The Debate Around Nature Versus Nurture

What is nature vs nurture? the nature vs nurture debate as being of a long period of time which as being debated among different scholars, psychologist and socialistic which gave their own view. The Debate Between nature VS nurture has been one of the most researched topics over the years. The term nature is our environment, upbringing and life experiences determine our behaviour, Scientists and psychologist refer to this has “The environmentalist Theory”. On the other side of the argument the term nurture is our genetics determined our behaviour our personality traits and our abilities, Scientists and psychologist refer to this has “The naturalist Theory”.

One for famous behaviourist experiment is “Little Albert” experiment it was carried out by john Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at the Johs Hopkins University. The Little Albert experiment was a controlled experiment showing the world his evidence of classical conditioning in human study. Albert was put on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room a white laboratory rat was placed near him and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind him. Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear.

Therefore, Watson came into a conclusion that parents have major impact on the behaviour of their children through the environments in which they are raised. In Watson’s research on learned and behaviour patterns, Psychologists have come to accept the Theory of nature. Watson also concluded that everything is “built into” a child through interactions with the environments (Rathus, 2007)

Gesell’s Theory is known as a maturational developmental Theory, Gesell began to work on his own ideas and theories around the same time as Watson. Gesell’s disagreed with Watsons views, because he observed and documented patterns in way children develop that show that all children develop through similar patterns and he also believed that behaviours was not influenced by nature but in fact influenced by another factor. which was researched.

He studied the journey of a child from infancy to adolescent. Through the research and studies the “other” factor. He came into a conclusion that genetics factors, has been cornerstone of naturalistic theory. Gesell stated that “the child of five to ten still grows in the same way and acts in relatively the same way as he did thirty years ago, and for many years before that” (Gesell, 1977).

Over the past centuries, these two experiment has been the best out of all other researches. Base on researches, experiment and research which carry out on nature vs nurture today are on parents and foster parents example of this “Three Identical Strangers,” this study show the factor of both nature and nurture. There were three identical brothers who were separated at birth and raised by different families. Two of the brothers met while attending Sullivan County Community College, and after making headlines, found the third triplet. Aside from looking alike, the three shared similar behavioural quirks and preferences.

“The Twin study” this study was carried out by a child psychiatrist Peter Neubauer and Violet Bernard, a child psychologist. They both worked with the Louise Wise Agency, which matched Jewish orphans with adoptive families, which gave them an opportunity to carry out a secret experiment that will show how much nature influenced nurture. These researchers carefully controlled in which way that the information of the twin were not share with any of the family and nor for the family were there told the children were twins or had siblings. But the experiment to the change the development of adopted children.

In 1980 The study came to and result were never published. it would seem as though genetics, biology, and other “nurturing” factors have a head over the “natural” factors. Following his extensive research on twins, Thomas Bouchard concluded that “Genetic factors exert a pronounced and pervasive influence on behavioural (Business Insider, 2019) variability, and the effect of being reared in the same home is negligible for many psychological traits” (Turecki, 2000). Adding to Bouchard’s original speculation, Skodak, Scarr, Skeels, and other new experts have examined the importance that the environment has on intelligence. Their studies on twins have shown that closely related family members do share more similar IQs than non-related or remote families do. They have also found that twins, siblings, and other relatives that are raised in different living environments from one another; do not show similar IQs (Rathus, 2007).