Nature Versus Nurture: Is it all the Genes?
...p, I believe, plays an enormous role in their development. According to the philosopher Hume, the mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) on which experience writes. Genes are like the lines of the paper, as that they limit and regulate the ability of experience in its writing. Children learn most of their behaviors from either their parents or their peers, regardless of the genes they possess. A child can learn to perform certain tasks or behave in certain ways in response to a situation. Instinct alone will not tell a child what to do in every situation. A child is born with a set of genes that can code for certain traits, but it is the environment that prompts and manipulates the development of these traits. For example, a child may be born with genes that code for abnormal aggression. If raised in an overly kind, respectful environment, the child’s gene for aggression will never be used. The child will have the ability to be aggressive because of his/her genes; however, without a prompt for this gene, it remains unused. Also, many social equalization programs, such as Head Start, are founded with the idea that nurture can change the way a person develops and learns. Our society spends billions of dollars in hopes that they can alter the predetermined path of genetics by varying the environment in which a child is raised. Psychologists study twins separated at birth for evidence for the nature side of this debate. Identical twins share the same exact genetic code, thus many of the characteristics that they develop will be the same. Due to similarities in environments in which the twins are raised, certain traits are displayed in both subjects. Thomas Bouchard’s study of identical twins separated of birth resulted in evidence so strong for nature that he challenged the American Psychological Association to produce just one single study that shows any link between environment and personality. This link was never found. Some identical twins reared in different environments showed so many similarities that no other conclusion could be sensible than that a person’s genes control most of their development. Studies show that identical twins raised in different environments are more similar than randomly selected people, that identical twins raised in the same environment are more similar than fraternal twins raised in the same environment, and that biological siblings raised together are more similar than adoptive siblings raised in the same environment. These observations prove a very strong correlation between nature and a person’s personality. What the psycholog...