How a person behaves can be linked to influences such as parenting styles and learned experiences. For example, a child might learn through observation and reinforcement to say 'please' and 'thank you.
One example of an empiricist theory within psychology is Albert Bandura's social learning theory. According to the theory, people learn by observing the behavior of others.
In his famous Bobo doll experiment , Bandura demonstrated that children could learn aggressive behaviors simply by observing another person acting aggressively. Even today, research in psychology often tends to emphasize one influence over the other. In biopsychology , for example, researchers conduct studies exploring how neurotransmitters influence behavior, which emphasizes the nature side of the debate.
In social psychology , researchers might conduct studies looking at how things such as peer pressure and social media influence behaviors, stressing the importance of nurture. What researchers do know is that the interaction between heredity and environment is often the most important factor of all.
Perfect pitch is the ability to detect the pitch of a musical tone without any reference. Researchers have found that this ability tends to run in families and believe that it might be tied to a single gene. However, they've also discovered that possessing the gene alone is not enough to develop this ability.
Instead, musical training during early childhood is necessary to allow this inherited ability to manifest itself. Height is another example of a trait that is influenced by nature and nurture interaction. A child might come from a family where everyone is tall, and he may have inherited these genes for height.
However, if he grows up in a deprived environment where he does not receive proper nourishment, he might never attain the height he might have had he grown up in a healthier environment. Throughout the history of psychology , however, this debate has continued to stir up controversy. Eugenics, for example, was a movement heavily influenced by the nativist approach. Psychologist Francis Galton, a cousin of the naturalist Charles Darwin, coined both the terms nature versus nurture and eugenics and believed that intelligence was the result of genetics.
Galton believed that intelligent individuals should be encouraged to marry and have many children, while less intelligent individuals should be discouraged from reproducing. Today, the majority of experts believe that both nature and nurture influence behavior and development. However, the issue still rages on in many areas such as in the debate on the origins of homosexuality and influences on intelligence.
While few people take the extreme nativist or radical empiricist approach, researchers and experts still debate the degree to which biology and environment influence behavior. Increasingly, people are beginning to realize that asking how much heredity or environment influence a particular trait is not the right approach.
The reality is that there is not a simple way to disentangle the multitude of forces that exist. These influences include genetic factors that interact with one another, environmental factors that interact such as social experiences and overall culture, as well as how both hereditary and environmental influences intermingle.
Instead, many researchers today are interested in seeing how genes modulate environmental influences and vice versa. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science. The nature-nurture war is over. Nature wins, hands down.
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There is no neat and simple way of unraveling these qualitatively different and reciprocal influences on human behavior. Waterland and Jirtle's Agouti Mouse Study examines the relationship between nature and nurture, showing how epigenetic mechanisms change gene expression lab mice and, by extension, human beings. The video below provides context for the Agouti Mouse Study, and outlines the development of an epigenetic approach to our understanding of disease.
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Votes: 5 Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes. Votes: 6 Benjamin Disraeli. Toggle navigation Quote Master.
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