ASSIGNMENT

NAME OF THE STUDENT: Chaitanya Chandwani

ROLL NO. 2021522

NAME OF THE COURSE: B.A (Honours) Applied psychology

SEMESTER: IInd Semester

TOPIC: Does intelligence depend more on nature or on nurture? Discuss

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 9th of July 2022

THE NATURE V/S NURTURE DEBATE

The concepts of nature and nurture shape the development of human beings. The nature-
nurture debate goes by several names that are often used interchangeably in different sub
disciplines of psychology. For centuries, researchers and scientists have been attempting to
explain the root of our societal and individual identities, and what triggers our infinite
behaviours. At the centre of this search for these answers lies the infamous Nature versus
Nurture debate, the timeless debate in the field of psychology. This paper will explore how
much of an individual’s personality and behaviour is a result of nature, and how much is a
result of nurture. It will explore whether adoption studies give a solid illustration of the
extent to which nature and nurture affect development. This is an archival study, utilising
sources in the forms of books and journal articles from the Kingsborough Community
College Library and several psychological journals. The film documenting the journey of the
well-known triplets from the Louise Wise Agency’s twins’ studies will also be reviewed, as
the majority of data from this study is redacted or sealed. This paper will not present new
experimental or case study research, but instead summarise and analyse existing information,
providing a supported conclusion towards the end.

The majority of works found concluded either that nature and nurture cannot be separated or
were simply inconclusive. Those that conclude that a separation cannot exist argue that
personality and behaviour both contain traits that are influenced by both heredity and
environment to differing degrees. The summaries of several of the studies themselves could
not come to a conclusion, similarly, because evidence existed in favour of both heredity and
environment. These authors also seemed to be searching for a polarised answer. It was
difficult to locate sources that were based on real, unbiased research that argued for solely
one or the other.

The basis of the nature versus nurture debate dates back to 500 B.C., when Hippocrates and
Aristotle were both searching for a way to explain human behaviour and animation of the
body. In 1874, Dr. Francis Galton wrote:

 “[Nature and nurture] separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which
personality is composed. Nature is all that a man brings with himself into the world. Nature
is every influence from without that which affects him after birth.” (Lock, 2016, p.14)

Not long after, Erasmus Darwin and his grandson Charles did in depth research on animal
evolution that was applied to human development. Erasmus noted “…that conditions… were
not predestined by nature, but predisposed… Heredity is the result of a malleable admixture
of nature and nurture.” Charles Darwin was the first documented researcher to suggest that
the environment can have an effect on genetics that can last through generations; this study is
now called “epigenetics,” which translates roughly to “around or inside of.”

NATURE

Many studies have been done that involve adopted twins because this seems to be the most
solid way to measure differences. Monozygotic twins exhibit what appear to be mirror image
traits, and researchers rely on this as a secondary control to their control group. In Minnesota
in the 1970’s, child psychologist Sandra Scarr did a study on the comparative IQ’s between
adopted children and their adoptive parents and siblings using cohesive biological families as
controls. Scarr found a strong correlation between biological predisposal and quantitative
intelligence. (figure 1) Adoptive parent-child pairs had the fewest similarities, with no genes
shared and a twenty two percent correlation. Siblings that were not full blood relatives had
only slightly more similarity in IQ scores, with half-siblings appearing to be the segue to
much more profound similarities. Parent-child pairs and fraternal twins raised together
shared fifty percent of their genes and had a forty-five to sixty-three percent correlation.
Interestingly, identical twins who were raised apart, sharing one hundred percent of the same
genes, had the highest correlation at seventy-eight percent. Because of this strong correlation,
Scarr argued in favour of heredity, stating that the characteristics of both parent and child
determine the child’s environment. Therefore, a child could never be truly affected by
nurture, only nature. (Goldhaber, 2012)

In her argument, Scarr noted that while development is a product of nature and nurture, an
individual’s experiences are actually driven by their genes. She believes that organisms could
change their surroundings, and that perceptions would cause one to experience the world
differently. She asserted that this predisposal was genetic and the basis of our development.
She set out to learn how nature and nurture works together to produce “variation[s] in
development.” (Scarr, 1983). In her adoption study, despite feeling that our development is
genetically driven, she did acknowledge that adopted children have higher IQ’s than their
biological parents, and that this was likely due to a more nurturing environment provided by
the adoptive parents. She still contradicted this by saying it was written in the adoptive
parents’ genes to provide such an environment. Additionally, Scarr found that twins raised
separately still seemed to have the same hobbies, interests, friend choices, academic
achievements, and even food choices.

The strength of genetic predisposition was also illustrated in the extremely unethical and
sweeping study of twins and triplets done by the Louise Wise Agency in New York City. In
this study, researchers utilised this adoption agency to place single-child girls in families
with whom they intended to place separated twins in order to provide a control. In the most
well-known case, they placed each boy from a set of triplets with families of different
socioeconomic backgrounds to see what effect this would have on them. When the triplets
were nineteen, they found out about the study and it affected them deeply. One of the boys
was so affected by this discovery, as well as their shared mental illnesses, that he ended his
own life. It was further discovered that there were many sets of twins, all with sisters of the
same margin of age difference in varied adoptive circumstances. The researcher who headed
the study gave all records to Yale to be sealed until 2066, long after his death. Because of
this, and the study head’s death, the actual breadth of the Louise Wise Agency’s twins’ study
is unknown beyond those twins that have already come forward.

Because these records are sealed, access to the actual data from researchers is unobtainable.
However, the remaining two triplets did recently make a documentary, featuring interviews
from people who have known them their entire lives, as well as clippings that show the
uncannily similar behaviours that were exhibited whenever they were recorded for interviews
or home videos of them simply being around each other. These clips show similarities
between these individuals who had never met, from their nearly identical face and body
composition – those close to them were taken aback that they all had the same very unique
hands. The boys all moved with the same patterns and displayed the same mannerisms –
which is uncanny, since they were raised separately. It is thought that these types of
behaviour are learned. In addition, the boys all suffered through moderate to severe mental
health problems from their teenage years on and did tend to overindulge with drugs and
alcohol – this was by no means congruent with their family lives. (Read, 2018)

Misunderstandings about heritability

The recurring public debate over nature–nurture questions reveals widespread

misunderstanding about the concept of heritability. Therefore, it is important to be clear
about the following points:

l) Heritability refers to a population, not to individuals. The heritability of a trait refers to

differences among individuals within a population, not to percentages of a trait within an
individual. To say that height has a heritability of 90 percent does not mean that 90 percent
of your height came from your genes and 10 percent came from the environment. It means
that 90 percent of the differences in height among individuals observed in a particular
population is due to genetic differences among those individuals.
2) The heritability of a trait is not a single, fixed number. Heritability refers to an attribute of
a trait in a particular population at a particular point in time. If something happens to change
the variance of a trait in a population, the heritability of the trait will also change. For
example, if everyone in our society were suddenly given equal educational opportunities, the
variance of intellectual performance in the society would decrease, and scores on
standardised measures of intellectual ability would be more similar. (This is what happened
in our hypothetical experiment in which everyone had to study the same length of time for
the exam.) And because heritability is the percentage of variance that is due to inherited
differences among individuals, the heritability would actually increase because the
percentage of the variance due to an important environmental factor, education, would have
decreased.

3) Heritability does not tell us about the source of mean differences between groups. One of
the most contentious and recurring debates in American society is over the question of
whether average differences in the intelligence test scores of different ethnic groups are due
to genetic differences between the groups. In the early twentieth century the debate
concerned the relatively low intelligence scores obtained by Hungarian, Italian, and Jewish
immigrants when they were tested upon arrival in the United States. The test scores of these
immigrants led some researchers to conclude that the majority were ‘feebleminded’ (Kamin,
1974). Today the debate concerns the lower scores obtained by African Americans and
Hispanic Americans compared with white Americans (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). In these
debates, the heritability of intelligence is often used to support the genetic argument. But this
claim is based on a logical fallacy, as illustrated by the following ‘thought experiment’:

We fill a white sack and a black sack with a mixture of different genetic varieties of corn
seed. We make certain that the proportions of each variety of seed are identical in each sack.
We then plant the seed from the white sack in fertile Field A, while the seed from the black
sack is planted in barren Field B. We will observe that within Field A, as within Field B,
there is considerable variation in the height of individual corn plants. This variation will be
due largely to genetic factors (differences in the seed). We will also observe, however, that
the average height of plants in Field A is greater than that of plants in Field B. That
difference will be entirely due to environmental factors (the soil). The same is true of IQs:
Differences in the average IQ of various human populations could be entirely due to
environmental differences, even if within each population all variations were due to genetic
differences. (Eysenck & Kamin, 1981, p. 97).

4) Heritability does not tell us about the effects of environmental changes on the average
level of a trait. Another incorrect claim about heritability is that a trait with high heritability
cannot be changed by a change in the environment. For example, it has been argued that it is
futile to use preschool intervention programs to help disadvantaged children enhance their
intellectual abilities because those abilities have high levels of heritability. But between 1946
and 1982 the height of young adult males in Japan increased by 3.3 inches, mainly owing to
improved nutrition (Angoff, 1988). And yet height is one of the most heritable traits we
possess. Then, as now, taller Japanese parents have taller children than do shorter Japanese
parents. Similarly, IQ test scores have risen significantly over the past century in many
cultures (Flynn, 1987). In sum, heritability is about variances, not average levels.

NURTURE

Study after study, we appear to be becoming less and less sure of genetics than we were in
1990, when scientists began the human genome project. It is still easier, however, to define
heredity than it is to define environment: environment can include any factor from events, to
people in our lives, to illness. Additionally, individuals’ perceptions can potentially make the
same exact factors wildly different between two people. This can cause a single situation
involving two people to be completely separate experiences that mean different things.
(Goldhaber, 2012)

One of the earliest known studies, though not an adoption or twins’ study, is the study of
“Little Albert” by psychologist John Watson in 1920. Watson showed that behaviour can be
learned by taking a small child with no previous fears, and instilling fear in him. He did this
by letting Albert play with various animals, to show that he wasn’t afraid of them, and then
building an association between those animals and loud, scary noises. At the end, not only
was Albert afraid of the specific animals, but his fear had generalised to anything resembling
them. (Goldhaber, 2012)

While each of the boys from the Louise Wise triplets struggled with mental health problems,
they also were able to overcome them, at least for some time, due to the environments in
which they were raised. When they were a bit older, they lived together in an apartment and
discovered very quickly the differences between them. Their very different households,
while all very loving, were run in very different ways. Because of this, they all had very
different cleanliness standards – a major problem for anyone living in the same space. They
also had very dissimilar methods of dealing with stress and interacting with the world. Some
years later they opened a restaurant in Manhattan together. Again, their differences showed
in clashing management techniques and levels of commitment which eventually caused one
of the triplets to leave the business. Not long after, the middle twin committed suicide and
the restaurant was shut down.

ANALYSIS

A great many studies have been done to observe whether behaviour and personality are
created by heredity or environment. While the scientists behind this research provide strong
arguments on the specific traits and circumstances they researched, twins’ studies have been
largely inconclusive overall and don’t shed much light on solid answers. Evidence exists in
support of both heredity and environmental factors, and the interplay between them. While
comparing a study in favour of nurture to a one in favour of nature, one will likely find that
the arguments on either side are based on the deficiency of the other, and therefore do not
provide the evidence needed to build their own cases to stand alone. In 1925, biopsychologist
Leonard Carmichael studied fish and amphibians for physical changes caused by
environment, and was able to apply his epigenetic findings to psychology:
“These changes develop as a result of the interplay of heredity and environmental factors, so
in order to have a ‘normal’ individual it is necessary to provide a very specific environment
in which development is to take place… the question of how to separate the native from the
acquired in the responses of man does not seem likely to be answered because the question
itself is unintelligible…. The effort to sever modifications due to the environment from those
which are innately given, is impossible, save at the level of sterile, verbal abstraction.”
(Goldhaber, 2012, 22-27)

Unfortunately, this is not well known because it wasn’t given much attention, but in short,
Dr. Carmichael understood that there is no situation in which an organism can exist without
environmental influence, because the environment will always exist. He also felt that the
question of nature versus nurture is “unintelligible” because it was too simplistic; too much
goes into the development of behaviour and personality to boil it down that way. Similarly to
Dr. Carmichael, Neurons to Neighbourhoods’ author Jack Shonkoff acknowledges that it is
logically impossible to separate nature from nurture:

“It is impossible to think of an organism that interacts with the environment without
considering the genotypic uniqueness of that individual…. It is time to reconceptualize
nature and nurture in a way that emphasises their inseparability and complementarity, not
their distinctiveness: it is not nature versus nurture, it is rather nature through nurture.”
(Shonkoff, 2009, pp 40-41)

Despite the fact that the majority of twin’s studies were found to be inconclusive, most of
these researchers working on these projects do acknowledge that any behavioural and
personality trait is influenced by both heredity and environment to some degree. Certainly,
each individual will be predisposed to behaviours and personality traits, but the extent has
not been researched. Revisiting Scarr’s study, in her conclusion she totally disregards events
and circumstances that are out of any individual’s control, such as (but certainly not limited
to) illness, large scale events, and culture. Her study was one dimensional because it fails to
take into account the infinite and uncontrollable variables that occur in any individual’s life
that drastically shape how a person behaves. Shonkoff argues this point as well, saying that it
is “potentially misleading to try to finely distinguish the relative importance of nature and
nurture in the course of human development.” (Shonkoff, 2009, pp 41)

The triplets from the Louise Wise Agency also clearly show that a combination of factors aid
in our development. Though data relating to the study itself is currently unavailable, the
mannerisms and lives of these three individuals can easily be observed in the many different
media platforms on which they were featured. Their documentary also gives very clear
examples of characteristics that are influenced both by their genes, as well as their
environment and upbringing.

There have also been extensive biological studies of brain development that show a strong
correlation between nature and nurture. Researchers have found that the integration of nature
and nurture is vital for brain growth and development, and thus that our experiences
influence our genetics and our genetics influence our experiences. We are programmed
genetically to expect certain experiences to occur as a catalyst to our development.
Researchers have proven this by depriving infants of patterned light and auditory stimulation
and showing that these can cause deficiencies in how a child behaves for the duration of their
lives. In addition, as individuals experience new things, their brains are stimulated to grow
(Shonkoff, 2009, pp. 55).

Fig. Correlation between quantitative intelligence and biological family members

Fig. Approaches to psychology

 
NATURE VS. NURTURE IN PERSONALITY TRAITS

Personality is a frequently cited example of a heritable trait that has been studied in twins
and adoptions. Identical twins reared apart are far more similar in personality than randomly
selected pairs of people. Likewise, identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins. Also,
biological siblings are more similar in personality than adoptive siblings. Each observation
suggests that personality is heritable to a certain extent. However, these same study designs
allow for the examination of the environment as well as genes. Adoption studies also directly
measure the strength of shared family effects. Adopted siblings share only the family
environment. Unexpectedly, some adoption studies indicate that by adulthood the
personalities of adopted siblings are no more similar than random pairs of strangers. This
would mean that shared family effects on personality wane off by adulthood. As is the case
with personality, non-shared environmental effects are often found to out-weigh shared
environmental effects. That is, environmental effects that are typically thought to be life-
shaping (such as family life) may have less of an impact than non-shared effects, which are
harder to identify.

MORAL CONSIDERATIONS OF THE NATURE VS. NURTURE DEBATE

Some observers offer the criticism that modern science tends to give too much weight to the
nature side of the argument, in part because of the potential harm that has come from
rationalised racism. Historically, much of this debate has had undertones of racist and
eugenics policies — the notion of race as a scientific truth has often been assumed as a
prerequisite in various incarnations of the nature versus nurture debate. In the past, heredity
was often used as "scientific" justification for various forms of discrimination and oppression
along racial and class lines. Works published in the United States since the 1960s that argue
for the primacy of "nature" over "nurture" in determining certain characteristics, such as The
Bell Curve, have been greeted with considerable controversy and scorn. A recent study
conducted in 2012 has come up with the verdict that racism, after all, isn't innate. A critique
of moral arguments against the nature side of the argument could be that they cross the is-
ought gap. That is, they apply values to facts. However, such appliances appear to construct
reality. Belief in biologically determined stereotypes and abilities has been shown to increase
the kind of behaviour that is associated with such stereotypes and to impair intellectual
performance through, among other things, the stereotype threat phenomenon. The
implications of this are brilliantly illustrated by the implicit association tests (IATs) out of
Harvard. These, along with studies of the impact of self-identification with either positive or
negative stereotypes and therefore "priming" good or bad effects, show that stereotypes,
regardless of their broad statistical significance, bias the judgements and behaviours of
members and non-members of the stereotyped groups.

PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF THE NATURE VS. NURTURE

DEBATE

Are the Traits Real?

It is sometimes a question whether the "trait" being measured is even a real thing. Much
energy has been devoted to calculating the heritability of intelligence (usually the I.Q., or
intelligence quotient), but there is still some disagreement as to what exactly "intelligence"
is.

Determinism and Free Will

If genes do contribute substantially to the development of personal characteristics such as

intelligence and personality, then many wonder if this implies that genes determine who we
are. Biological determinism is the thesis that genes determine who we are. Few, if any,
scientists would make such a claim; however, many are accused of doing so. Others have
pointed out that the premise of the "nature versus nurture" debate seems to negate the
significance of free will. More specifically, if all our traits are determined by our genes, by
our environment, by chance, or by some combination of these acting together, then there
seems to be little room for free will. This line of reasoning suggests that the "nature versus
nurture" debate tends to exaggerate the degree to which individual human behaviour can be
predicted based on knowledge of genetics and the environment. Furthermore, in this line of
reasoning, it should also be pointed out that biology may determine our abilities, but free will
still determines what we do with our abilities.

CONCLUSION

The Nature-Nurture debate centres on the question of whether human capabilities are inborn
or acquired through experience.

The Nature View holds that human beings enter the word with an inborn store of knowledge
and understanding of reality. Early philosophers believed that this knowledge and
understanding could be accessed through careful reasoning and introspection. In the 17th
century, Descartes supported the nature view by arguing that some ideas (such as god, the
self, geometric axioms, perfection and infinity) are innate. Descartes is also notable for his
conception of the body as a machine that can be studied much as other machines are studied.
This is the root of modern information processing perspectives on the mind.

The Nurture View holds that knowledge is acquired through experiences and interactions
with the world. Although some of the early Greek philosophers had this opinion, it is mostly
associated with the 17th century English philosopher John Locke. According to him, at birth,
the human mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate on which experience writes knowledge and
understanding as the individual matures. This perspective gave birth to associationist
psychology. Associationists denied that there were inborn ideas or capabilities. Instead they
argued that the mind is filled with ideas that enter by way of the senses and then become
associated through principles such as similarity and contrast. Current research on memory
and learning is related to early association theory.

The current question is not whether Nature or Nurture shapes human psychology, but rather
how Nature and Nurture shapes human psychology.
The sides of the nature versus nurture debate, if one can look past the argument itself,
complement one another. The biologists arguing in favour of nature fill the gaps where those
in favour of an environmental argument fail. Likewise, those arguing nurture fill gaps where
biologists fail to explain behaviours. Though many adoption studies are inconclusive, they
are only inconclusive in finding nature or nurture to be their answer; they do not sufficiently
consider that both play an equal or varying role in the development of behaviour and
personality. Perhaps more compelling are the biological studies of genetics and the human
brain in which scientists have documented since the early twentieth century that genes and
biological structure of the brain as well as body are indeed influenced by the environment in
which an organism lives. Researchers have also shown that new experiences trigger new
brain growth, thus showing that development may indeed be dependent on our life
experiences, and what we see in the world around us. Many early and modern biological
studies also plainly show that the environment plays a role on the biological, as well as
behavioural characteristics of organisms – which could be considered more profound than
the effect of the environment on human behaviour. The twins study has shown us that there
is much variation in what may play a role in our development. Adoption studies, therefore,
would illustrate the varying degrees of interplay between nature and nurture.

REFERENCES

·          Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Barbara L. Fredrickson, Geoff R. Loftus and Willem A.

Wagenaar (2009) Atkinson & Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology, (15 th edition) London :
Thomson Learning

·          Kees-Jan Kan, Jelte Wicherts, Conor Dolan, Han L J van der Maas ulture_Dependent
(2013) On the Nature and Nurture of Intelligence and Specific Cognitive Abilities: The More
Heritable, the More Culture Dependent
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257534231_On_the_Nature_and_Nurture_of_Intell
igence_and_Specific_Cognitive_Abilities_The_More_Heritable_the_More_C

·          Kyle Reese (2019) Nature Versus Nurture: The Timeless Debate

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331155182_Nature_Versus_Nurture_The_Timeles
s_Debate

·          Wikipedia, Nature versus nurture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture