Nature/Nurture

When I first heard about nature and nurture I thought of outdoors and animals for nature, and a mother caring for her child and people being there when tragedy or disasters strike when I thought about nature. My perspective had changed greatly. I learned that nature is similar to genes and that nurture is environments and together they shape our development.

One of the things I really thought were interesting were the twin studies. My favorite section was the one about separated twins. I liked the story about Jim Lewis and his twin brother Jim Springer who were identical twins that were separated at birth. They were adopted by blue-collar families and had no contact with each other for 38 years. The thing that really caught my eye was how they both had a son named James Alan, a faithful dog named Toy, liked woodworking, driving Chevys, watching stock car racing, and drinking Miller Lite beer. They also had similar voices which allowed them not to be able to tell each other apart on voice recordings.

The second thing I found interesting was on the section of evolutionary explanation of human sexuality. This section was a little intimidating and uncomfortable but somehow it caught my interest. It says that male and female eat the same foods, avoid the same predators, see, learn, and remember similarly, but when it comes to sex, things are different between a man and woman. Men desire more frequent sex, think more about sex, initiate more, and sacrifice more to gain sex. I found it disgusting and strange that in a study of half or more, the men agreed to go bed with a stranger whereas women didn’t.

Last but not least I found out that at all ages but mostly during childhood and adolescence we seek to fit in with groups and our subject to group influences. The things we do and choices we make are influenced more by our friends and people we hang around with. For example, some of the foods we eat, the words we say, and the decisions we make even the good or bad ones. When it comes to popularity or inventing styles of interaction we develop from people of our own age. Parents are more important though when it comes to education, discipline, responsibility and interacting with authority figures. Parents have a say in their children’s influence by selecting the child’s neighborhood and school. I think it also has to do with the amount of freedom your parents give you and how much they spoil you.

In twin studies they were many studies done involving identical and fraternal twins, separated twins, biological and adopted twins. The studies gave examples of how identical twins have same genes but not always the same number of copies and why one might be more at risk for more illness. It also showed how even though they shared the same placenta one might have a better nourishment. Fraternal twins develop from separate fertilized eggs even though they share a fertile environment they are genetically no more similar than ordinary brothers and sisters. It was cool how separated twins still had many things in common and how regardless of personality differences between parents and their adoptees, children benefit from adoption.

This shaped my thinking about nature and nurture when it said people with identical genes but with different experiences have similar but identical minds and how one twin might fall in love with someone completely different than the co-twin’s love.

When I listened to the Evolutionary Psychology and Sexual Attitudes video, I agreed when they said how men and women don’t look for the same qualities in a mate like they did in the older days because of how we evolved.

When I listened to the Natural selection and Evolutionary Psychology video, the part I found interesting was when he talked about adoption, and how many people adopt other peoples children, but how in nature the only way to “adopt” is to persway another animal to look after a child is to deceive it into thinking its their own.

Nature and nurture sound very interesting but it seems like there is a lot of information. How could one sum it all up?