Settling the Nature Versus Nurture Debate

¶ … Nature vs. Nurture? The nature versus nurture debate should not be viewed as an 'either/or debate.' Clearly, genes have an effect upon human behavior, shaping everything from our physical appearance to our gender to our tendency to inherit specific diseases and characteristics. But that genetic foundation is also always in interaction with the wider social environment. As noted by the Jungian psychoanalyst Maxson McDowell, as soon as a baby is born, his or her cognitive structure is being affected by the environment.

Even before birth, the environment of the womb can affect the baby's development. A child born in a stimulating household will be better able to develop his or her innate intellectual gifts than a child that is born in an abusive and neglectful one. A good example of the interaction between nature and nurture is that of height: parents who are genetically predisposed to be tall are likely to have taller children.

However, a child that is deprived of appropriate nutrients early in life will not reach his or her full height (Cherry 2015). Additionally, as nutrition overall has improved in our society, the average height of individuals has increased. About other traits, however, such as aggression, the evidence for nature versus nurture is somewhat more ambiguous. Bandura's social learning theory, based upon experiments he conducted upon children, suggested that children that observed aggressive behavior in adults were more likely to mimic that behavior when engaged in independent play (McLeod 2015).

But not all children who watch violent video games or even who grow up subject to aggressive conditions develop into asocial adults. Once again, there appears to be an interaction between genetics and the environment but determining which is predominant is uncertain. Also, certain conditions such as autism which are clearly not 'learned' can produce abnormal behaviors such as inhibited social functioning which are clearly not purely the result of modeling and observation.

Given the fact that genetics and environment are constantly in dialogue, the study of the field of epigenetics is becoming increasingly popular. "Pioneering studies showed that molecular bric-a-brac could be added to DNA in adulthood, setting off a cascade of cellular changes resulting in cancer" (Hurley 2013). In other words, changes in the genetic structure of individual's DNA due to environmental damage could then be passed down to subsequent generations. Humans are mutable biological organisms, biologically and psychologically and are in constant dynamic interactions with their environment.

Because so many different aspects of an individual's history affect personality and the ability to cultivate different talents, it can be very difficult to isolate a single variable due to genetic inheritance or genetic damage. There are certain diseases and conditions such as Huntington's Disease and Down's Syndrome that have been linked to specific genetic or chromosomal abnormalities but other aspects of the human character such as, for example, musical ability, seem to be linked to a constellation of different factors.

"Perfect pitch is the ability to detect the pitch of a musical tone without any reference. Researchers have found that this ability tends to run in families and believe that it might be tied to a single gene" but researchers have found that "musical.