Nature/Nurture

After reading and reviewing the Nature/Nurture chapter, my perspective on this issue has changed in several ways. Before reading the chapter I didn’t realize that the two worked together to form our behaviors. So many people argue about the two subjects, fighting over whether it is nurture or nature that determines our behaviors. After looking at heritability and twin studies I realized that a lot of our behaviors, such as personality, interests, fears, and heart rate all might be affected by our genes. On the other hand other parts of our personality come from the way we are raised; our religious and political views, our manners, our beliefs, and our values. This helped me fully realize that both nurture and nature are important, and while we might fight over which is more important in behavior, we can’t deny that both do have significance in life.

One thing I learned that I didn’t know before was that sometimes our genes can be ‘outdated’. Both the book, and the video lecture by Richard Dawkins talk about the fact that our genes and natural selection have prepared us for situations in which we no longer need to be prepared. I liked the example they gave when they said that our genes are programmed to make us like to eat food. This used to be necessary to survive. They pointed out that in the modern world we have food everywhere we look, and no longer need to worry about finding enough food to stay alive. I really liked the line the book gave, “We are, in some ways, biologically prepared for a world that no longer exists.

Something else I found interesting was that there are two different types of societies; individualistic and collectivist. When they described the individualistic view of life and said that America is individualistic, I laughed because I knew it was true. We as Americans are always thinking about ourselves, and this is the way we are taught to live. Movies promote individualist views and messages such as teaching us to be independent individuals, people who don’t have to rely on anyone else. The collectivist societies are completely different, learning to work together and help each other. It made me wonder what kind of movies people in Asia watch. Do their movie heroes promote helping out their societies and working together, or are they unique and independent like the characters in our movies?

A third thing I learned was that identical twins have 100% of the same genetics and that they are always the same gender. I guess that makes sense since they both came from the same egg and sperm, but I never really thought about it before. I know this doesn’t seem like a very applicable fact to pull away from the chapter, but realizing this helped me understand why twin studies are so important.

And that leads me into that exact question, why are twin studies so important? I think they are important because by showing the behaviors and lifestyles of two people with identical genetic make-up, it helps us decide how much of our behavior is based on our genetic nature, and how much is based on parental and environmental nurture. I think cases where identical twins are raised in separate homes are especially important because then the two people weren’t nurtured the same way, which means most of what they have in common could be based on their inborn nature.
I think the videos we watched were important because they showed us that a lot of our traits can be looked at to decide what parts of behavior are affected by nurture or nature. Richard Dawkins pointed out that all humans should want to pass on their genes to offspring in order to keep their species alive. It is in our nature. It’s pretty interesting to understand which parts of our behavior are affected by certain parts of our lives and inborn ideas.

To conclude, a question that came to mind was in the PowerPoint lecture on the slide titled ‘Parenting’. It talks about how certain behaviors come about because of the way our parents brought us up. They said that our religious faith is affected by our parent’s beliefs. Now, I certainly agree with this, I mean, you don’t often see a Buddhist come out of a Christian home, or vice versa. However, one thing that I wondered through this was whether or not there was a point in life when we break away from our parents believes and decide for ourselves what we believe in. We may say we’ve stepped away from what they believe, but then, do the new ideas that we come up with still have a bias based on what we used to believe? Personally, about a year ago I went through a period where I realized that everything I believed in was based on my parents beliefs and ideas, and I basically went through everything I stood for and trusted in to see that I believed it for myself, and not based on what I’d been raised with. While I feel that my beliefs are now all my own and not solely based on my parents beliefs, the question could be raised as to whether or not I’m still putting my beliefs in what I’ve always known thought to be true.