The Meaning of Nature and Nurture in Psychology

The Meaning of Nature and Nurture in Psychology The nature nurture dichotomy is a theme always present in many areas

of psychology. But is it right to talk about it as a dichotomy? ,

Certainly not. To say so would be like stating that they never act

together, that they are contradictory and exclusive one from each

other. Biological and environmental explanations of human behaviour do

not need to be contradictive; the biological factors work inside of an

environmental context, and this context is formed upon a biological

base, that is why nature and nurture can not be a dichotomy.

But what does nature and nurture mean in psychology? Nature is

everything determined in our genes by heritage; in one person half of

these genes come from the mother and the other half from the father,

and each individual with the exception of his or her identical twin

has a unique genetic profile. This profile is the starting point, the

biological base for the development of one person’s character,

personality or behaviour. The term nurture implies the environmental

influences that act over the individual, like culture , family ,

friends and all the different circumstances that can affect and shape

a person’s behaviour.

Over the years much research has been done in the nature nurture

controversy as to the source of the creation of human personality, and

today nearly everyone agrees that both nature and nurture play crucial

roles in human development . This outlook has come to be known a...

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...he number of participants for each correlation

coeficient

(v)

There is a moderate positive association between stress and health. As

stress increases so does health. The associated probability level

P<0.001 showed that the result is highly unlikely to have arisen from

sample error.

Question 3

(ii)

r= - 0.4

(iii)

no it is not statistically significant

(iv)

N= 48

(v)

it means that the researcher had missing data from the variables.

(iv)

An improved SAT performance is moderately associated with amount of

expenditure per pupil; as expenditure increases improved performance

decreases although it is not statiscally significant. The associated

probability level of 0.001 shows that there is only a small chance

(1%) that this correlation has arisen by sampling error.