PSYCHOLOGY -- NATURE vs. NURTURE (350 WORDS REQUESTED)
According to modern psychologists, human behavior reflects the complex interplay between internal, hereditary, biological influences (i.e. "nature") and external or environmental influences (i.e. "nurture"). I have notice various ways that both natural and environmental factors have influenced my personal development. As a child of eastern European parents, I have the same light physical features of my parents and a similar accent when speaking Russian. It would be hard to know whether my accent is a function of nature or nurture except for the fact that I do not have their accent when speaking English because I learned English in the United States as my primary language. I am a 20-year-old female and have one sister and one brother who are three years older and one year younger than I am, respectively.
My mother is very talkative and emotionally demonstrative while my father is much quieter and reserved. He is generally calm but has a bad temper while my mother is often a very anxious person who is very good natured and even-tempered. I tend to be talkative and much more similar to my mother than my father except that I am not as nervous as a person. It is possible that my personality is a function of my mother's genes but it is impossible to know how much of the similarities between us are the result of my imitation and modeling of her behavior during my formative years. My older sister and I are very similar except that she is much more nervous than I am, just like my mother. According to my parents, they purposely tried to help me not become as nervous as my sister by correcting some of the mistakes they made in that regard with her. For example, she became very frightened of thunder storms and other loud noises as an infant. Therefore, when I was a baby, my parents pretended that thunder was a fun game and they made me laugh whenever there was thunder. They did the same thing with my younger brother. As a result, neither of us are nervous about sudden loud noises but my older sister is still frightened of thunder. That would clearly seem to be a function of my parent's efforts to use nurture to overcome our natural childhood fears of loud noises.
