1.1- Heredity

Heredity

nature- the predisposed characteristics that impact an individual’s physical, behavioral, and mental traits/processes

Environment

nurture- external factors an individual experiences, societal factors

evolution

focuses on natural selection, passing down of genes, and how behaviors come from ancestors

Charles Darwin

Published book, Origin of Species, which discussed natural selection and theory of evolution- organisms pass on traits that help them survive.

Eugenics

improving the genetic quality of the human population by promoting reproduction of individuals with desirable traits and discouraging undesirable ones

Henry Goddard

American Eugenist who pushed for using intelligence tests to rank individuals into different mental categories. He used this to argue that we should prevent ‘feeble-minded’ people from having children

Heritability

a mathematic measure to estimate how much genetic variation a population will have

Epigenetics

examines how the environment and a person’s behaviors affect a person’s genes and how they work

Plasticity

when the brain builds new neural pathways in response to a person’s experiences