Heredity or environment which is more important

Perfect pitch is the ability to detect the pitch of a musical tone without any reference. Researchers have found that this ability tends to run in families and believe that it might be tied to a single gene. However, they've also discovered that possessing the gene alone is not enough to develop this ability. Instead, musical training during early childhood is necessary to allow this inherited ability to manifest itself.

Height is another example of a trait that is influenced by nature and nurture interaction. A child might come from a family where everyone is tall, and he may have inherited these genes for height. However, if he grows up in a deprived environment where he does not receive proper nourishment, he might never attain the height he might have had he grown up in a healthier environment.

Throughout the history of psychology , however, this debate has continued to stir up controversy. Eugenics, for example, was a movement heavily influenced by the nativist approach.

Psychologist Francis Galton, a cousin of the naturalist Charles Darwin, coined both the terms nature versus nurture and eugenics and believed that intelligence was the result of genetics. Galton believed that intelligent individuals should be encouraged to marry and have many children, while less intelligent individuals should be discouraged from reproducing.

Today, the majority of experts believe that both nature and nurture influence behavior and development. However, the issue still rages on in many areas such as in the debate on the origins of homosexuality and influences on intelligence.

While few people take the extreme nativist or radical empiricist approach, researchers and experts still debate the degree to which biology and environment influence behavior. Increasingly, people are beginning to realize that asking how much heredity or environment influence a particular trait is not the right approach. The reality is that there is not a simple way to disentangle the multitude of forces that exist.

These influences include genetic factors that interact with one another, environmental factors that interact such as social experiences and overall culture, as well as how both hereditary and environmental influences intermingle. Instead, many researchers today are interested in seeing how genes modulate environmental influences and vice versa. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Levitt M. Perceptions of nature, nurture and behaviour.

Life Sci Soc Policy. Schoneberger T. Three myths from the language acquisition literature. Anal Verbal Behav. Moulton C. Perfect pitch reconsidered. They used twins because identical twins share percent of their genetic material and fraternal twins share at least 50 percent.

If one twin developed cancer and the other didn't, that helped the researchers conclude that the disease is not strictly hereditary. Researchers concluded that "inherited genetic factors make a minor contribution to susceptibility to most types" of cancer.

Instead, environmental factors seemed more important. Those factors "encompass everything that is not genetic," said Heather Spencer Feigelson, Ph. Thus, it is a much broader context than the idea of environmental factors being limited to substances such as pesticides, air pollutants or toxic waste. In an editorial accompanying the Scandinavian study, Dr. Robert N. Only a few of them were found normal. Blood relationship and abilities: With the help of Stanford Binet Intelligence Test, correlation between the various members of the family was found.

Trend is one of the such mental tests as reported by Anastasi. Example of hogo fish: If this fish is incubated in an abnormal temperature it develops one eye instead of two eyes. It is due to environment. This also proves that an individual is more a product of environment than of heredity.

Nursery education: It has been found that children who are sent to nursery earlier than other children show an increase of 4 to 5 points in their intelligence quotient as compared to children who do not receive education. The used to talk, walk and act like wolves. It also indicates the importance of environment. Children under experiment remained dumb.

Conclusion At the end, we can say that Heredity and environment both are significant factors in the development of personality. If heredity is the base, environment is the structure. If heredity is the seed, environment is the soil. If heredity is the soul, environment is the body. They are inseparable. One man is a law-abiding citizen, another is a criminal; one a militarist and another pacifist.

It is difficult to indicate any genetic basis for these variations and in many cases it is almost impossible to assess properly the relative role of heredity and environment in producing these differences. Both have been operative to produce every particular situation since time immemorial. In no case of personality development can we properly attribute any characteristic to heredity or to environment alone. A given result is always produced by the interaction of gene substance, and their environment.

We should not, therefore, be interested, in asking about the absolute contribution of either factor as a whole. Heredity, no doubt has its influence on the physiological traits but environment is also the arbiter of our development. What heredity can do environment can also do. Neither can ever be eliminated and neither can ever be isolated. Both have been operative in determining human behaviour. An immigrant group, no matter what its heredity antecedents, exhibits new characteristics when transplanted from its native land to the country of its adoption.

Heredity is of no avail if environment is not there to show it off. For instance, it is the industrial age which has made possible for men of talent to rise to eminence that otherwise could have remained in obscurity.

A new social situation or a happy chance may thus give a genius the opportunity to reveal his power but no amount of favourable conjuncture will turn a person of mediocre mentality into a genius. David Abrahamson has written that heredity determines what a person can do, and environment what he will do. The capabilities of man are hereditary, but their manifestation is the work of the environment.

Heredity gives us our working capital; environment gives us opportunity to invest it. Heredity explains man the animal, environment man the human being. All the qualities of life are in the heredity, all the evocations of qualities depend on the environment. In other words, heredity has potentiality and environment offers it a chance of bringing them out.

It also follows from this principle that the higher the potentiality, the greater is the demand made on environment. Thus more subtle differences in environment may have little effect on those of low potentiality while the same differences may be vastly significant for those who have higher potentiality. For instance, a seemingly minor change in a situation, say, a rebuff, may prove decisive to a sensitive nature while it may not affect a thick skinned ; man.

Lastly, the more elastic the life the more is it at the mercy of environment. That is why environment affects us most in the earlier years of our life when we are most impressionable. We should thus conclude this controversy of nature versus nurture by accepting the unchallengeable truth that heredity and environment—the two ultimate determinants of every living being- are of coequal importance and that none is more potent than the other. Drop files here or. Accommodation: Forms and Methods of Accommodation in Society.

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