Psychology in the Real World

Nature VS nurture is a part of developmental psychology. It is the issue of the degree to which environment and heredity influence behavior (Feldman, 2013). They call this the age old question of psychology. With all of the research that has been done, people now believe that it is not one of these factors that that determine a person’s development, but both. The magazine article that I picked is basically talking about the development of children or nature VS nurture. There were some misguided theories before, when it comes to why children turn out the way they do. I thought one of the examples used in the article was a very good one. Smithstein used autism as an example. It was thought that autism was caused by a more or less a bad mother, and now that people know it is not they try to turn to environmental factors such as vaccinations. I think that this is very important in the argument. It shows that a least some of the reason children turn out certain ways have nothing to do with parenting or nurture. It shows that some things such as disorders and diseases can develop due to a person’s nature or genetics. The journal article, Twin Studies: What can they tell us about nature and nurture, outlines and talks about the different studies that have been done on twins. Most past research was dedicated to studying twins. Twin studies used to be almost the only way to compare the influence of genes against the environment on personality and behavior. Research suggest that genes combine with the environment to produce complex human traits (Guo, 2005). This article talks about the problems with traditional twin studies and these studies in general. One of the topics in the journal article is gene by environment interactions. Many huma... ... middle of paper ... .../od/nindex/g/nature-nurture.htm Collins, W., Maccoby , E., Steinberg, L., Hetherington , E., & Bornstein , M. (2000). Contemporary research on parenting the case for nature and nurture.American Psychologist , Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/Shatara/Documents/Parenting Study.pdf Feldman, R. (2013). Psychology and your life. (2nd ed., pp. 293-296). New York: MCGraw-Hill. Guo, G. (2005). twin studies: what can they tell us about nature and nurture? . Retrieved from http://www.unc.edu/~gguo/papers/05 twin studies Contexts.pdf Ridley, M. (2003, June 02). What makes you who you are. Retrieved from http://cms.daegu.ac.kr/sgpark/molecular biology/DNA(TIME).htm Smithstein, Psy.D., S. (2010, August 01). Nature vs nurture: the debate rages on. Psychology Today, Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-the-wild-things-are/201008/nature-vs-nurture-the-debate-rages