What do you think about the "nature-nurture" debate?

Question

If you are an interactionist, do you think nature and nurture have equal weight (50/50 %)?

Answer 1

I think it's nature and nurture.

Answer 2

Sometimes it's all nature. Sometimes it's all nurture. Sometimes it's 50-50, or 40-60, or 75-25. Depends on what item you're talking about. It's a little bit like computers: by itself, a computer does nothing, but load an operating system on it, and it does a lot, and hook it up to the net, load a bunch of programs, and it does plenty.

Answer 3

In 1969, a California psychologist named Arthur Jensen published in the Harvard Educational Review an article entitled "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" In it, Jensen cites many studies into the IQ of different population groups, does some math (which he shows the reader), and finds that 80% of the variance is caused by heredity (nature) and only 20% is caused by environment (nurture).

And again, as someone else mentioned, to a large extent a group's environment is the result of their inborn capacities (or shortcomings). The pattern of living that occurs again and again wherever some kinds of people live are the result of who they are; this isn't some sort of weird coincidence that just happens to befall them again and again wherever they go.

Answer 4

I don't think it's always equal weight. I think sometimes nature can override all else, and other times people are just "submissive." But then again, how much the enviroment affects you could be genetic too, in which case it's technically all genetic. I think the debate that exists is more important than the question itself. Through the debate and wandering both sides we learn more about ourselves and our interactions, and that's the important part.

Answer 5

i think its 50-50...it just cant be one or the other, sorry but people just arent that simple...we are the most complicated organism in the world, and yet people try to blame our traits on one thing or the other...realize that it doesnt work like that...people are different, so however they turn out gay, transgender, or whatever, its because of their biology and their life experiences...they both rely on eachother

Answer 6

As one of the prime current 'concerns', re this discussion, involves Gayism or homosexuality, and certainly homosexuals are laboring the point that their genetic inheritance determines who or what they are, I intend to restrict my comments, mainly with this reference in mind, but it could apply to much concerning the human condition generally.

Scientists [many of them] seem to be laboring the point that they are finding chemicals or physical paths in the brain, etc, that pre-dispose us to certain types of behaviour or outlooks in life.

Personally, I think the only way this inheritance vs. conditioning debate can be settled at all is if these types of scientific investigation were carried on with a large sample of babies [say] less than a year old and the group of adolescents and a group of fully-fledged adults, and see what the percentages were re different types of physical features illustrated in the brain were.

There is also opportunity for longitudinal study of habit-forming:
to see what structural changes occur in the brain as one develops through life:
Do these %s correlate with thaose shortly after birth.

Also, a study re [admitted] sexual 'preferences' [say] 20 years after a baby sampling with the same individuals - or those whom they havebeen able to keep in touch with, and see whether the relative sizes of the particular physical characteristics under examination of the brain show any indication of anything correlative.

Regardless of what study is undertaken, however, what must be retained paramount is the question:
Do results occur physically, that is, do physical changes occur, Both - within our bodies generally and within our brains, according to the mental or value decisions we make morally in life??
This also needs to be accounted for, because we already know that the body does respond physiologically to the moods and mental activity we undertake in life.
So, this is also a very real consideration in any study!


Personally, I have found, over life, that we ALL face heavy challenges and often extraordinary conditions in life that could challenge our belief systems and send us either way.
Such potentially life-changing experiences are not limited to those who feel that they have been hard done by, or who wish to attribute certain behavioural tendencies to certain conditions or inheritances in life.

So when we speak of social conditioning or environmental factors, these tend to affect our moral decision-making as far as we choose to let them.
Sometimes, we have to be stronger than those around us, in order to maintain our integrity in life.


When it all boils down to it, I am of the mind that regarless of physical inheritance [I mean I have a lot of such impediments and weaknesses myself, and could have given up on certain hopes and pursuits] and regardless of the mental beliefs etc around us, in all of our countless daily decisions, we have to be the ones who ultimately make our own life's choices, regardless of our batch of mental or other inheritances.
Regarding the position of our Creator in all this at Judgment Day, He will know our precise circumstances, including inheritances, and will judge accordingly.
Personally, i have found most 'Gays' to be theresult of general regular [no doubt, moment to moment] moral decisions in life that have allowed for that weakness to creep in.

I have a brother, for instance, who was in jail for 5 years, supposedly for some sexual misconduct, which was never proved.
Many blokes in there were quick to resort to homosexuality once in.
Nearly all of them seemed to resort to forms or displays of masturbation.
Most of the psychologists berrated my brother and ensured he served his full time in there because they couldn't believe that he resorted to neither of these behaviours the whole time.
They said he would explode upon release and let all his frustrations out on the opposite sex, etc.

Well, he was released 5 years later, and none such thing has happened!

Answer 7

Depends on the person, persons.

Answer 8

yes.