Nature-Nurture Debate

Nature-nurture is a debate that has been going on for centuries, it is the discussion of whether or not our beliefs and our actions are influenced by our genes or simply the environment around us. While research has found that a lot of our actions are a result of our environment that we are raised in, they can also be effected by genetics. For example,  violent outbursts are sometimes attributed to the way a person reacts to certain situations, but genetic research has found that they may have already been previously programed to do so.

"Caspi et al. (2002) showed that among maltreated children, those who carried a particular allele of the MAOA gene showed a predisposition to violence and antisocial behavior, while those with other alleles did not."



Examples of both sides of the Theory at work would be:

• That of a basketball player, just because they are born with certain genetic traits which predisposed them to excelling at athletics, does not mean that they do not have to put in the work and follow diets to insure that they are at the top of their game. You can be born with all the physical gifts in the world but if you do not practice your craft, and make sure your body is in tip top shape, those gifts do not do any good for you.
• While people seem to believe that if a child is adopted at birth that they start to display the traits of their adoptive parents rather than their biological parents, this is not the case. While the children can pick up certain traits from their adoptive parents, they never lose most of their inherited traits, and can sometimes display aggressive or risky behavior that can not be explained by the adoptive parents.
• Researchers have found that if you take a litter of puppies that have been born to a certain set of parents, and put them with another. The puppies will most likely take on the traits of the parents that you put them with. The reason for this is because they emulate the behavior of their parents that they see. So unlike humans, dogs tend to go off more of what they see than what is genetically there.
• While most people believe that our political beliefs about certain issues are formed over time, research has also found that our political beliefs can sometimes be already ingrained in us because of certain genetic traits that our parents have given us. This is interesting because you would think that as we become older we would form those beliefs on our own but sometimes it appears that we are already meant to have those beliefs.
• It has been proven that children who have grown up with their parents reading to them, can sometimes do better in school. This is not always the case, often times it falls on the child to want to learn and to take the help that is given to them. While our parents can sometimes influence our education by the things that they do, it is often times up to us. We have to have the Nature within us to want to learn.

My Personal Take on it....

While I believe that certain people are born with certain traits that make them better at some things than others that often times the environments that we are born into can have a bigger factor on our lives than genetics. I believe that if you are raised in an environment where you are taught to do things a certain way, that you will pick up those traits and they will carry you throughout your life.

Some people say that people should rise above their raising, but it can be hard when you are genetic predisposed to feel a certain way or act a certain manner. Like the MAOA gene, it is hard not to act a certain way when you have to genetics to do so.

Source:

http://nobaproject.com/modules/the-nature-nurture-question