Nature Vs. Nurture
Nature vs. Nurture
The Nature versus Nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual’s innate qualities versus personal experiences in determining or causing differences in physical and behavioral traits. (Ridley, M (2003, 05 23). What makes you who you are. Time). This paper will take an informative approach to dissecting the Nature vs. Nurture debate in an attempt to prove that environment has more to do with personality development than genetics.
Almost everyone in any related field has an opinion as to which is truly more important, nature or nurture. The director of a group called the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, Thomas Bouchard, believes that 70 percent of a person’s personality is genetic and 30 percent is due to environment. The director of the Lewisville Twin Study, Adam Matheny, however, says it is 50-50.
Nature and nurture are both influential to language development and emotions. A lot of physical development is pre-programmed to coincide with brain development and is brought about through nature. Nurture, such as stimulation, is also essential for the brain to develop. Even the cases of identical twins are not a perfect example of nature being superior to nurture. If some of the ties happen to be a coincidence and some happen to be based on vague knowledge of their past, the entire idea is less credible. For example, the fact that the Jim twins both named their sons James Allen or James Alan could be simply naming the child after themselves. Allen/Alan might be because they were told that their birth father was named Alan. The only way to know for sure is to know more about the context of all the things that are similar between the two. Since we don’t know any of it, we can only take it as vague information. Based on all this information, many believe nurture is more important than nature, at a balance of 70 percent of early childhood development being influenced by a person’s environment and 30 percent...
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