they do. I definitely think outer influences have more effect than genetics.

“Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions . . . by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.” 

― Malcolm Gladwell

Sources: 

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/nature-vs-nurture

https://explorable.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate