The Essence of Human Behaviour - Essay Example

In the study of psychology, one of the most debated topics is that of nature versus nurture. This debate entails questions about whether the behaviour and the mental processes are influenced by genetics, and heredity, or are a product of the environment and learning. Nature in this debate is the heredity or that which is inherited, whereas nurture is what is learned from the environment and other influences from it like experience. The phrase nature versus nurture was coined by Francis Galton, who was inspired by his cousin Charles Darwin and his famous book, On the Origin of Species. The phrase has become the bone of contention and is often debated among psychologists on numerous grounds (McLeod, 2007). This survey will go through some of the strongest arguments from both sides and try to evaluate whether it is indeed necessary to attribute behavioural development to one of the two notions and whether tlly play a fundamental part in the development of the mental processes of an individual.

For a very long time it has been established that the corporeal uniqueness of a person is due to the genetic inheritance. This means that some bodily features are a result of certain genes we receive from our parents. They determine the colour of our eyes, the way our hair is, and also some diseases like Huntingdon Chorea. The tendency of our physical attributes to be related to our genes has led certain psychologists to believe that human behaviour, maybe, is also the result of heredity or “nature”. Psychologists that adopt this position are referred to as “nativists”. They advocate that the characteristics, both corporeal and psychological, are the result of constant evolution that humans have undergone and the uniqueness of each person is due to the person’s unique genes (Dusheck, 2002). The theory of Chomsky explains this notion as he proposed that languages are learned from what he described as an “innate language acquisition device” (Chomsky, 1965). Also, the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud and his ideas on human aggression support this notion as he believed that aggression is a result of the natural drive in humans called Thanatos (Veer & Valsiner, 1994).

The role of nature has been rejected by scholars who are of the mind that the human mind is a blank slate or tabula rasa, as propagated by the famous philosopher John Locke (Dusheck, 2002). Psychologists that propose this are known as empiricists and believe that one learns and creates one’s own prior and mental processes from experience and environment – this is called nurture. Supporting the alternate spectrum is an example of a simple human child exhibiting, during infancy and upbringing stages, numerous changes in behavior and psychology due to the effects of the environment in which the child is nurtured. This is the reason that when a child feels protected and loved, he or she starts imitating the language and the behaviour of others around him (Plomin, 2001). It will be prudent to state Bandura's social learning theory (Bandura et al., 1961) in which he states how aggression is embedded in the mental process by the act of observation and recreation after it is shown in the environment. This was the result of the famous experiment that included the Bobo dolls.

I will relate to this my inability to speak to large crowds. For that reason, whenever there is a situation where I have to give a toast or have to deliver a presentation, I feel reluctance, hesitation and fear of the stage. Even though many say that it is stage fright and will pass away the moment I begin, it has never been so. The reason for this is that in fifth grade, I had the unfortunate experience of falling over during a recital. The whole show which was going smoothly came to an abrupt halt. This experience, I believe, not only made me nervous about going onto the stage but also affected my confidence in presentation and meeting new people. Now and then I still feel that I will embarrass myself again. This aligns me with the empiricists as I too believe that it was the unfortunate experience that made me incredibly shy in presenting myself to others.

In conclusion it can be said that it is true that both sides have equal and strong arguments, and this suggests that both seem to influence the development of the behavior and mental processes. But it must be noted that as much as the arguments are convincing and persuasive, they both play a determined role in the early and consistent development of the mental and behavioural processes of an individual.