Straylight

Well... I had to do it.

I think that most people will agree that who we are is a combination of our nature (genetics) and nurture (childhood conditioning). The debate seems to pertain to which is more important in defining who we are.

Are we mostly 'blank slates' at birth, just waiting to be imprinted with either helpful or destructive conditionings?

Are we born with a spectrum of innate strengths and weaknesses, distinct for others, which we either learn to maximize or to downplay?

This should not be taken as a debate on equality (that is, if 'Nature' is true and you have more capabilities that me, we are or are not equal), but rather on the causes themselves.

Discuss.

~SL

__________________
"Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice."
-Ayn Rand

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it. "-Voltaire

Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor

I don't talk to people who quote Ayn Rand, usually, so you can consider yourself lucky.

People are born with innate strengths and weaknesses. Some are specific to our species while others are specific to our individual genetics. From there, we grow up and gain environmental influences. Which, however, influences us more is a difficult question. I would argue our environment because, if you look at the big picture, our genetics are determined by environmental circumstances.

If we decide to call genetics what we cannot change (usually) and the environment external influences, I am still inclined to believe the environment is more influential. It contains many more variables than our individual genes.

Straylight

And why is that? (on both counts. Why do you not talk to people who quote Ayn Rand, and why would you talking to me make me 'lucky'?). This seems like a rather rude and condescending statement to me.

How are genetics determined by environmental circumstances? Genetics are hard-coded from the combination of our parent's genes, and no at all subject to the environment. Radioactive waste notwithstanding, that is.

But if our interactions with our environment are altered through our unique strengths and weaknesses (as any organism as highly adaptable as man will seek to maximize his strength while minimizing weakness), then isn't everything we learn from our environment at least partially filtered through our genetics?

~SL

__________________
"Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice."
-Ayn Rand

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it. "-Voltaire

cbrmale

I have noticed a trend in psychology studied to emphasise environment over hereditary compared to when I studied in the last years of the 1970s. I have a nagging feeling that sweeping statements like 'blank slate' are a 'politically correct' interpretation of the issue. By the way, the Tabula Rasa theory is pretty much unique to the United States, and ignored elsewhere in the world.

I don't think anyone has been able to get beyond the bland statement that we are a combination of the two influences, although genetic influences cannot be denied.

For more information, you should research studies on identical twins reared apart. These studies indicate that many aspects of personality are genetically inherited. On the converse, adoption studies indicate that adopted siblings living together grow up to be no more similar than random pairs of strangers. So for me it is a non-politically correct view that the nature part of our makeup is the stronger of the two.

Hodge

The twin studies are flawed, however. They looked for similarities and discarded differences. I have many similarities with any person in here, and a case can be made that I am so and so's long lost twin if differences are ignored.

Plus, the environment is going to react in a similar way to two people with the same genetic make-up.

The only personality trait you're born with is temperament, and that may be subject to change as you develop. I know I was a pretty happy and extraverted baby and toddler and young kid, but as I got older I became more melancholic and introverted.

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Science

silverwriter

Yes, we probably are. Mothers are encouraged to talk to their children in the womb as well as the practice of no one talking during birth under the theory that the first words a child hears are mentally imprinted, even if we can't remember them specifically as adults.

Physically, yes. Mentally... I would like to believe there are innate things. The reason behind why Susie wants to be a doctor and Bobby wants to be a lawyer. Natural talents and whatnot. However, environmental factors can explain the so-called natural talents I've noticed in my friends.

I second that completely.

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journyman161

And environment can certainly influence & alter your genes; google epigenetics & find a new PoV on it.

Perhaps we need to revive Lamarckian ideas. Poor bastard was castigated for daring to think that such things could be true but it turns out he was smack on the money

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*He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
*Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
*Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it - Moses Hadas
*He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know - Abraham Lincoln

cbrmale

I think I quoted adoption studies as well, where adoptive siblings display as much similarity to each other as total strangers. The adoptive studies back up the twin studies in that nature is much stronger than nurture. By the way, I have an adopted sister, and while I love her very much she is way different! Way out there different!

The twin studies cannot be discarded, because certain personality traits certainly shone through despite the twins being separated at birth. Certainly many specifics were much stronger than random strangers. Uncannily so.

The statement 'the only personality trait you're born with is temperament' is an unsubstantiated blanket statement (big understatement). Please enlighten us as to where you got this gem of information, something so positive and factual. Which research, by whom, and when.

Then not only do you make this gem, you then set about destroying it. I don't follow.

Silverwriter, like Hodge I would like you to back up your views with some hard cold facts. Debate is not 'I would like to believe' or 'I second your unsubstantiated statement that has no evidence backing it up whatsoever'; in an area like this there is much evidence and studies to keep everyone satisfied. I even have textbooks from my undergraduate psych years still in my bookcase with whole chapters just on this subject area.

Straylight

I've read them and about them pretty extensively and not seen any major flaws. Your latter argument is simply a matter of statistical variance -- there are only so many different spectrums that can be different on a person, and so it is natural to run into others with similiar groupings. Where it becomes significant is when those similiarities group for a specific reason.

Are you implying that the environment is sentient and parcels out specific reactions? Two people with the same genetic make up, one located in Beverly Hills and the other in Tijuana Mexico are not going to experience the same stimuli at all.

But every experience you will ever have in life is filtered through that temperment. A happy person experiences things in a different light than a melancholic one. A smart person sees a thousand shades where a stupid one sees only two.

So couldn't the argument be made that that part that nurture plays is entirely based on the perceptual and cognitive filters that we call Nature?

~SL

__________________
"Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice."
-Ayn Rand

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it. "-Voltaire

Hodge

I think you mentioned such studies but never quoted them.

They weren't. The twin studies mainly focused on pretty mundane similarities. There are exceptions, of course, like the laughing twins who both had such effed up temperaments that they come off like stoned teenage girls.

I think it'd be pretty obvious considering you're not born with an affinity for caviar or any specific character traits at all.

"We are born with a hefty dose of preprogrammed synaptic links -- this is why we can cry and wriggle around the moment we leave the womb. But experience alters synapses as well, either creating new ones or changing the strength of existing ones. "

http://home.att.net/~xchar/tna/ledoux.htm

"If you think DNA dictates all, be prepared to have your beliefs shaken. In spite of having the same set of genes, these identical twins couldn’t be more different, personality-wise."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/artic...06-000006.html

"While there is a general consensus that temperament forms the enduring, biologically based foundation of personality and that this biological basis should imply some continuity within the individual across time, there is a limited literature exploring linkages between these areas. The purpose of this article was to provide an initial assessment of the relation between a two-factor model of temperament in early/middle childhood and the five-factor model of personality in late adolescence/young adulthood. Data were gathered from 115 children who had participated in a longitudinal study of early/middle childhood and who provided follow-up data 15 years later. Significant linkages were found between the two time periods. At the facet level, temperament in early and middle childhood accounted for an average of 32% of the variance in personality in late adolescence/early young adulthood. At the domain level, temperament accounted for an average of 34% of the variance."

Deal, James E. "Temperament Factors as Longitudinal Predictors of Young Adult Personality"
Merrill-Palmer Quarterly - Volume 51, Number 3, July 2005, pp. 315-334

(you can't access the actual papers unless you're enrolled at a university or other organization that has access to it—or unless you want to pay for it)

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Science

Hodge

A specific reason? Did they entertain other possibilities in the twin studies? No. They focused on the similarities and said it was due to them being twins. Twins no doubt will be more similar to each other than normal, but they certainly won't be the same or even close to it.

Yes they are. If two little boys look like Brad Pitt, people are going to react to them similarly. Good looks play a big part in people's perceptions. And if two little girls have some disorder like ADHD (and I mean the real kind), then people are going to react to them similarly. Granted, I'm assuming these people live in the same society, which they usually do. You're saying two different countries, with one being a very rich community and the other being, well, Mexico. This was not the case with the twin studies.

Which would be why your temperament is part of your personality...

It's not that pervasive, and temperament can change in early childhood.

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Science

Wyndstar

I've read on Lamarkism. Its not widely supported because children don't automatically display those talents learned by their parents. Just because we write doesn't mean our children will be able to take up where we leave off and then improve. My children will not be good mechanics because I aquired the skills.

I had to stop and think about that for a while. Infants DO imprint while in the womb, and they do have their own temperments. So while its possible that they could inherit aquired traits, how many of them would 'follow up' on them? My daugher might have mechanical skills, but she likes clothes. She doesn't like grease. It isn't likely she'll nuture my skills, so of course, she'd lose them. My son on the other hand, is a genius at dissasembling and putting things together. So perhaps children CAN inherit a parent's learned skill, but their temperments lead them to altogether different things.

Or, if it isn't physical skills they learn, maybe its emotional ones. That would explain maybe why every generation seems to get more agressive, less empathic of other people. Maybe deep down, people learn that they have to be ruthless and disconnected in order to survive. Which might explain Hodge. His parents' learned emotional behavior overrode the temperment he started out with.

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Old enough to know better, young enough to think I can still get away with it.

Hodge

It's not that children do what their parents tell them to, it's that they learn from their parents. People either accept or reject what their parents teach them -- we've all heard about how children of smokers either smoke themselves or are very much against it. And of course parents aren't the only socializing agent, just the first.

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Science

journyman161

Wyndstar, epigenetics is showing us that the physical events in a parents life can actually alter the dna of the parents & that alteration is passed on by the children to their children - that is, it is a permanent alteration in the genome.

While things are satill at an early stage, (it is difficult with humans because of long lifetimes) the effects are present in animals & also in studies done of people who lived through disasters 2 or 3 generations ago & their children & grand children.

It isn't as simple as everything that occurs to the parent gets reflected in the child but traumatic events certainly seem to leave an imprint & they are finding the genes so altered.

There's a backgrounder here that should provide a starting point.

__________________
*He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
*Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
*Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it - Moses Hadas
*He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know - Abraham Lincoln

cbrmale

I quoted the findings. Adoptive siblings are no more similar in personality than random strangers. Even though the children have had a shared environment for decades, it still hasn't influenced their overall genetic personality.

I would never say DNA dictates all. However, for twins separated at birth, specific differences are much stronger than for non-twin siblings separated at birth. You say so yourself "Twins no doubt will be more similar to each other than normal"

If twins are raised separately, and there is little genetic inheritance of personality and intelligence, I would not expect them to be more similar than normal. But they are.

I am still not sure what relevance this has in a debate on inherited personality and intelligence. It seems that this study is about how much or little temperament changes over time in individuals. Correct me if I am wrong.