Nature vs Nurture

What is nature?

Inherited, genetic influences of behaviour and that all behaviour is innate

What is nurture?

Behaviour is taught and influenced by the environment and experience

How is nature or nurture measured?

Concordance rates represented by a correlation coefficient of how similar people are. These provide an estimation of to what extent a trait is inherited or a result of the environment.

What does an interactionist approach say?

Factors are not separate or work alone but combine.

Strengths of the debate

• Research support - Use of adoption studies to investigate nature or nurture - Rhee and Waldman found that 41% of variation in aggression was biological

• Support for epigenetics - those who experienced the famine in ww2 went on to have low weight babies - nurture can affect future generations

• Real world application for inherited disorders - genetic counselling can provide advice for those with disordered family on how to manage and prevent their own disorder

Limitation of the debate

• Nature and Nurture is an interactionist system - they should not be pulled apart as in real life they work together - niche picking is when people choose their own nurture as a result of their nature