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Asked by anon-215334 to Laura, Kathryn, Ian, Chris, Bogdana, Alex on 8 Jun 2019.
Question: Do You Believe In Nature or Nurture?
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Bogdana Huma answered on 8 Jun 2019:
The influence of nature vs nurture is a long-standing topic of debate in psychology. There is no straight forward answer, mainly because different psychological phenomena are shaped to different extents by nature and nurture.
Let’s take for example an individual’s personality; that is, the set of traits that determine a person’s behaviour. One aspect of personality that we call ‘temperament’ (a person’s generic disposition to be, say, rather more energetic or more apathetic) is influenced by and large by nature. Specifically, psychological research has discovered a relationship between temperamental traits and chemicals in the brain called neurotransmitters. For instance, a temperamental trait called sensation-seeking (an individual’s propensity to seek new and intense experiences) seems to be associated with how the neurotransmitter dopamine is processed in the brain. So, an individual’s behaviour is to some extent determined by their biological and chemical make-up that their born with.
By contrast, other aspects of personality, such our attitudes, are shaped by social and cultural factors such as our interactions with families, & friends, and the dominant values in the society we are living in. We are not born with attitudes, instead we develop them based on our experiences and knowledge. This also means that attitudes are flexible and can change over the course of one’s life. Take for example attitudes towards food items. A person may start out being indifferent towards, say, avocado. Then that person tries it and it tastes really weird and so they start disliking it. But then, at a restaurant they are served a salad with avocado that they really enjoy which then leads to them giving avocado a second chance. After trying other dishes with avocado it becomes one of their favourite ingredients. So their attitude towards avocado changed over time based on their experiences with it.
In conclusion, depending on the phenomenon we’re researching, we can expect nature or nurture to be less/more important.
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Alex Lloyd answered on 8 Jun 2019:
Hi,
Interesting question!
I think it is a mix or a ‘conversation’ between both nature and nurture. We are born with our genes, or nature, which provide directions for how we can develop. But, whether these then present depends on our experiences (or nurture). This is especially true at times like the teenage years when the brain is going through some huge changes!
In my work, I look at when and why teenagers take risks. Some people are naturally more likely to take risks than others, but experience can change whether this actually happens. For example, if you are a natural born risk taker but your parents are strict, you might learn that risk taking is bad and never want to take risks compared to somebody with less strict parents. So, it is my view that both nature and nurture play a role in psychology.
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Ian Cookson answered on 8 Jun 2019:
A classic question! I believe, as the other psychologists have described that it isn’t one or the other. There are a number of psychological theories where issues are initially described as being one thing or another, but as the theories are developed then they are found to be more likely to be a combination of the two or more influences. You could look at work on imprinting by Lorenz. He described how geese bond with the first moving thing they see. So they have this in built desire to bond with something (nature), but this can be something other than a mother goose (nurture). I also saw a presentation about the complexity of human psychology that compared it to the murmurings or swarming of starlings, which is an interesting analogy, and suggests there isn’t ever one single origin to behaviour.
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Kathryn Atherton answered on 9 Jun 2019:
It’s both! At this stage, it would be completely barking to be believe in just one or the other.
Side note: I try to keep the notion of ‘belief’ out of my scientific thinking. We generate hypotheses and then we test them; that’s how we add to the growing body of scientific knowledge. ‘Belief’ often leads to bad science: only seeking evidence that supports your belief and/or misinterpreting the evidence that’s under your nose.
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Chris Fullwood answered on 10 Jun 2019:
A very interesting question, and to give you a short answer, I’d say I believe in both! As someone from a social psychology background, I’m interested in understanding more about social influence, for example looking at the different ways in which people might change the ways they behave when they’re in the presence of other people. For instance, my research looks at how people manage impressions in different contexts (including on the internet, for example in places like Facebook or dating sites) and we know that people expend a great of effort to make people like them, but when we’re alone and the pressure to impress is taken away, we might feel more relaxed and can just be ourselves! You might consider this to be an example of how nurture has influenced our behaviour, for example we’ve learned through social interaction that certain ways of behaving are more likely to get favourable responses and this could lead to a variety of different types of rewards (e.g. a better job with a bigger salary if you’re trying to impress in a job interview), but clearly your genetics are also important because the ways in which people react to you might also be influenced by things like your height, your looks etc. Someone once said that your genes load the gun, but your environment pulls the trigger! Or another way to see it, your genes provides you with the potential and your environment decides if you reach that potential. Someone might have ‘clever’ genes for example, but if they’re not nurtured and encouraged, they might not reach their potential.
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Laura Fisk answered on 11 Jun 2019:
One of my favourite questions! For me, it’s definitely ‘both’, but I definitely have more of an interest in ‘nurture’. That’s basically because I can usually have more of an impact on ‘nurture’ than I can on ‘nature’. ‘Nurture’ for me is the stuff that’s more likely to change through therapy or interventions, or be affected by how we organise the world through stuff like government policy). ‘Nurture’ includes people’s experiences – and that, for example, means loads of stuff: how they have learned to think about the world (which I can usually help people learn to notice and change if needed); how they were looked after as a baby (which I can help them undersrtand and offer a different experience of through therapeutic interactions); how they are treated by others as a young person and adult (which we can think about and problem-solve during therapy or training).
That’s not to say I ignore ‘nature’. ‘Nature’ for me represents the ‘building blocks’ of a person – their genes, their biology etc. I might not be able to change much about them, but sometimes knowing what they are can help a person or family understand what the strengths and gaps might be – for example, if someone’s brain developed in such a way that meant the speed it works at is a bit slower than average, we can measure that and teach people and families ways of adapting to that difference. It’s sometimes interesting to ask ‘why’ nature came to be like that for a person or family – but it’s not always possible to find out.
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