4-2 Project One

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1 Project One: Position Paper Olivia Rivard Southern New Hampshire University PSY 108: Introduction to Psychology Jennifer Meyers September 28, 2022

2 PSY 108 Project One: Position Paper Nature versus nurture has been an ongoing debate for many decades, the debate between genetics and social environment. The nature side of this debate refers to how human characteristics are passed down genetically. Nurture is the way your environmental influences are acquired through interaction physically and socially. This is an important issue because it has been debated for many years and there is still no final decision to whether nature or nurture has a bigger impact on human behavior. I believe nurture has more impact on human behavior. Nature and nurture play two completely different roles, however, they both still impact each other in different ways. To form us, environmental influences interact with our genetic predispositions (Levitt, as cited in Soomo Learning, 2020, p. 2.17). This is what makes the debate so complicated, because picking just one or the other is nearly impossible. The way I began to understand is, say someone had a heart condition and became overweight because they are not physically capable of working out, this would be due to a health risk. Also known as an impact caused by genetics (nature). Now, say a person did not have a heart condition, and was overweight from eating poorly but, decided they wanted to make healthier choices and start working out with a personal trainer. This would be an influence of social environment (nurture). These two examples demonstrate the difficulties with separating nature from nurture when attempting to explain human behavior. My argument that nurture has a bigger impact on human behavior is supported by the cognitive perspective. Through cognitive learning we acquire mental information that guides our behavior (p3.14). We typically learn to repeat acts that bring rewards and to avoid acts that bring unwanted results (operant conditioning). We learn new behaviors by observing different events and watching others. Learned associations feed our habitual behaviors (W. Wood et al., 2014).

3 Observational learning, one form of cognitive learning, lets us learn from others’ experiences (p3.14). For example, if someone is teaching you to drive and your first lesson is just observing, naturally, you would pick up on the persons skills. If afterwards it is your chance in learning to drive, you would then already know some things to do, and not to do from observing your peer or instructor. This again demonstrates how nurture has an important impact on human behavior. As we know, the nature-nurture debate has been an ongoing discussion for decades, the debate between genetics and social environment. We know and have accepted by now that both need each other and can't really be separated. However, I believe our social environment builds our minds, the way we learn, our personality, and intelligence; it forms the people we are today. My position with this debate is that while we know the two cannot be separated, nurture still has a more important impact on human behavior.

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4 References Soomo Learning. (2020). Psychology (6th ed.). https://www.webtexts.com

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