Nature Vs Nurture Debate
Nature versus nurture has been strongly a strongly debated subject for decades, People believed for a long time that personality and behaviours were biologically inherited and that social surroundings played no part in making people who they are, that when people were born they were already born with there personalities and behaviours embedded within them. This Belief is the nature side of the debate the more scientific theory , on the other side of the debate people believe that you are born with no behaviours or personality and that you build these traits as you grow and the influence of the traits and personalities are surroundings. The home environment, parents/guardians and, siblings play a huge role in determining personality and behaviours.
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Children may grow up to be similar to there parents but this may be because the child is learning and imitating from the parents. We can see that personality is not something that we are born with but something that we learn based on studies of feral children who have been severely abused and neglected. If a child is locked in a room its whole life and kept alive it does not gather personality or behavioural patterns automatically, the child will be unable to talk or gather personality and basically be like an object and not a person at all. The child will act nothing like the mother or father. The case would be that we are born with the potential to walk and talk but without any social contact we will not learn to do so. We see this in the case study of Anna, a young girl neglected from birth.Locked in a room without any social contact. Anna was found when she was 5 years old. She was tied up by her arms and barely kept alive.Anna hardly seemed human.Her plight reveals that, isolated in this way an individual develops scarcely any capacity for thought emotion and meaningful behaviour.(John J. Macionis, Ken Plummer, 1997).Anna clearly never learned any personality or behavioural patterns because of the neglect she received in her young life. Soon after Anna was rescued she benefitted from intense social contact and showed improvement. it was noted that she after only ten days she was more alert and even smiled. during the next year anna showed more advancement showing interest in people and even learning to walk. Psychologist John B Watson devised a theory called behaviourism which held that behaviour patterns are not instinctive but learned. For Watson human nature was absolutely
Children may grow up to be similar to there parents but this may be because the child is learning and imitating from the parents. We can see that personality is not something that we are born with but something that we learn based on studies of feral children who have been severely abused and neglected. If a child is locked in a room its whole life and kept alive it does not gather personality or behavioural patterns automatically, the child will be unable to talk or gather personality and basically be like an object and not a person at all. The child will act nothing like the mother or father. The case would be that we are born with the potential to walk and talk but without any social contact we will not learn to do so. We see this in the case study of Anna, a young girl neglected from birth.Locked in a room without any social contact. Anna was found when she was 5 years old. She was tied up by her arms and barely kept alive.Anna hardly seemed human.Her plight reveals that, isolated in this way an individual develops scarcely any capacity for thought emotion and meaningful behaviour.(John J. Macionis, Ken Plummer, 1997).Anna clearly never learned any personality or behavioural patterns because of the neglect she received in her young life. Soon after Anna was rescued she benefitted from intense social contact and showed improvement. it was noted that she after only ten days she was more alert and even smiled. during the next year anna showed more advancement showing interest in people and even learning to walk. Psychologist John B Watson devised a theory called behaviourism which held that behaviour patterns are not instinctive but learned. For Watson human nature was absolutely