The Concepts Theories Of Nature And Nurture In Psychology

Nature refers to genetic predispositions’ impact on human traits, and nurture describes the influence of learning and other influences from one’s environment. (Definition) Nature is all about characteristics that are inherited from genes or from your parents. Nature contributes to the personality through genetics. Nurture is about those characteristics which develop from experiences and environment. Nature vs. Nurture is a debate about whether behavior, personality and human culture caused by nature or nurture. In this debate, nature is defined as the genetic and hormone-based behavior, while nurture is defined as the experience and environment.

Personality is an example of an inherited trait that has been studied in adopted children and twins. Randomly selected pairs of people are far less similar in personality than identical twins raised apart. Biological siblings are more alike in behavior than adoptive siblings. Each opinion suggests that personality is inherited to a certain extent. Adoption studies show that by adulthood the personalities of adopted siblings are no more alike than random pairs of strangers. This means that shared family effects on personality decrease by adulthood. As is the case with personality non-shared environmental effects are often found to out-weigh shared environmental effects. Environmental effects that are typically thought to be life-shaping may have less of an impact than non-shared effects.

Nature is hereditary skills, whereas nurture refers to personal skills. It completely depends upon the heredity where nurture does not depend upon the heredity. Nature includes the genes which are determined by physical factors and personality traits. On the other hand, nurture refers to your childhood or the way you have grown up. It includes the biological and family factors while the nurture includes the social and environmental factors. In nature, the behavior is the result of genetic, inherited structure but in nurture, the behavior is the result of learning from the outside peers and religion. Nature is also known as an inborn behavior whereas nurture means learned behavior.