A Look At Now: 5 Years Later

user-pic
Vote 0 Votes

When reviewing the material that has been taught over the course of this psychology 1001 class, one may find themselves wondering what will be remembered when they look back five years from now. On a personal level, I believe the one topic that has stood out to me and will be remembered is the controversial nature vs. nurture debate. The nature versus nurture debate discusses the relative importance of an individual's natural qualities against personal experiences in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits. The nature side of this debate stresses how much of an individual character is based on biological factors. For example, genes are activated at appropriate times during development and are the foundation for protein production. Proteins have a wide range of molecules, such as hormones and enzymes that act influence direct development in the body. When looking at the influence of genes in the Nature vs. Nature debate there has been found to be a change in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene. The discovery of this inherited, genetic "happiness gene" is evidence for the nature side of the debate when looking at life satisfaction. On the other hand, The nurture side emphasizes how much of an organism is based on environmental factors. In reality, it is most likely an interaction of both genes and environment, nature and nurture, that affect the development of a person. Genes and the environment must be in sync for normal development. Even if a person has inherited genes for taller than average height, the person may not grow to be as tall as genetically possible if they aren't given proper nutrition. I believe I will remember this debate because of its currently a well known issue in the social world. This will cause me to hear about it through some form of images.jpg

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/188076

4 Comments

| Leave a comment

This was a very good article to read. I'd have to agree that it is one of the most memorable discussions in psychology because it applies to many aspects of it. In my opinion, almost everything is partly nature and partly nurture; however, it is hard to know for sure.

I agree that this is one of the most prominent things from this semester that I think I will hold on to atleast 5 years down the road. I think we learned about each side of the argument and I have come to the popular conclusion that it isn't black and white, but a mixture of one's genes and one's environment.

I also found the nature versus nurture debate to be one of the most thought-provoking topics of the course, as it seemed to be at the heart of many psychological debates, especially in the areas of genes and intelligence. It can also go hand in hand with the correlation versus causation debate, as nature and nurture are hardly independent, and it is often difficult to tell if one causes the other.

I think nature vs nurture is such an interesting debate, but it also somewhat annoys me in life. People think relatives are usually somewhat similar, and since I have three older brothers who all act alike everybody thinks I'm going to act like them, think like them and pretty much be like them. It would be nice if they figured this out so people could understand I'm not a miniature version of them.

Leave a comment

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by elba0012 published on April 29, 2012 11:35 PM.

How to Think: Principles of Scientific Thinking was the previous entry in this blog.

Classical Conditioning is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.