Ben Campbell
5/11/13
7th
Nurture Vs. Nature There has been a large controversy over whether parental teaching effect our way of thinking or if the environment influences and effects our way of thinking. Some people believe that it is strictly parental teachings that effect our way of life, others believe that it is the environment that effects us, and some believe that both of these influence our behavior. Either way, people have been struggling for a long time deciding whether our personalities are nurture or nature. Tests are done often on identical twins that were separated to see how they are each influenced by their separate environments.(Wikipedia.com) Urie Bronfrenbrenner, who studies genetics, said, "It is not nurture vs. nature, but the interaction of nature and nurture that drives development."(Wikipedia.com) Researchers are finding that the balance between parental teachings and environmental influences for certain traits change as people get older. Also, people may react to us in a certain way because of a parental influenced personality and, we may choose certain experiences because they fit best with our instinctive preferences. This means that our experiences may be influenced by our Parents. One way researchers study the development of traits and behaviors is by measuring the influence of parents through out ones life span, and it is found to be that the parents teachings on certain trait increase as people age. Research was done to see whether a trait would show up in a child if it was environmentally influenced or parentally influenced. A child was given more negative attention than another was, and it increased the chances of the child having depressive symptoms and anti-social behavior. But these symptoms disappeared when accounted for in parental influences and how parents treat their children.
There are three types of /environment relations. The first one is called a passive correlation. It is to be explained as, for example, if a musical ability was genetic, and a child was passed a musical ability trait, than the child would most likely have musically inclined parents. Their parents then would provide them with the genes and environment to promote the development of that ability. The second one is called evocative. This