Nature and Nurture

The nature and nurture argument is one of the most concerned issues in psychology that explains human behavior. Nature is the characteristics that people are born with, or the genetic inheritance such as genes, personality traits, and physiological aspect. In contrast, nurture theories refer to the outside environment and emphasize how life has affected people through experiences. They could not be separated completely hence the scientists' difficulty of choosing one over another.

Nature, which is known as heredity, physical characteristics that you are born with. Color of eyes, height, straight or curly hair, genetic diseases such as bold hair, heart disease are the result of genetic inheritance. In an investigation on children, the linguist Noam Chomsky believed that all children have Language Acquisition Device (LAD) congenitally, which gives them ability to learn to talk fluently. Beckett, C. (2002) also indicated "The ability to acquire language as such would seem to be the product of genetic inheritance". Some people who possess an ability to feel the language, "language intuition", found it is easy to learn other difficult languages which are not mother language such as Japanese, Chinese while others found studying Japanese and Chinese difficult, troublesome and they would not continue to study. Moreover, twins usually have similarities both appearance and characteristics. It is known that some twins were raised separately, and they just had met when they both had family. Not only they had similar appearance such as hair, eyes, but also their gait, favorites, and the way of thinking were similar.

On the other hand, nurture refers to influences of experiences and environment. It is a belief that all knowledge is gained by experiences through time. Researchers had show that children were most likely to imitate people who are powerful, nurturing, and who control rewards in their lives (Bandura & Huston, 1961; Bandura & Ross, 1963; Mischel & Grusec, 1966). Furthermore, according to Dockery, M. and Reiss, M. (1999), life experience might be gained from interacting with parents, neighbors and others. These lead to the prediction that boys are more aggressive and care more about dominance than girls while girls are more likely to imitate the characteristics of their mothers such as caring, being emotive. In addition, a well looked after and well - educated kid usually has better characteristics and higher educational level than those who did not receive any attention from parents. Because of observing how people around them think and behave for a long time, they would be influenced to do the same way.

Finally, both nature and nurture have reasonable evidence to support its impact on human's development but it is controversy that how to distinguish whether it is innate characteristics or personal