Nature and Nuture Essays -- Psychology Behavior

The question is this How can we distinguish between the environmental causes of behavior and heredity causes? This question embodies the nature- boot issue. John B. Watson argued that each is made, not born. He discounted the importance of heredity, maintaining that behavior is managed entirely by the environment. Indeed he boldly claimed Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own special gentleman to bring them up in and Ill guarantee to take any champion at random and train him to become any type of medical specialist I might select-doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so engage the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years. (Weiten 82)Although the question was first posed as a nature-versus-nurture issue, developmental psychologists today ag ree that both nature and nurture interact to produce specific developmental patterns and outcomes. Consequently, the question has evolved into how and to what degree do environment and heredity both produce their effects? No wiz grows up free of environment moulds, nor does anyone develop without being affected by his or her inherited genetic makeup. However, the debate over the comparative tempt of the two factors remains active, with different approaches and theories of development emphasizing the environment or heredity to a greater or lesser degree.Some developmental theories rely on basic psychological principles of learning and stress the piece learning plays in producing changes in behavior in a development child.(Weiten 350) These theories... ...ferent environments, the may consider people embossed in similar environment who have totally dissimilar genetic backgrounds. If they find, for example, similar courses of development in two adopted children who have different genetic backgrounds and have been raised in the same family, they have evidence for the importance of sentimental influences on development. Moreover, psychologists can carry out research involving animals with dissimilar backgrounds. By experimentally varying the environment in which they are raised, we can determine the influence of environmental factors on development.Dodge, Kenneth A. The Nature Nurture Debate. 2004 p418-427. Gloucester County College Library. 2006Papalia, Diane E. A Childs World infancy through Adolescence. New York McGraw-Hill, 2006Weiten, Wayne. Psychology Themes and Variations. Belmont Wadsworth, 2002