So Harold Manville Skeels, a psychologist that was a professor at Iowa University, conducted an experiment to see if foster care kids would do better in intelligent homes. After setting the stage he had all the kids take an IQ test and come up around 115, which is an above average score and it created a positive for the nurture view.
Alternatively Joseph McInerney stated that some animals show behaviors that they repeat all the time no matter where they live. Humans have basic instincts and some major mental illnesses are caused by genetics. He also claims that multiple genes play a role in determining a behavioral trait.
When an individual gets brain surgery they sometimes change there views on things and their behavior. Since this happens sometimes it doesn't really accompany the fact that how you're raised has anything to do with it along with it not really being about genes. All that was altered was the brain waves being transmitted and the whole persona changed. This goes against both theories thus it isn't just nature vs. nurture.
Now the falsehood of one gene containing a behavioral trait is one argument against nature. An appropriate question becomes what do genes do? Do they create a behavior or merely interpret it?
The case against nurture is that common genes share common patterns so a DNA strand is solid evidence against nurture. Nature more or less just uses it's case as defense and doesn't in depth try to disprove nurture.
So why can't they both be right? I believe they can and are both legitimate on some level. The particular level may remain unknown but never the less they both have valid statements and evidence to show that they are tied to behavior.
I would like to have heard the results of the study of foster kids in your blog, but thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteI just had a conversation the other day about this topic. I am in agreement with you. I believe that both nature and nurture affect a person’s behavior. I believe there are certain aspects that are “hardwired” and others that are established through environments we spend time in. I know someone who has not seen her father since she was two, no contact, yet she turned out to be just like him. Sociopathic behavior, drugs, violence. I have known people who have been in one environment where the negativity or indifference was heavy in the air. There they were introverted, shy, scared. I have seen these people move into a loving, supportive environment, thrive and become really good people. Would this have come about if they had stayed in their original environment? See, I don’t think we can ever really know the answer to this question. Wherever we are we have our nature and we are in an environment controlled or otherwise (nurture).
I often wonder if I would have turned out as pathetic as my father had I not had my completely empathetic mother at the other end of my life. Unless we have a severe mental illness, at some point we become responsible for our own lives and our behavior. At some point we should stop feeling like a victim and make the changes we need to be good people. It’s hard, and I’m speaking from personal experience. My motivation was my daughter. I didn’t want her inheriting my anger and negative view of the world.
That was supposed to say "as apathetic as my father."
ReplyDeletewell the problem here is that the views are exclusive. One cannot exists at the same time of the other. Because then a deductive conflict arises.
ReplyDeleteI have lived away from my dad all my life, yet my mother says I make the same faces, and have the same humor as he does. This is not surprising to me though, I think genes do tell how to interpret input but they do not necessarily form behaviors as a whole. For a person is too complex. No one is the same to their parents, they have some similarities, but thats where it ends.
I mean if that was true, how could we account for brothers having completely different personalities and mannerisms.
Here we have same exact nurture and nature. Or at least should be same. Yet people interact completely different given the same situations. I think there are way to many variables to attribute to either just nurture and nature, or even both. For all we know it might be none. It might even be a choice we haven't considered. Like maybe temperature in the womb?