7.1: Nature vs. Nurture
- Page ID
- 225442
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- Summarize how both heredity and environment interact to shape human development.
- Differentiate between passive, evocative, and active genotype-environment correlations.
- Describe the epigenetic framework.
- Analyze how environmental experiences can influence gene expression and developmental outcomes.
Nature and Nurture
The nature vs. nurture debate has existed for thousands of years, but in the mid-1800s, researcher Francis Galton coined the term "Nature vs. Nurture". The question at its foundation:
Does our biological make-up (genes) or the environment we grow up in influence our development and social advancement more?
The question seemed to be answered in the 1970s when Dr. John Money, a prominent psychologist, published his findings from the John-Joan Case. For years, Dr. Money continued to boast about a successful case study in which nurture proved more important than nature.
Born in 1965 as a biological male, Bruce Reimer suffered irreparable damage to his penis as an infant during a botched circumcision. Since Bruce was an identical twin, Dr. Money approached and encouraged Bruce's parents to have his gender reassigned by undergoing surgery to remove the remains of his external genitalia and construct rudimentary female genitals. Bruce's parents were told to raise him as a girl. Bruce was renamed Brenda.
However, Brenda/David rejected the female identity after puberty and chose to live as a male. It was only then that his mother told him of his biological status. In the late 1990s, David began speaking publicly about his experiences, finally causing others to question Money's methods and results—that environment can outweigh genetic influence.
Today, scientists and researchers agree that the debate is defunct- one does not outweigh the other. It takes both nature (heredity) and nurture (the environment) to influence one's development. It is difficult to isolate the root of any single characteristic as a result solely of nature or nurture, and most scholars believe that even determining the extent to which nature or nurture impacts a human feature is difficult to answer. Almost all human features are polygenic (a result of many genes) and multifactorial (a result of many genetic and environmental factors). It’s as if one’s genetic make-up sets up a range of possibilities, which may or may not be realized depending upon one’s environmental experiences. For instance, a person might be genetically predisposed to develop diabetes, but the person’s lifestyle may determine whether or not they develop the disease.
Environment Correlations
