Your behavior & personality - determined by your environment or genes?

Your behavior & personality – determined by your environment or genes?


The one debate that never gets a clear solution is a debate on nature versus nurture. Nativists advocate that the characteristics and behaviors of people are a result of inheritance whereas Empiricists advocate that the mind is a blank slate which gets the impressions from the environment and learning experiences. So, what do you think? Is your behavior and personality influenced by the environment or genetics? Who are you: A nativist or an empiricist?

Nativists – its genes.

• The physical traits like the eye color, skin color and many others are a result of the nature, and not nurture. For e.g Even if a child with African parents is born in Asia, he is most likely to have curly hair because that’s in his genes.

• There are many diseases which are genetic in nature and passed on from one generation to next generation.

• As per the Language acquisition device theory, all are born with an inherent mental capacity that helps people to learn and produce language.

• The finest example is of fraternal twins who tend to show the same similarities in response and behavior even when they are reared apart.

Empiricists – the environment makes you so.

• The many factors like life expectancy, diseases, and some of the other biological traits are influenced by lifestyle and environmental factors.

• The social learning theory given by Albert Bandura strongly advocate that learning comes by observation.

• The abstract attributes like sexual orientations, personality, intelligence and many others are not gene-coded in the DNA.

• If behavior cannot be changed, then psychology studies and treatment would not have existed in the world.

• Two siblings staying in different environments, grow up to be different. Such is the effect of nurturing.

• Man is a social animal who learns from his surroundings and experiences. Otherwise a person should stay the same all through the life but we see people changing with time.

Conclusion



The debate between nature and nurture goes on but the question stays there. Are people born in a way or the behavior is shaped as per the life experiences? In fact, nature and nurture both play an important role in people’s lives. Some of the traits are predetermined by the genes but it is the individual who can choose who he wants to become and what he wants to accomplish in his lifetime.
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    Discussion

  • RE: Your behavior & personality – determined by your environment or genes? -Bhavani (09/25/14)
  • Our behaviour and personality is determined by our genes.
    because they only initially teach us how to behave.. from that be behave with our environment.
  • RE: Your behavior & personality – determined by your environment or genes? -Deepa Kaushik (09/24/14)
  • It is a very nice discussion where we have environment versus genes. When we consider the behaviour and personality as the traits for the discussion under these heads, then we need to have two more terms viz. capacity and expression to have a deeper introspection of the topic.

    The term behaviour mainly revolves around the abstract performances of the human processing. Whereas the personality covers the physical and physiological frame-work mingled with the abstract phenomena. Both the behaviour and personality represents the person as a whole and it varies from person to person. We can segregate the behaviour and personality in terms of the capacity or capability of the person and the expression of the same behaviour / personality.

    The genes denote our inheritance. This is something that we carry on within us from our ancestors. It accompanies the looks, the gestures, the physical appearance and frame-work, the physiological process within the body and the mental exhibition which portrays our reaction to the external expressions. These qualities have some specified limitations which are inherited. Even if we try a lot under the influence of environment, we can just exhibit a bit better to what our genes has lain down. But the boundaries remain restricted. This can be well understood with the example of difference in IQ of one individual from the other. Despite best efforts, two people cannot reach the same level of intellect in every aspect.

    The other phase is our environment. This is the atmosphere where we stay and groom ourselves. The environment has a wide impact of our mind. The person cannot increase his IQ, but can express his views with much clarity under the influence of environment. Getting civilised is the bi-product of environment. Our thoughts and expressions are getting polished and shaped with the environment. Though the weight of the substance remains the same, but it can be collapsed and re-shaped into some other form. Here, the stagnant weight is the influence of the genes, whereas the re-moulding is the characteristic of the environment.

    This discussion will keep on lingering, as it does not have a boundary of demarcation. With a small example, if brain is to genes, then mind is to environment. To be precise, our behaviours and personality are determined by our genes and controlled and managed by the environment. Genes are the creator and environment is the protector of our behaviour and personality.