Is peronality determined by nature or nurture - Essay Example

Nature vs. Nurture by The question we are going to discuss and answer is whether a personality determined by nature or nurture. This issue remains complicated and always actual for psychology in general, and the disputes regarding it do not stop. First of all we must admit that both nature and nurture influence any individual on his way through the life. But the key question is which power plays the main role when a person becomes individuality. Numerous discussions and debates in scientific circles show that one clear answer either does not exist or has not been found yet.

Also the raising of the question was called naive by some psychologists yet it still attracts attention showing that knowing the key factors of human behaviour is crucial for influencing it. Going further we may try to solve this issue logically avoiding inclination towards nurture or nature. By nurture experience, knowledge, upbringing, education and all that is received and/or achieved by an individual through his or her life with the influence of environment and other people in such individual, is meant.

By nature we mean all that is put in a person on a genetic level and therefore which does not depend on his or her free will. These genetic factors are born with a person and stay with a person during his life affecting everything because they are the foundation of an individual. So which force of them is more powerful? If thinking logically you may say that more influential is something that was there first because it can affect something that comes after that, so speaking clearly, nature is not standing in the way of nurture but it can decide what to take and what not to take.

Nature prevails because it dictates the means of nurture and those people are the happiest who can balance their natural skills with the influence of environment. It is also possible to say that environment can be changed and individual`s inner skills can be crushed by the negative upbringing. Let us remember John Locke and his conception of “tabula rasa” (“blank plate”) described in his major work “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. Locke states with reason that there is nothing in a person except for what he gets with his experience and achievements, from the environment and other people.

In other words, a newborn child is a “blank plate” and this child takes everything from the outer world with his/her senses and by mixing experience becomes a human individual (Locke, 1967). But after all we must say that in times of John Locke such things as psychoanalysis, theories of Darwin and genetic code were not known. But just to show that two hundred years did not make any visible progress in this direction it is necessary to say that psychologist John B. Watson in 20th century stated the exact kind of things that Locke had in mind.

So considering all above mentioned it is possible to admit that with this kind of question there is only one kind of an answer – both nurture and nature play a significant role in the process of human becoming an individual. But depending on circumstances either nurture or nature can become more powerful and by that start to push out the other one. Unfortunately, situations like this lack of balance and harmony is what can be seen very often and that is the reason of a general unhappiness of most people.

ReferencesLocke, J. (1967) An essay concerning human understanding, New York: McMillian.Watson, J. (1924) Behaviorism, Philadelphia: Psychology Press.