Nature vs Nurture

[Myzozoa]

Says the guy who is citing his AP psych class after a few chippy, wanna be authoritative posts. At least that guy can take a side instead of arm waving and red herring example hair splitting.



Unlike what your admittedly lacking experience and probably biased psych teacher told you, it's not about what comforts you or what people want it's about what is correct. The conclusion comes from the fact that genetics dictate everything from development to how you digest your greasy high school meals every day. Why would it taper off for no reason in matters to do with the personality, the personality which is generated entirely within an organ within a body that is governed by genetics?

Why would anyone assert otherwise?

I dont feel the need to cite sources to refer the basic theories of the essential schools of psych, and of course my teacher was biased in some ways, however I totally slept through the entire course and just read the textbook, it was written by an NYU professor (look I cited a source).

Genetics does dictate how organs develop and even what we are naturally good at. so out of this you could make arguments that what we do in life is all driven by genetics because we only pursue things we are good at and heredity determines that. Then you can go on and on about how this affects the development of personality too. I never said it 'tapered off' I dont deal in absolutes as fun as they maybe.

Genetics plays a role, so does environment, I dont know wtf you mean by ' the personality which is generated entirely within an organ within a body that is governed by genetics?'

Why would anyone assert otherwise? Maybe they got a clue and looked around and said hmmm, I am not exactly the same as parents, not even close. hmm i wonder if my friendsare like theyre parents, oh nope guess not. Just to be sure i think ill do some research and see if eveyone is like their parents, hmm some are some arent, must be something else, wonder what that could be?

 

[Morm]

I dont feel the need to cite sources to refer the basic theories of the essential schools of psych, and of course my teacher was biased in some ways, however I totally slept through the entire course and just read the textbook, it was written by an NYU professor (look I cited a source).

so you slept through a course and feel the need to not even tell me what that source was beyond appealing to a higher power with it?

Genetics does dictate how organs develop and even what we are naturally good at. so out of this you could make arguments that what we do in life is all driven by genetics because we only pursue things we are good at and heredity determines that. Then you can go on and on about how this affects the development of personality too. I never said it 'tapered off' I dont deal in absolutes as fun as they maybe.

Only a sith deals in absolutes. I think you missed the point about genetics, they determine how you react and internalize stimulus.

Genetics plays a role, so does environment, I dont know wtf you mean by ' the personality which is generated entirely within an organ within a body that is governed by genetics?'

Let me get my spoon: Your body is governed entirely by genetics. Processes, development, respiration and everything else. Therefore anything the body makes, the brain included, is regulated and developed by genetics.

why would anyone assert otherwise? Maybe they got a clue and looked around and said hmmm, I am not exactly the same as parents, not even close. hmm i wonder if my friendsare like theyre parents, oh nope guess not. Just to be sure i think ill do some research and see if eveyone is like their parents, hmm some are some arent, must be something else, wonder what that could be?

You aren't the same as your parents, you have various genes turned on at the onset of development that they may not have and you are only 50% like each parent to begin with. Therefore it would be ridiculous to think that the mixture of genetics from your parents would make you exactly like your parents...one person being exactly like two people is a pretty ridiculous strawman. Maybe you should 'get a clue' and do more than sleep in class, or at the very least pick up a biology textbook because you are exceptionally inadequate and backing up what you are saying or producing any form of coherent debate.

No wonder you can't pick a side and like psych. I find it extremely arrogant for you to come in here on a high horse with little more than a greasy high school background to flail about with.

 

[Glen]

It's not really a debate of is it one or the other it's a debate over which one is the most predominant.

so... again, how are you defining predominance here? how do you quantify the effects that one side or the other has?

i'm not so naive as to think i can make an argument against you without first deferring to you in pretty much every scientific field, but i seriously think you're trying to measure the immeasurable.

take someone who is not an alcoholic. say they do not have a gene that predisposes them towards alcoholism, but one of their parents was in fact a raging alcoholic. since this child didn't have the gene, that's nature trumping nurture, right? nurture in this case being the severely heightened risk of an individual developing an addiction if their parents are addicts. but what if this person dealt with the trauma of an alcoholic parent by abstaining when necessary? what if through sheer force of will they refused to allow a habit to become an addiction?

again, i don't understand how you hope to quantify the effects of one side vs the other in even a single case, let alone an entire species. the whole thing strikes me as egregiously facile.

 

[Morm]

Predominance meaning which one has a larger overall effect. It really comes down to how much people are willing to yield that genetics plays versus how much development of the personality goes on after that genetic scaffolding is in place.

The idea is that it's consistent enough through a species that a decent proportion could be determined within at least a standard deviation. Thinking everyone is a unique flower that has the ability to not let their genetics dominate them or some such is crap. Our genetics are so similar, you and I, that there must be an almost immeasurable number of parallels, especially with broad strokes development. I don't know how a person can think "you can't categorize things across a species" when there must be a way with enough information input, considering we are the same species and therefore are exceptionally genetically similar. The MAIN concern is how much of a personality is determined before the stimulus can get there and with that in mind, how a person reacts is clearly their nature.

I'll grant that some people might be predisposed to have nurture affect them more, sort of like your example (at least, the outcome) where the person chooses or chooses not to succumb to it. In that case, it's their nature to allow things to get to them more, which means it's still a natural cause versus a nurturing one which allows for it to have such an effect and once the stimulus is received, nature STILL determines how it is assimilated and reacted to.

How does it strike you as egregariously facile, exactly?

 

[Glen]

so even if someone makes a concious decision to live their life a certain way, as in my alcoholism example, your rebuttal is "their genetics made them react to stimuli that way haha you lose"? you really may as well have made a thread daring users to challenge any tenet of christianity, then shot back to any and every response with "that's only there to test your faith".

it's facile to pigeonhole people like that, not to mention incredibly defeatist. to hell with self-improvement, we're nothing more than the product of our genetics. if thinking people are a bit more complicated than you're giving them credit for means i think we're all unique snowflakes, then i guess i do? i didn't expect this to turn into some fatalistic mope-show, but then i remembered who started the thread!!!!!

 

[Morm]

The choice to live their life in any way is a product of personality. How that personality forms is more the topic of things, not free will. I don't think you understand the actual premise.

I never said it was entirely genetics. Some people might misinterpret what I'm saying as some sort of fucked up biological predetermination and I never said that. Don't put words in my mouth or make it into a strawman. I'm simply saying that genetics (nature) has a larger stake in development of personality than nurture does. Genetics may dictate almost entirely how stimulus is reacted to and assimilated, but that stimulus needs to be present to begin with.

How is it facile to pigeonhole people? How is it defeatist? If they fit in the hole, they can be placed there. If you don't like it, tough shit. I don't see anything but a string of red herrings from you. To say that I am calling people simple is a simplification of my entire premise. "We are the sum of our parts and those parts are more precisely dominated by genetic processes than by external stimulus" describes it adequately. Genetics and how they shaped us, along with how they interacted with stimulus, is what I am saying makes us. There are billions of interactions within our body every day that make us who and what we are, and that's just talking about proteins and cellular biology stuff. It's insanely complex which is why this debate is interesting- can we somehow pick out the parts necessary to determine what is important?

The only one moping here is you. I appreciate your opinion on this but you're really coming off as upset for some reason. My negating of your own personal and admittedly uneducated opinion on the matter isn't a personal attack on you. The fun part about asking non specialists is that their point of view might not have been herded in the same way and as such might provide some interesting insight. My opinion has clearly been hijacked and shaped by science and biology, but that doesn't mean someone can't come along and present a reasonable argument for the other camp. The key thing there is reasonable, it wouldn't hurt to back it up like several of the posters before you did.

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

was this what you hoped for when you started the thread? ;o

 

[Hipmonlee]

Do we actually have any twins on the forums? I dont know any who are here as twins, but there may be some who are one half of the set.

I'd be interested to hear their views on this matter.

My younger brothers are twins, and they are a lot alike. Moreso than the rest of the family, though that doesnt really support either side of this debate.. On the other hand, despite their identical genes and pretty similar upbringings, they are actually quite different in a lot of ways..

Ways that obviously go beyond what you would expect from nurture as well.. One is far more extroverted than the other, I mean there have obviously been a lot of butterflies in the amazon flapping a lot of wings, but I cant really see any obvious cause for that. He's just like that..

Have a nice day.

 

[Morm]

I think it's pretty obvious from the effort I put into the OP and the replies that I was looking for actual discussion, not trolling and derailment. Who the fuck would use well presented science and thought out logic as a troll platform?

Hip, I think that true genetically identical twins would be the best bet, as non identical are basically just siblings. Though I did know one set that looked identical yet wasn't...they were indistinguishable in predisposition and behavior, as well as look, despite not being genetic copies. That kind of lends support to nurture having a stronger role with them, as they may have been treated identically. I knew one set of true identical twins that were the same damn person as far as anyone could ever tell, til you got them in the same room.

Then again, with twins, it's much more likely that they get treated the same...though with the last pair I mentioned, they went to different schools (for who the hell knows what reason) and actually had different interests but as far as personality is concerned they were the same. So perhaps twins would be tainted by being treated as one rather than two individuals and that could impact the nurture side and make it look more like nature.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Well, yeah, my brothers were never tested, but I assume they are identical because of their physical similarity (they are as similar as any twins I have ever met). Of course that isnt exactly scientific, but I am not exactly trying to turn this into a doctoral thesis.

Have a nice day.

 

[Chou Toshio]

"Personality" seems like a really difficult thing to identify and discuss via nature v. nurture. It's too vague as a concept.

Now if we talk about "habits"-- that's easy. Given a certain degree of cultural similarity of initial environment (say, both raised in America)-- things like speech patterns, word preferences, nervous habits, food preferences-- I think these sorts of things are likely to be heavily affected by nature.

On the other hand, beliefs-- political stances, personal philosophy, world views, religious beliefs-- these things are heavily affected by culture, and the environment. If you are raised by a devout Islamic family in the middle east, your nature can be whatever-- odds are you're going to grow up to be a Muslim.

These types of factors are much more specific than "personality." Heck, even "temper" is more specific-- if a person is generally positive, generally negative, easily angered, extremely patient, etc. etc. Temper is probably strongly decided by genetics.


I will say that living abroad, especially in Japan, has really made me appreciate the power of culture though. You FEEL the cultural barrier when you live abroad. Going back to the twins, if you raise them in an at least vaguely similar culture, the similarities would be really pronounced. But, I bet if you raised them in wildly different cultures, there will be a lot more differences even in subtle behavior.

I grew up in Hawaii as a Japanese American, where people of at least partial asian descent make up the majority of the population, and Japanese is one of the biggest and most influential ethnic/cultural groups. I grew up as and alongside many people of "Japanese Stock."

...But when you go to Japan, things feel totally different. Even outside the obvious language/knowledge barriers, Japanese people walk differently, they stand differently. You feel the real and deep effects a culture makes on even subtle, unconscious body language-- the angle (different in men and women) people point their toes, the spacing between feet, the size and stride of foot steeps, posture, angle of arms when walking, when standing--you feel the difference when you're there. The human brain unconsciously picks up on these differences, and in time, works to match them. While I stuck out like a sore thumb when I first went there, now Japanese have a hard time telling I'm a foreigner unless they have a more extensive conversation with me.

Once back at home, I watched a Japanese film with my Dad. He commented on how weird the girl's walking was-- toes pointed in, and kinda waddling like a duck. He thought it was so bizarre. If I thought about it, yes, it's strange-- but many Japanese women, especially younger in teens or early twenties, have a similar gait. You'd just never see a Japanese American girl walk that way.

I guess what I'm saying is that the affects of nurture can be very subtle, but when you cross the boundaries between cultures, it becomes more pronounced. There are many 4th or even 5th generation Japanese in Hawaii and in the larger US of pure Japanese heritage, with genetics all well within the range of the original Japanese stock-- but even at subtle behavioral levels, the difference is really obvious.

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

Well, I'd say personality is more broad than vague, there are a wide range of attributes that can be classed as part of personality and i wouldn't see why any of them would be unable to be discussed upon in the context of this thread.

In other words, one wouldn't be hard-pressed to conjure a personality trait with which to discuss whether nature or nurture has a large impact on it.

Interesting point about behavioural quirks though, east vs. west cultural differences are certainly very large; one could certainly say that nurture is predominant in this case, especially when radical differences are so apparent. In China, even if one is an expat you will find yourself doing certain things that the locals do, most common of which I find is jaywalking, because cars here take no notice of zebra / pedestrian crossings and traffic lights are a mediocre deterrent at best, the pedestrians adopt the same attitude (rather than one of self-preservation) and just walk willy nilly across streets and intersections.

 

[MrIndigo]

I've always believed the answer is that nature sets out the complete tree of possibilities that it is possible for you to arrive at. Nurture is what actually chooses the path.

Whether or not a particular outcome is more strongly tied to nature or nurture would depend on a case by case basis. Behavioural things are probably more strongly tied to nurture than nature, with a few exceptions perhaps for ASD individuals upon whom nurture is more limited to act.

A more physiological thing (say, for instance, the inability to speak due to brain lesions) would obviously be because the nature-pathway involving social-conditioning into spoken language was never available because the hardware of the brain was incapable of doing so.


Actually, I like that hardware-software analogy.

 

[Lanturn314]

I think it's pretty obvious from the effort I put into the OP and the replies that I was looking for actual discussion, not trolling and derailment. Who the fuck would use well presented science and thought out logic as a troll platform?

Well Morm, people are actually giving evidence that contradicts what you think is right, but you are refusing to listen. It's not like people here are even saying it's all nurture, but rather that you are oversimplifying things by trying to ask which one predominates, because it really depends what we're talking about.

Hip, I think that true genetically identical twins would be the best bet, as non identical are basically just siblings. Though I did know one set that looked identical yet wasn't...they were indistinguishable in predisposition and behavior, as well as look, despite not being genetic copies. That kind of lends support to nurture having a stronger role with them, as they may have been treated identically. I knew one set of true identical twins that were the same damn person as far as anyone could ever tell, til you got them in the same room.

Oh wow, anecdotal evidence. How wonderful. Let me bring up some actual numbers. You wanted psych/personality data, right? Then where better to go than studies on the heritability of various psychiatric conditions?

The NIMH cites a 40-65% chance of a person whose identical twin has schizophrenia also developing the disorder. It occurs in 10% of the population with a first-degree relative (ie mother, sister, brother, father), vs 1% of the general population. So while there is an increased risk based on genetics, it's definitely not the whole story.It is not quite known exactly how the environment helps determine whether the disorder will develop, but some popular hypotheses are exposure to viruses or malnutrition before birth, psychosocial factors such as social isolation, living in an urban environment, and stressm(this paper on the stress-diathesis model was interesting), and the use of cannabis. The wikipedia article provides more examples with actual cited sources of environmental factors in this disease, so I'll let you read for yourself.

For depression, there's a lot of disagreement on its heritability.This twin study found that the heritability was higher in women (42%) than in men (29%). This study, however, found no sex differences in the heritability. This study only focused on females and found heritabilities ranging from 0.34 to 0.41. Note that all of these numbers in all of the studies are less than 0.5 or 50%, which suggests that environmental factors play a large role. Social isolation, child abuse, stressful life events, and disturbances in family function such as divorce or the death of a parent can all play large roles.

For bipolar disorder, this paper found that heritability of BPD was around 85% and 89% using narrow concordance using broad concordance, with no shared environmental effects detected. There was a genetic correlation of 0.65 between mania and depression and a correlation of 0.59 for nonfamilial environment. Approximately 71% of the genetic variance for mania was not shared with depression. This paper found that the heritability of Bipolar I was .73, of Bipolar I+II .77 and of Bipolar I+II+Cyclothymia .71. So bipolar is significantly more heritable, and therefore more attributable to genetics, than either schizophrenia or depression. However, the heritability is still not 100%, so while genetic factors predominate here, there is also room for environmental factors to play a role.

So clearly, making sweeping generalizations about how important genetics are to things like mental illness is rather stupid. Sure, it's a contributing factor, and it only makes sense to give medications based on that. But it would be a disservice to patients to neglect the impacts of the environment on these patients, as well. This study is particularly illuminating: the researchers compared depression patients receiving antidepressants alone, patients receiving cognitive-behavioral therapy alone, and patients receiving a combination of the two. The overall rate of response and remission was identical at 48% in the groups who were only receiving one mode of treatment, compared with 73% in the combined group. In patients who completed the study, the rates of response were 55 percent in the antidepressant group and 52 percent in the psychotherapy group, as compared with 85 percent in the combined-treatment group. If anything shows that the nature vs. nurture debate is an extreme oversimplification of things, this does.

Then again, with twins, it's much more likely that they get treated the same...though with the last pair I mentioned, they went to different schools (for who the hell knows what reason) and actually had different interests but as far as personality is concerned they were the same. So perhaps twins would be tainted by being treated as one rather than two individuals and that could impact the nurture side and make it look more like nature.

Again, way to give anecdotal evidence. You of all people should know how unacceptable that is-- you could at least say that you realize these observations aren't exactly good enough to make generalizations from.

How about we bring in the famous Minnesota Twin Study, where they studied various aspects of twins separated at birth? For IQ, genetic factors were found to be responsible for about 70% of the variance between sets of twins. As for other personality factors, the heritability ranges from 28-50% depending on what is being measured. Here is a chart that sums up the results:

Hide

So as you can see, this "debate" truly is an oversimplification of how things really are. We should not be looking at one over the other, but rather focus on the larger picture, which is how they interact to produce the individual.

 

[Cooper]

so even if someone makes a concious decision to live their life a certain way, as in my alcoholism example, your rebuttal is "their genetics made them react to stimuli that way haha you lose"? you really may as well have made a thread daring users to challenge any tenet of christianity, then shot back to any and every response with "that's only there to test your faith".

Thank you for saying it. I feel like a lot of people in this thread are looking at the nature vs. nurture debate in a way similar to the free will vs. fate debate. Advocates of free will can say that you can attempt to break the pattern of fate (if there is one) by doing something unexpected and uncharacteristic of yourself, and fate advocates will be there to say that your thoughts about breaking fate and actions toward that goal were all fated. Anyone not blinded by religion can see that that's a pretty terrible argument, and the same concept applies here. If you want to say that everything you do in life is based on how your genes make you react to stimuli, including differentiating yourself from the parents who gave you those genes (teenagers much?), that's a valid point of view. But it doesn't make for a good discussion thread.

When I was in high school, I was a huge asshole to just about everyone, and my friends were the people who knew that I was joking most of the time. If you argued that somehow my parent's genes came together to produce a disposition in me towards assholery, I might agree with you. But then I went off to college and realized that no one likes an asshole, so I made he conscious decision to stop being an asshole. It was tough, but I did it. So now we have two conflicting personality traits in me. Are you going to argue that my earlier disposition was real, and this new one is fake? Or that I somehow have a disposition towards not having a disposition? My conscious decision was based on an environmental factor (people don't like assholes), and was a product of my nurture.

To say that nature and nurture don't contribute equally is a pretty dumb thing to say in my opinion, simply because of the fact that peer groups play such a HUGE role in shaping our lives and personalities and thoughts and feelings and everything else. Genetics influence how we interpret these stimuli, but what we do with them is strictly based on nurture.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

I don't get why the term is still called Nature Vs. Nurture, when it is so obviously a combination of the two. There are multiple studies from both sides that say that one is more important than the other for various reasons.

/thread

The only people still debating about this question are the ones who benefit from the public seeing everything in black and white. Either something is wrong and there's someone to blame, or everything is right and someone needs the credit. Examples include people lobbying against gay civil rights and the treatment of diseases (especially psychological afflictions). It's been obvious for a long time that nature and nurture work together to shape us both physically and mentally. The only question is how much of an impact each has in every case, which is going to take a bit more than this thread to decide.

 

[Glen]

The choice to live their life in any way is a product of personality. How that personality forms is more the topic of things, not free will. I don't think you understand the actual premise.

i think i understand the premise just fine ?_?

how is there any discussion to be had whatsoever when you can stultify any argument for nurture (again, not that i'm even arguing for nurture) with "yes but their genetics made them react to stimuli in that way"?

I never said it was entirely genetics. Some people might misinterpret what I'm saying as some sort of fucked up biological predetermination and I never said that. Don't put words in my mouth or make it into a strawman. I'm simply saying that genetics (nature) has a larger stake in development of personality than nurture does. Genetics may dictate almost entirely how stimulus is reacted to and assimilated, but that stimulus needs to be present to begin with.

i proposed a situation wherein conscious choice could just as likely be the culprit for an aspect of someone's personality as genetics. your response was "their genetics made them react in that manner". how is that not advocating biological predetermination?

How is it facile to pigeonhole people? How is it defeatist? If they fit in the hole, they can be placed there. If you don't like it, tough shit. I don't see anything but a string of red herrings from you. To say that I am calling people simple is a simplification of my entire premise. "We are the sum of our parts and those parts are more precisely dominated by genetic processes than by external stimulus" describes it adequately. Genetics and how they shaped us, along with how they interacted with stimulus, is what I am saying makes us. There are billions of interactions within our body every day that make us who and what we are, and that's just talking about proteins and cellular biology stuff. It's insanely complex which is why this debate is interesting- can we somehow pick out the parts necessary to determine what is important?

but they don't fit in the hole, and i don't understand why you think they do. you and i are tremendously different people, but there are people with differences much greater. it seems like an impossible task to lump every single person together in hopes of reaching a conclusion. had you made this thread posting a specific case and asking opinions on whether nature or nurture had more impact on the person's development, that would be interesting and not an exercise in futility. alas, every person reacts to stimuli differently. if you're going to say that genetics are mostly responsible for that in every single case in every single human in existence then why is this even an "interesting discussion"? there is clearly nothing you can learn from this thread, is it a lightly disguised podium from which you can educate the laity???


The only one moping here is you. I appreciate your opinion on this but you're really coming off as upset for some reason. My negating of your own personal and admittedly uneducated opinion on the matter isn't a personal attack on you.

i'm not moping though ?_? you responded, with great anguish it seemed, to my post with a "youre not a unique snowflake glen!!!"

and again, you didn't "negate" my opinion. you dismissed my legitimate point on alcoholism with "genetics. born this way. lady gaga." which is clearly unprovable as, were it provable, this "debate" would not exist.

The fun part about asking non specialists is that their point of view might not have been herded in the same way and as such might provide some interesting insight. My opinion has clearly been hijacked and shaped by science and biology, but that doesn't mean someone can't come along and present a reasonable argument for the other camp. The key thing there is reasonable, it wouldn't hurt to back it up like several of the posters before you did.

wow, how needlessly condescending

THIS CONCLUDES TIPS ON HOW TO BE REASONABLE ON THE INTERNET BY MORM "BATSHIT FUCKING CRAZY" OOPID

 

[Cartoons!]

When you discuss nature and nurture, how broadly or specifically can you apply such factors to a person's personality and decision making? I can see someone making arguments for why someone might have criminal tendencies, but it fascinates me that the debate could even be brought into the realm of human/dog name and brand preference.

 

[Morm]

I've always believed the answer is that nature sets out the complete tree of possibilities that it is possible for you to arrive at. Nurture is what actually chooses the path.

I like this, though I find it a little bit lacking for some reason. I just find that it should be a bit more reactive, rather than "this is a path to walk down, now choose!" It's certainly a neat take, just too passive for my tastes.

Well Morm, people are actually giving evidence that contradicts what you think is right, but you are refusing to listen. It's not like people here are even saying it's all nurture, but rather that you are oversimplifying things by trying to ask which one predominates, because it really depends what we're talking about.

WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY

Oh wow, anecdotal evidence. How wonderful. Let me bring up some actual numbers. You wanted psych/personality data, right? Then where better to go than studies on the heritability of various psychiatric conditions?

You do realize that anecdotal evidence wasn't used to back me up beyond "well then again" and I did affirmatively say that identical genetics are the best bet? Learn to fucking read. Maybe next time you'll be more rigorous and call out Chou's 100% anecdotal post even though it supports your view of "morm is wrong and black and white despite reinforcing many times that they both play a role"

THEN you presented evidence to the contrary, after being a snippy bitch, way to prematurely blow your brain load. Your evidence is actually contradictory, like the parts you admitted they were, and the schizoid issue could so very easily be an issue with a subtle development problem or rather the likelihood of a development problem with that given set of genetics. It would make sense, especially because schizoid turns up predictably at the same age all (early 20's in males, when the brain is done developing, for example) the time and there is almost no deviation at all. All of your evidence cites rates and other such statistics, but then CAUSE is entirely hypothetical and because of the nature of the beast of psych research, authors can put any spin they want on things.

Jrrr, as if you don't have an agenda with making EVERYTHING not black and white. I have never said it's all one way or the other, I think I'm just the only person here that understand how powerful genetics actually is. I've been saying all along it's both but that nurture is dominant. Why is everyone so dead set on that being wrong?

Glen, conscious choice is a product of personality. The choices you see, the path you are most likely to take (for whatever reason) and etc. So it kind of just down the river from the entire debate. I came out and said it's not a personal attack on you, way to make it into a personal attack.

You know guys, you can look at it this way: You have the most powerful influence on life in the entire universe, genetics, and you have experiences that the animal might not even remember. To me, it's a no brainer, you go with the brute force reacting to experiences in a predictable way.

Edit: the Minnesota twin study thing (the thing in hide tags in lanturns post) was just explained to me. Basically it says that Twins share 50% of their personality values, meaning that HALF are likely genetic (that is the portion from the 'personality scaffolding' I mentioned). The other 50% is an interaction of reaction and stimuli, meaning that genetics (=nature) is bumped up OVER 50%, meaning that this particular study actually supports the view of it being both with a favoring towards nurture, which was my entire "black and white" premise all along. Sweet Victory !!!!!!

 

[ivar]

well morm at least lanturn always has your back

 

[Lanturn314]

I like this, though I find it a little bit lacking for some reason. I just find th
Edit: the Minnesota twin study thing (the thing in hide tags in lanturns post) was just explained to me. Basically it says that Twins share 50% of their personality values, meaning that HALF are likely genetic (that is the portion from the 'personality scaffolding' I mentioned). The other 50% is an interaction of reaction and stimuli, meaning that genetics (=nature) is bumped up OVER 50%, meaning that this particular study actually supports the view of it being both with a favoring towards nurture, which was my entire "black and white" premise all along. Sweet Victory.

You neglected to add that I also explained to you that these people were all raised in Western societies, and most of them were American. So their environments weren't all that different, which could mean that the 50% is actually a bit high. So thank you for neglecting to post that.
Also, in your previous posts, you were advocating a much larger contribution of nature than this study would suggest, and only citing nature examples. It was pretty hard to figure out that you were actually advocating both, so either you weren't and this is you back-pedaling, or you need to word things better.

 

[Morm]

a random sampling to demonstrate how much I am not back peddling

I am a STRONG advocate of nature. Your environment may play a part, but your nature determines how you react to that stimulus in the first place.

I am not saying nurture does not exist, I am simply saying that nature is the one calling the shots based on what nurture does.

Only a sith deals in absolutes.

Predominance meaning which one has a larger overall effect. It really comes down to how much people are willing to yield that genetics plays versus how much development of the personality goes on after that genetic scaffolding is in place.

I'll grant that some people might be predisposed to have nurture affect them more

The MAIN concern is how much of a personality is determined before the stimulus can get there and with that in mind, how a person reacts is clearly their nature.

I never said it was entirely genetics. Some people might misinterpret what I'm saying as some sort of fucked up biological predetermination and I never said that. Don't put words in my mouth or make it into a strawman

"We are the sum of our parts and those parts are more precisely dominated by genetic processes than by external stimulus" describes it adequately. Genetics and how they shaped us, along with how they interacted with stimulus, is what I am saying makes us.

I was citing examples of why nature should be dominant. I have said all along that the stimulus needs to be there to cause a reaction, but that genetics is the one that determines the magnitude and type of reaction.

Let me break this down:

1. Nature determines if the stimulus will be benign or cause a reaction.
2. Nature determines the severity and type of reaction to the stimulus.
3. Nature determines how it is internalized and assimilated BASED ON the type of stimulus.
4. Nature creates a scaffolding from the onset that guides the decision making process and reactions to stimulus.
5. Therefore, nature plays the central role in personality development with the NEEDED aspect of stimulus input.
6. Nurture, on the other hand, merely needs to be present to cause a reaction.
7. The nature of a discrete individual is there regardless of stimulus, though I've never denied that it can create a layering effect one the scaffolding and tendencies are in place.
8. The evolution of discrete natures is a response to stimulus, so in a longer term thought process continued and repeated stimulus is actually more important than a short term one, ESPECIALLY at the population level, but even with this buff nature takes the drivers seat in assessing HOW to deal with it.

You can argue both back and forth, but it's easier and more parsimonious to make genetics the uniting feature than to look at stimulus on a case by case feature. What this means is that it is more likely to be central so, according to occam's razor, it should be taken as the correct answer until it is demonstrated incorrect. Of the papers Lanturn has cited, one of them actually backed me up (or at the very least didn't back her up adequately, depending on how you spin it), two of them contradicted each other and the others had a great deal of stats and treatments without really talking about cause, which is the point.

 

[gizchim]

nature versus nurture was always a stupid question; the reality isn't nature versus nurture, it is nature and nurture. simply put, nature defines the template, nurture embellishes it. the brain defines who we are, and it is defined at birth by genetic process and our parents; this is nature. our brain is also adaptive; it changes both of its own accord and against its own accord, and in extreme cases can fundamentally alter who we are from that point on. this is nurture.

what is predominate isn't really that important, because ultimately its a circumstantial issue; they both possess the capability to be dominate, but whichever is more dominate a factor in shaping who they are is contingent upon individual circumstance.

 

[FlareBlitz]

I don't think that the argument based around which aspect is more "dominant" is being framed correctly.

Suppose, for instance, that a certain zygote has the genetic potential to be the smartest human that ever lived. However, it is born into a family living on the brink of poverty and is not given proper nutrition or intellectual attention, thereby acquiring several development disorders.
If the same zygote grows up in a normal, if unexceptional, fashion then it could become a fairly intelligent individual.
And finally, if the zygote is born into a rich family that is able to afford it excellent nutrition and schooling opportunity, then it would develop into the smartest human that ever lived.

If we frame it this way, then it's apparent that nurture is the dominant force - the fetus goes from blithering invalid to the paragon of human intellect. However, if we frame it another way, we could just as easily say "a child with unexceptional genetic potential given an excellent upbringing will only be of above average intelligence"; framing it that way implies that nature is the dominant force.

The point of what I'm saying is that both nature and nurture have a very large number of subcategories that all have impacts of varying magnitude, and attempting to make arguments along generalized lines about either of them is specious at best.

Another point I've been thinking about - I believe many of the impacts of nurture are logarithmic, while many of the impacts of nature are linear. What I mean by this is, a child who receives maybe 5% less nutrition than another child but has 5% more genetic potential (defined in a very very hazy way here, but anyway) the child with the greater genetic potential will likely come out on top. However, if we have a child with 70% more genetic potential but who receives 70% less nutrition, he will be mentally crippled. So basically, small differences in the upbringing of two children may not matter, but larger differences matter disproportionately.

 

[Morm]

I really like that post, flareblitz. I see a flaw in the logic though- you are looking at one character of potential and not nature as a reactive force. What I mean by this is that in each example the child is still reacting because of its innate nature. As a result of the stimulus, the nature shapes the personality around it based on the laid down framework.

I agree that nurture can trigger those kind of profound effects, you're right, but what those profound effects are is based on the nature. It's basically an old philosophical argument: "Anything a creature does is within it's nature to do so because it is doing it." So in this "nature" I include reactions to the stimulus.

We haven't even really touched on how nature impacts how you view the world and interact with it, thusly changing the stimulus received either as a perception filter (think pessimist vs optimist) or perhaps because others are reacting to you and giving you a specific stimulus as a result.

what is predominate isn't really that important, because ultimately its a circumstantial issue; they both possess the capability to be dominate, but whichever is more dominate a factor in shaping who they are is contingent upon individual circumstance.

It's important when determining and mitigating the formation of mental illness and detrimental/socially crippling personality qualities. If you know the cause you can prevent it.