Nature vs Nurture is one of the oldest psychological debates that question whether heredity or the environment most impacts human psychological development; such as habits, behaviors, intelligence, etc. It is obvious that you share similar physical traits with your parents like height, eye color, and hair color. Many question whether you develop personality traits from your parent’s genetics or if it all depends on your environment and how you are raised after birth When you are born you have no ideas or preferences, like a blank slate. But as you grow, you develop your own identity. But is it developed by your surrounding environment or have you always had your set personality and beliefs?
If you believe your personality develops as you grow, you take the side of nurture in this debate. If you believe you have always had a set personality that was created by your DNA you take the side of nature. These two theories are very different but are both believed to have input on what makes us who we are. Based on different types of literature I’ve read and on my own beliefs, I believe we are a product of our setting, meaning our genetics have no real impact on our personality or beliefs. I am on the nurture side of this debate because I believe every aspect of life, good or bad, molds who a person is and gives everyone in the whole world their own personal identity. Similarly, we adapt every winter to the cold weather, and every summer to the hot weather. We have adapted from the beginning of time to current time. Our lives are constantly changing and if our mindsets were developed before birth because of genetics, our minds would be too similar to our parents and we would never be able to change much over time.
The expectations of a human now are much higher of those in the 1500s. If our ancestors passed down their beliefs and traits to their kids and they did the same, so on and so forth; us humans would be stuck with the same problems we had thousands of years ago because we would not be able to move on to bigger and better things. We may carry traits from our ancestors, yes, but most are physical features. If we do have a trait or two similar to our ancestors personalities this does not mean it has been passed down in our genes this means that a family has carried on a tradition because that is what each child is exposed to growing up.
127 our experts are availableright now
For example, say if your great grand father was a famous snowboarder; does this mean you will go into the olympics for snowboarding because you have carried on his trait? No, But this could result in a snowboarding vacation trip every year because your family has carried on this tradition for as long as they can remember. This is because this is what your family was exposed to as kids through the environment and this is what they know; not what has been passed down genetically. To begin, the concept of being rich or poor has a very tremendous on a human because this alters their setting, Often times rich people act more “stuck up” than the poor because poor people have to struggle to survive while the rich get everything the need handed to them on a silver platter. I feel this is often the case with celebrities. A lot of the time people who are famous now were not always famous; they lived lives just like you and me.
But as their popularity grew, so did their paycheck and so did their ego. For example, Justin Bieber was not always famous He lived as a normal boy in the country side of a small Canadian town with his mother. They wore normal clothes and drove normal cars and lived a low key life, But as he became more famous his family moved out of this small to Los Angeles, California. Now you see Bieber on the news, driving around in a Leopard print Bugatti, head to toe in designer clothes If he were to wear and drive such flashy items in his birth town, he would be looked at as crazy because the environment is much more humble and farm like than in LA, They are almost complete opposites. With time, Bieber adapted to his new life with his new friends leaving his old life behind This happens to a lot of people who fluctuate between economic standpoints going from an apartment to a mansion causes a person‘s mind set to change.
Your wealth and living situation can be predetermined before you are even born We see this same situation in the play Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw. In the play there’s a father named Alfred and daughter named Eliza who are dirt poor with nothing but the clothes on their back They were very similar and lived in the ragged part of town where they were too poor to make anything of themselves. Their setting affected the way they lived life and expressed themselves as humans. As the story progresses the father(Alfred) runs off to marry a woman and receives money from an anonymous donor. Alfred Doolittle begins to think of himself as a higher power because of his new found wealth, “[Alfred] is resplendently dressed as for a fashionable wedding,.. ‘Look at this hat, look at this coat [he says]ta [Eliza]’ll find me quick enough now after what you’ve done to me.”
Alfred seems to say this in a way that makes him seem better than Eliza and all of the people he knew when he was pooh With his new clothes, wealth and wife he gains the respect from people of the town who never gave him a second look when he was poort. This causes him to become almost cocky and he begins to talk down to others. He even says, Eliza will running back to him once she finds out he now has money. He adapts quick to the rich snooty lifestyle because he has now realized that he has what others struggle to have. He and Eliza could never relate to each other, but even more so now that Alfred is surrounded by wealth and has a new found attitude because of it. Likewise, you are who you are by the events and situations you have been put through. Significant events such as having a baby, getting married, winning the lottery, experiencing death, being laid off or other traumatic events are all life-altering.
These events cause people to change their whole perspective on what they used to know. For example, in the short story “A soldier‘s home” by Ernest Hemingway, Krebs suffered with PTSD after coming home from World War 1. He developed “a distaste for everything he might have done something else, now this poem expresses how peer pressure and wanting to be “cool” my not always work in your favor in the long run. Skipping school will cause you to jeopardize your education and drinking can hurt you in your future. The people who are in your school and the people you hang out with can severely impact who you are. Finally, who you are can even be classified in your geography For example, people in the city may act different than people from rural areas and vise versa. People from different types of towns are almost guaranteed to act in different ways People in the city tend to be more materialistic and dependent on industries. They are also more outgoing because they are constantly around large amounts of people because the city is very densely populated.
On the other hand, people in rural areas tend to be more reserved and independent people there isn‘t many people around or materials they can take advantage of. For example in the poem “The Quiet Life” by Alexander Pope the speaker lives alone on a farm where he cares for himself and only worries about his necessities. The poem states, “herds with milk,” fields with bread,” and “trees in the summer that yield him shade”(The Quiet Life, Pope) he spends his life relaxed and out of the societies eye causing him to be blissfully happy because he doesn’t have to worry about anyone but himself, These are good traits to have his independent setting causing him to be happy with who he is.
In conclusion, nature vs. nurture is a debate that has been going back and forth for years and continues to go unanswered. When posing the side of nature you believe that you are who you are because their are hereditary traits in our DNA. When posing the side of nurture you believe that you are who you are because of your setting and the experiences you go through. It is obvious that the nurture theory of this argument is a lot more logical. Without being influenced from experience and our environment we would not progress into anymore than clones of our ancestors, we would not have our own mind set and wouldn’t be able to function in society, Your personal identity can only develop by living and experiencing all aspects of life.
