There has always been a large controversy over whether inherited genes or the environment influences and affects our personality, development, behavior, intelligence and ability. Does how you are raised affect your views as an adult more than what your genetic codes dictate? if your family has always been carpenters, are you destined to be a carpenter because of your genes or because of your familial upbringing? some people believe that it is strictly genes that affect our ways of life, others believe that it is the environment that affects us, and some believe that both of these influence our behavior. Either way, social scientists have been struggling for centuries deciding whether our personalities are born or made. Tests are done often on identical twins that were separated to see how they are each influenced by their separate environments. When identical twins are separated at birth and grow up to have identical tastes is that an argument that it has more to do with nature than nurture? the way a child is raised is a major contributor to the child rsquo s personality as it ages. Children are born with a blank slate, known as ldquo tabula rasa rdquo , and the first few years of one rsquo s life are important to the development of personality. There are many different theories about this subject, but all point out that the child rsquo s behavior is affected by nurture.

National Technical Honor Society Essay

Psychologists are quick to support the nature debate because it deals with the genetic make up of a person and biological psychology, which is fact. First of all, a person rsquo s physical traits, such as eye color and blood type are genetically determined, even though there are certain ways to alter your look. Studies have proven that biological siblings are more similar in personality that adoptive siblings. In addition, a person rsquo s genes can determine whether a person is predisposed to a disease or illness, such as diabetes and alzheimer rsquo s. A person who is affected with those types of diseases shows how nature can directly affect the development of an individual.

A new technique called developmental genetic analysis is a procedure that examines the effects of genes throughout a person rsquo s life. There is no denying the fact that a person can be affected by both nature and nurture. One topic that may fall in between is debating whether intelligence is derived from either genes nature or from their surrounding and personal leanings nurture.

Intelligence is one of the most important and talked topics in psychology but even after so many time and research, there is no exact definition of what makes intelligence. I personally believe that a person can be affected by both nature and nurture throughout their entire life. We inherit many traits from relatives such as hair color, eye color, height, and many other traits. It is a known fact that all of this stems from biology, there is no doubt about that. What the real questions is, when it comes to nature, is whether or not more abstract traits such as behavior, temperament, fear, and personality come from our genes as well. What a twin/adoption study, in this case, refers to is when two identical twins are separated at birth, both are living in two different parts of the world and being raised by two different families.

Results, sometimes even shocking ones, are found when the twins eventually reunite and discuss their lives. What is often found is that twins raised in completely different environments share very similar characteristics such as the same interest, talents, personalities, and behavior. This goes to prove that genetics can have an effect on the way people behave and so on. This case was written into a memoir written to inform about a pair of twins who were separated at birth by two persons peter neubauer, a child psychiatrist, and viola bernard, a child psychologist. The memoir is named ldquo identical strangers rdquo , by the twins paula bernstein and elyse schein both wrote the memoir to inform people about their case and how is connected to the topic of nature versus nurture. The question on the nurture side of the argument is whether or not a person's environment influences the person he or she will become. For example, if nurture is indeed the cause of a person's behavior, attitude, and personality this would mean that others that surround the person have influenced a particular behavior if you may.

This would mean that a person is not really born with a personality at all it will be the people in his or her life or society that will shape the kind of person he or she will become. British philosopher, john locke was on the nurture side of the argument and believed that everyone is born with a tabula rasa, latin for blank slate. He believed that at birth, the mind is a blank slate and that our experiences write on these slates. According to this theory, we are born without knowledge of what we should fear or how we should act, it is up to our environments to teach us how to act and behave. A case study was done as well in order to prove whether or not this is true, if humans are really born with a blank slate and learn to fear stuff. The case study included a baby boy and a psychological theory which included ivan pavlov rsquo s classical conditioning. In this experiment, albert was given a white rat to play with which was now a natural stimulus.