Third Paper

Nature, Nurture or Both?

            For years psychiatrists have studied families and children and questioned how they become the adults they are. Genes can work by influencing our behavior which can channel us into certain environments. They also influence our susceptibility to certain kinds of environmental stressors (Rice). How much of a person’s personality is affected by nature and genes that are passed down and how much is affected by the way they are raised? How much influence does a mother have on children and does the way a parent treats a child influence the way they are treated by others? And does the way a child act affect how others perceive them and in turn treat them? Maybe there will never be a clear answer because humans are affected by both in so many ways. Nature is what molds us within the womb but nature can manipulate nature. It is not uncommon to here that people don’t change but that is not an entire true statement either. Children learn and amend their behavior every day. As adults, it gets harder to modify the day to day routines and attitudes but with the right help and support people of every age make choices to become someone a little different than they were yesterday. This is not to say that there are certain things engrained into our DNA, just that both create each individual ever born. 

            There are so many arguments for the nature vs. nurture debate. In Nicholas Christakis’s article Forget About Nature vs. Nurture. The Answer Lies Between Christakis’s says, “No child is born able to read; this task is learned from parents and teachers in social settings. In other words, one of our most essential abilities as humans—reading—is the product of the combination of innate and learned traits.” This statement is so powerful using very few words. There are so many things as humans that we do, such as reading that we don’t really take the time to understand how many people helped teach these skills.

            There have been many things that for a long time were believed to be determined entirely on our culture. For example, our choice of friends, or voting patterns that have turned out to have deep evolutionary roots. Christakis was a part of a study that discovered people seek out friends that have similar genetic variants that they do way beyond physical characteristics. “Peoples genetic variants can change over time due to early social experiences such as education, poverty, malnutrition and child abuse” (28).

            A study conducted using Norwegian rats proved that a great deal of how our behavior as adults is significantly affected by the way we are handled by our mothers as infants. The greatest discovery made by researcher Michael Meaney was that loving behavior learned from mothers is passed on to offspring in the next generation. Researchers discovered that the pups whose mothers licked and groomed them more during nursing tended to be less fearful and less responsive to stress. Even the female offspring of attentive mothers tended to have similar practices with their own pups. The pups with less attentive mothers had pups that followed suit. “It would be shocking of the same process was not working in humans. That would imply that maternal care is essential for a rat, but not for us,” Meaney said when asked about the correlation he was trying to make between rats and humans. When negativity is detected in the home the key is to change the family dynamic early on. If a family can learn how to come together constructively and manage to change the interaction between parents and children the results can be carried across multiple generations (22).

            As we learn from the behavior of rats it opens up many doors and questions about not only a positive learning environment but also some negative or difficult genes that can be passed down. Staff writer Rob Stein for the Washington post and Cardiff University researcher Frances Rice answered questions about children carried by a surrogate mother. Research has shown that children whose mothers smoke during pregnancy have an elevated antisocial behavior as opposed to children of nonsmoking mothers. The big question is if a child is biologically related to a smoking mother but carried by a nonsmoking surrogate would that child have the same preexisting condition of being antisocial or could the nonsmoking surrogate influence the child’s behavior while still in the womb? Stien’s opinion is that if the biological mother has a genetic predisposition to antisocial behavior it would be unlikely that child would have a different outcome. Stien’s theory is a prime example of the nature playing a huge role in not only a person’s childhood but also as an adult (Science: Nature vs. Nurture).

            When asked about siblings that were adopted into different homes both Stein and Rice agree that the biological siblings, even though they are not raised in the same home, would have more in common with each other than with the children they were raised with. Stein believes that genetic predisposition plays the biggest role in personalities and behavioral traits but Rice has a slightly different view. She believes that if a child is prone to something like antisocial behavior that there is an element of inheritance that comes with it but it is also very probable that there was some conflict within the adopted family as well (Science: Nature vs. Nurture).

            While Stein seems to fall more on the nature side of the argument he recognizes that many other factors can be attributed to the outcome of a person as an adult. More complicated behavioral traits are both a combination of genes and environment. It is widely accepted (not scientifically proven) that complex behaviors (such as risky behavior) involve multiple environmental factors and multiple genes of small effect.  If a child inherits a gene that makes them more prone to risky behavior it doesn’t mean they will grow up to be a jet pilot or jump out of airplanes for a living, but the way they manage their biological designators steer them to a more thought out path of safely doing risky activities (Science: Nature vs. Nurture).

            Rice seems to fall somewhere in the middle of nature vs. nurture. There have been studies about infants learning while in the womb and Rice supports and backs with some of her personal research. She has discovered that baby’s are able to “learn” stories that are read to them during the late stages of pregnancy. When tested after they are born the infants prefer to listen to the story that was read to them rather than a new one. This is possible because a babies hearing is functioning before they are born. What is difficult about this particular argument is how does one decide if this is nature or nurture? It could be considered nature because the infant is still in the womb and growing but it could also be considered nurture because the mother is instilling a story to her child that has meaning to her (Science: Nature vs. Nurture).

            Perhaps one of the most fascinating theory of nature and nurture is how we project ourselves determines how people naturally treat us especially siblings. The easiest way to dive into this theory is to use a stereotypical family where the mother stays home therefore having the most influence in childrearing. In a study conducted where the researchers watched the behavior of mothers and how it influenced the way the other siblings would treat a child it was noticed that positive maternal encouragement for new experiences were positively associated with the way older siblings treated their younger brothers or sisters. On the flip side of this coin hostility and inconsistency were positively related to hostility and negativity between the siblings. Children raised in these kinds of environments were also less likely to have good social skills in school and are not open to helping others or new teaching experiences (1248 Reiss, David et al).

            The mechanism that creates to co-variation between mother and children is unknown, but it is known that a mother’s influence on her children will stay with them for their entire life. One theory about the way children treat each other is a learned routine from their parents. Children imitate or model their parents’ behavior toward them which carries into the way they treat others. At a very young age children internalize interactions with their parents and it is turned into a working model of self in relation to others which then translates into social behavior. Both of these theories emphasize that nurture plays a greater role in a child’s life than nature (1248 Reiss, David et al).

            Although a parent plays such a huge role in a child’s life children also have an active role in creating their interactions with parents and others. “It is possible that the consistency of a child’s experience with parents and siblings may be evidence of a child’s stable interactional style, prompting similar behavior with different relationship partners and eliciting similar responses” (Reiss, David et al). Genetic traits that can be passed down, such as temperament affect a child’s interpersonal behaviors and have an impact on emerging and continuing relationships.

Early childhood temperament is a window into adolescent behavior. If a child possesses behavior patterns such as aggressive tendencies they are most likely to be somewhat angry adolescents but have been reported to become highly stable over time depending on the environment they are raised in. When looking at this pattern of behavior both nature and nurture play a huge role in how different of an adult a child can become. This however is not always the case. More often than not genetically influenced traits can lead to how they are treated by others which also plays a part in the person a child develops into. For example, if a child is active, social and smiles often they appear friendly and cheerful to others eliciting nurturing responses. Children that come across distant and shy usually seek out solitary activities such as reading. They may give off the vibe that they want to be left alone and for other children to keep their distance. This type of behavior can elicit negativity from other children. Young children especially cannot grasp what kind of behavior they are showing to others and they also don’t understand that they are treated similarly to the attitude they are portraying (1249 Reiss, David et al).

Despite prior evidence for strong genetic influence between mothers and siblings research shows that environment plays a much bigger role than it was believed to in the past. Adolescents have consistent experiences with both mothers and siblings in part because of some common environmental factors. There is a general family climate that can shape the interactions across various subsystems. Mothers play a vital role in shaping their own relationships with their children but also how the children create relationships with each other. Mothers that treat all of their children similarly have the result of the children treating each other the same way. Children will carry the model of the working relationship she has with each individual into their own interactions even when she is not present to intervene how they treat one another. If a child and mother are experiencing problematic exchanges, that will carry through to create antisocial behaviors and escalate to involve other siblings as well. A mother’s behavior toward a adolescent mirrors an adolescents behavior toward their siblings. This hypothesis described is referred to as a passive genotype-environment correlation (1258 Reiss, David et al).

 If one child experiences aggressive and hostile relationships with a parent while a sibling is sheltered from the direct negativity it will inevitably affect the way both children interact with each other. It would be most likely that the child experiencing the direct negative behavior will treat the more sheltered sibling in a similar manner. This kind of family environment only initiates negative reactions from all relationships and is usually carried over into their adult life (1259 Reiss, David et al).

As a conclusion for the argument nature vs. nurture it is becoming more accepted that both play a vital role in who we are as children, teens adults and parents. In the article Goodbye Nature vs. Nurture Debate Matt Ridley argues that modern genomics has shown that the nature/nurture debate invokes a meaningless opposition. He states “The discovery of how genes actually influence human behavior, and how human behavior actually influences genes, is about to recast the debate entirely. No longer is it nature vs. nurture but nature via nurture. Genes are designed to take their cues from nurture.” A great way to sum up this statement is asking the question do some parents pass on smart genes to their kids or do they pass on books to aid their curiosity?(M., S., and B. M.).

            In the end there will never be a way to scientifically prove whether nature or nurture id key in how children behave as adults but it will forever be a topic of discussion among scientist and psychologist for many years to come. There will always be new tests available but there will also always be children that are the exception to the rule. Trying to determine how much of a trait is produced by nature/genes and how much by nurture/environment is as useless as asking if the drumming we hear is produced by percussion or an instrument.

Works Cited

Christakis, Nicholas A. “Putting the Social into Science. Forget About Nature vs. Nurture. The Answer Lies Between.” Time 178.24 (2011): 28 MEDLINE. Web. 26 Nov. 2012

M., S., and B. M. “Goodbye Nature vs. Nurture Debate.” New Scientist 207.2778 (2010): 03. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Nov. 2012

Reiss, David et al. “Adolescents Relationships to Siblings and Mothers: A Multivariate Genetic Analysis.” Developing Psychology 35.5 (1999): 1248-1259 PsychARTICLES. Web. 26 Nov. 2012

Stein, Rob. “Science: Nature vs. Nurture.” Washington Post, The n.d.: Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 26 Nov. 2012

White, Paula. “Nature vs. Nurture.” Heart and Soul 7.2 (2000): 22. MasterFILE Premire. Web. 26 Nov. 2012