Nature and Nurture in Psychology - Essay Example

Nature and Nurture in Psychology s Sociology Department 9th January The concepts of nature and nurture have been on the opposite sides of the barricades for decades as two incompatible factors or forces affecting an individual’s development, behavior, knowledge, personal traits and even preferences. Nurture and nature are defined as factors dominating psychological development of an individual beginning with infancy. Thus, there’s nothing surprising in the fact that these two have been surrounded by vigorous debates, because defining one of this factors as the leading one produces a profound effect on further research, treatment and, of course, teaching and education of children. These debates laid foundations of numerous development models and theories, granting priority either to nature or to nurture. Initially seeking to define the single key factor among the two, psychologist later change their goal to defining to which extent each of them affects development. In other words, i the course of empirical data accumulation and theoretical studies, psychologists have developed the main approaches to balance between nature and nurture, which can be applied in practice to this or that extent. In terms of cognitive and psychological development, scientists tend to be divided into two parties: one of them believing in priority of genes and inherent abilities/traits (where an individual is considered mainly active in the process of development) and another focusing on the role of nurture, environment and relatively passive position of an individual (Bergin, 2011). In other words, nature-based approaches assert that all peculiarities, behaviors and abilities are “imbedded” in the personality on the genetic level. Nurture-based theories, on the contrary, insist all these “building blocks” of the personality to be taught and fostered by environment. However, there are also theoretical frameworks taking both nature and nurture into account. One of the most prominent approaches of the twentieth century is certainly Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, which perceives an individual as an entirely independent subject researching and learning in the process of maturation. Along with positioning an individual into the process of cognitive development as an active subject, Piaget also distinguishes several general stages passed by a person in this process (Huitt & Hummel, 2003). In terms of the driving force sparking cognitive development, Piaget was – as it is quite obvious – the supporter of nature and maturation. In other words, the inherent genetic background of a person is believed to drive the process of development. Relying onto this factor, Piaget asserted that there were several “standard” age-based development stages. An individual constructs his/her knowledge and abilities independently, based on his/her own experiences of interaction with the environment. When passing to the new stage of development, a child is expected to possess a certain set of skills. However, this is the assumption that has been widely criticized due to controversial empirical studies. Moreover, as Piaget granted extreme importance to development stages and children’s inherent disposition, many scholars argued that his theory fully neglects the role of nurture and social context a child develops in. Regarding such criticism, Lourenço & Machado (1996) wrote in his defense that Piaget “conceived social interaction as integral to human development; in a sense, social interaction was embodied in the cognitive structures themselves”. As the previous approach was perceived as a rather lop-sided one placing only nature in the center, Vygotsky’s theory of sociocultural development rose as an opposition for it. In contrast to Piaget, the soviet scholar Lev Vygotsky paid more attention to nurture, i.e. environment and social context. An individual is viewed as an entirely social being obtaining knowledge and skills from the surrounding world. Thus, the key to cognitive development lies in social interaction and learning from other people. Entering relations with others, an individual received necessary patterns of behavior, perceptions of symbols, knowledge etc. In addition, nurture in this theory incorporates not only other people interacting with the child, but also socio-cultural factors, which form the learning environment (Alpay). According to this theoretical framework, the differences in development, behavior patterns, personal traits and so on are caused by nurture and different sociocultural experiences individuals had rather than their genetic differences. Similar to Vygotsky’s approach, behaviorism as a theory of development grants much significance to nurture as well. Moreover, it is possible to state that behaviorism stands on the opposite extreme of Piaget’s theory, taking only learned behavior and nurture into account as factors driving an individual’s development. Leaving behind nature and genetic information, this approach is considered rather one-sided; however, it shifts control ability from the child as an independent learner to his/her environment, immediate surrounding such as family members, teachers, peers and so on. Thereby, all the emerging personal and cognitive differences are attributed solely to different methods of teaching, interaction and reinforcement (Bergin, 2011). From the teachers’ standpoint, this theory is suitable as it gives them full control over the process and allows them to arrange and organize the environment for interaction and learning that would foster desired behaviors in the child. Behaviorism was vigorously supported by John B. Watson, who claimed to be able to raise any type of specialist of any child, if he was given the opportunity to organize proper learning environments (Papierno et al, 2005, p.312). Among the most respectable theories, there is also bioecological theory created by Bronfenbrenner, which views “development as emerging from the interaction of individual and context” (Rosa & Tudge, 2013). In other words, the theory values both heredity and nurture (or environment) as main factors influencing an individual’s development. Genetic background initially inherited by a child is perceived as a determining basis for further development, which can be sparked due to mutual impact of genetic information and environment. Brenfenbrenner distinguished several interconnected systems incorporated in an individual’s sociocultural surrounding: these are microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem. These subsystems cover the child’s interaction with the environment, for instance, within microsystem, the child interacts with his/her immediate surrounding such as parents and school (Bergen, 2008). This theory is cultivated by many psychologists nowadays as one of the most plausible approaches explaining differences in personal features, abilities and preferences in twins: although they possess nearly identical genetic background, they might experience different types of interactions and attitudes, which leads to further differences. Although twins have identical genetic background, they can be quite unalike in behavior, in personality, in health, and even in appearance, and they tend to grow more different as they age (Powledge, 2011). Such cases often become subjects of epigenetics – the approach asserting the shaping role of nurture. This approach isn’t old and grants more importance to nurture insisting that it is able to form and affect genomes. According to Powledge (2011), epigenetic processes affect individuals and often lead to physiological, behavioral, psychological and cognitive differences. This perspective views a human being as a product of joint effects of nature, i.e. genes, and outer factors, i.e. nurture, which can affect an individual even on the early stages of development through DNA. As it is seen, these models present rather different approaches towards the issue of nature and nurture in development of the individual. However, modern psychology tends to focus and rely on theories placing social interaction and effect produced by the environment into the core of development processes. On the other hand, numerous scholar have been realizing the fact that none of the two factors predetermines children’s development solely – there isn’t black and white. According to Martin, Carlson and Buskist, “each individual is born into a different environment and each individual possesses a unique combination of genetic instructions” (Martin et al, 2010, p.93). This means that nowadays, despite persisting debates, scholars of psychology perceive nature and nurture not separately but in connection to each other. It is their interplay and mutual impact that are now viewed as determining factors. For instance, Sameroff (2010) describes the unified theory of development integrating both nurture and nature and emphasizing strong and close interconnection between an individual and social context (Sameroff, 2010, p.6). Bertelson et al (1994) also rely on interplay of these two factors in construction of language acquisition theory. Modern theorists and psychologists tend to reach consensus in the issue of nature and nurture, admitting that both of them affect development, and causes of problems – if they emerge – are sought in both factors. However, disagreements may emerge in the extent of influence produced by each of the factors, i.e. proportion of impact extent of both nature and nurture. References ALPAY, E. The contribution of Vygotsky’s theory to our understanding of the relation between the social world and cognitive development. [Online] http://www.imperial.ac.uk/chemicalengineering/common_room/files/PsychEd_5.pdf [Accessed January 9, 2015] BERGEN, D. (2008) Human development: traditional and contemporary theories. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. BERGIN, C. C., BERGIN, D. A. (2011) Child and Adolescent Development in Your Classroom. Wadsworth Publishing Company. BERTELSON, P., EELEN, P. & YDEWALLE, J. D. (1994) International Perspectives on Psychological Science: Leading themes. Psychology Press. HUITT, W., & HUMMEL, J. (2003) Piagets theory of cognitive development. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. 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