Nature vs. Nurture: What contributes to the way an individual thinks?

This topic has been debated a lot and if you're a psychology major or taking up a health allied degree program, chances are you've written countless papers regarding nature vs. nurture. Many argues that both perspective compliment each other in influencing a person's psychology but recent studies leans towards the standpoint of nature. Find out why...

Nature and nurture work together and both can influence an individual state of being, however, it is the extent to how much it can affect a certain aspect in an individual that their significance varies. In the nurture aspect, I came across the empiricism that argues that the human mind is a blank slate that will gradually be filled throughout experiencing life (Psillos & Curd, 2010). Also, it emphasizes that learning plays a crucial role in the psychological characteristics and behavioral differences of individuals, thus, the concept of maturation is only applicable to a biological aspect (Psillos & Curd, 2010). A theory that supported this ideation is Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (1977) which implies aggression can be learned by observation and imitation for this was the by-product of Bandura’s famous ‘bobo doll’ experiment in 1961 (Bandura, 1977; Bandura, 2008).

Bobo Doll Experiment

However, in the aspect of behavioral genetics, behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin in his book entitled ‘Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are’ (2018), claimed that “nature, not nurture is what makes us who we are.” He emphasizes that genetics can provide more explanation in accordance to psychological differences that is evident among people as opposed to all other factors integrated. In addition, he stated that genetics is responsible for fifty percent of psychological differences not only in school achievement and mental health but in all psychological traits, ranging from personality to intellectual capabilities. And, all of this was the by-product of heritability and genetic influences which most people view as innate, immutable, and deterministic but in reality, it will only be in the case of single-gene disorders (Plomin, 2019). Uncommon to the public, is the fact that complex traits not only psychological traits but most of the medical burden in society is caused by common disorders that are greatly impacted by many genes’ small effect contrary to the understanding that the implication is due to single genes (Plomin, 2019).

Thus, the genetic (nature) point of view is not deterministic rather, it is probabilistic.

To dive into the specificity of genetic probability, the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) was pioneered by Plomin, making it the world's largest study of the development of twins starting with 15,000 pairs that are examined 14 times through young adulthood and currently about 10,000 pairs continue to participate (Plomin, 2019). In light of this, given the studies mentioned above, I acknowledge the importance of nurture (environment), however, I realized that the way the environment truly works is very different from how we perceived it before genetics came into view. Nature was long viewed as deterministic but upon discovering that it is far from it and that it is more probabilistic, I was enlightened of its potential to ground cognition, information processing, and even psychological traits.

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In your perspective, is it nature or nurture? or both? Tell me what you think about the matter by sending an email or reaching out to my social media channels. I'm excited to hear about your thoughts!

REFERENCES:

Psillos, S., Curd, M. (2010). The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science (1. publ. in paperback ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 129–38. ISBN 978-0415546133.

Bandura, A. (2008). Social cognitive theory of mass communication. In J. Bryant & M. B. Oliver (Eds.), Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research (pp. 94-124). New York, NY: Routledge.

Plomin, R. [Robert Plomin] (2019 November 8). How DNA Makes Us Who We Are | Robert Plomin | Talks at Google. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k41lteal1M

Plomin, R. (2018). Blueprint: How DNA makes us who we are. MIT Press.