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.