What Makes Us How We Are?

Nature vs. Nurture The author of this report has been asked to cover the topic that is known as "nature vs. nurture." Basically, it is the question of whether people are pre-destined for their fate in terms of personality, life outcomes and so forth or if that is influenced or even created by the environment in which a child grows and experiences events in their life.

This brief essay will describe the basic questions in play and will also compare and contrast two different studies that focus on the nature vs. nurture argument. While nature and nurture both certainly play a part in many to most lives, there is usually a combination of the two rather than one or the other when it comes to most people.

Summary As noted in the introduction above, there are two basic arguments when it comes to how people become what they are, act how they act and do what they do. The "nature" argument is the idea that people are pre-disposed and pre-destined to behave and act in a certain way. This is the idea that all of the things that matter in a person's makeup are based on the genetics of the person. This could include things like intelligence, personality, mental illness, behavioral tendencies, addiction tendencies and so forth.

The other side of the argument would be the "nurture" argument. This argument states that the way people do (or do not) develop is based more on the environment that a child grows up in, how adept their parents are, whether they are exposed to violence, how poor their family is and so forth. Very rarely is it argued that people are all from one source or another.

It would seem to be commonly accepted that people are who they are in part because of how they were raised but also in part based on the genes that they got from their biological parents. The real question is which one of the two matters more in terms of final outcomes and ongoing progress (Cherry, 2015). One article found about psychology notes that the general realm of psychology is divided into different approaches and that each of them falls somewhere along the nature vs. nurture spectrum.

In order from the former to the latter, there is the biological approach, the psychoanalysis approach, the cognitive psychology approach, the humanism approach and the behaviorism approach. The article notes that psychologists are not of one mind about the nature vs. nurture paradigm and/or that generalizations cannot be made across the board because each case is different (McLeod, 2015). PBS did a similar review on the subject. The same mixed message, more or less, was offered.

It is noted that some things often happen based on genetics while other things are absolutely (or at least partially) environmental (PBS, 2015). Both studies gave mixed answers and both basically said that it depends on what behavior or trait is being discussed. For example, hair and eye color are absolutely hereditary. However, propensity to abuse drugs or act a certain way is much less settled. Conclusion Indeed, both studies focused both on behavior and physical traits.

Both studies talk about how people are firmly entrenched, quite often, one way or another.