nature or nurture? What do u think?

Question

What are your views about the nature/nuture debate? Are humans products of their genetics or the environment?

Answer 1

I believe that with all the increased knowledge of genetics these days there is a certain amount of over-zealousness when it comes to possibly attributing more to genetics than is correct.

Without further elaborating on my own views (although I could easily back up what I say if it were called for), and with one adopted child and two biological children (as well as experience with other adopted individuals), I am convinced that if someone handed me a healthy, non-brain-damaged, newborn infant tomorrow that child's brain development, physical development, personality traits, and emotional development would be far more the product of my nurturing than of the child's genes.

Science and medicine state that it is the nurturing of a child in the first two or three years of a child's life that helps establish brain connections. Children left in Romania orphanages are actually made to have retarded physical and mental development by their environment. There are a number of scientific realities related to development that would point toward nurturing having a far more important role in development than genetics. Anyone can find this science if he looks for it.

I believe that over, say, the next ten years the general population, as well as the experts, will become shocked to discover the extent of the impact of nurturing as compared to the relatively minor role genetics play in development, personality, and maybe even the immune system - we shall see if I'm right.

Just a note: Not long ago I was on a site that addressed the issue of brain development/brain connections in babies and toddlers. This was a scientific/medical site. It stated that if a child is made to feel insecure or threatened during those years of life the child's physiology will learn to respond to stress with higher than normal levels of cortisol, and for the rest of that child's life he will have been "blueprinted" to respond to stress with higher than normal levels of cortisol; which would mean this individual will be prone to high blood pressure and other health issues more than the person who felt secure and safe as a baby and toddler. (Do a search on something like "maternal influence on brain development".)

Answer 2

From what I have come to understand it cannot be one or the other, but; we are less a product of nature, or genetics than we previosly thought. You would find the writings of Bruce Lipton very interesting. He has a DVD entitled "Nature, Nurture..."

Answer 3

human are both influenced by genetic and environment.
scientisc has proved that. check DeCazco's Human Relation (2002)

Answer 4

It's proven to be both.

Answer 5

both