Nature-Nurture Debate Essay

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How is the nature-nurture debate currently viewed by developmental psychologists and how has research built upon the ideas proposed by early philosophers and scientists?

Introduction:
• The nature nurture debate is the question of how much of the mind is formed by the physical environment we live in and how much made up of inborn biological factors.
• This debate originates from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and continued by Francis Galton who added ideas such as free will and personality. Paragraph 1: Philosophers and the nature-nurture debate:
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau- said that a child’s personality was dependent on interactions between internal and external forces. He also said that all humans have an inborn instinct to seek out …show more content…
• Francis Galton 1869- first person that identified the two separate influences of nature and nurture and how they were measurable and comparable. He says that natural advantages may be “starved by defective nurture).
• Plato and Rene Descartes believe that at least some knowledge is inborn.

Paragraph 2: Psychologists on the nature side of the argument:
• G. Stanley Hall said that childhood milestones happen at a particular time as laid out by an inborn developmental plane, he then said that psychologists would be able to identify norms of which this development takes place.
• Arnold Gesell coined the idea of maturation which described the genetically programmed changes that are marked by 3 qualities- they are universal, they are sequential and they are resistant to environmental influence.
• Elizabeth Spelke said that when babies are born they already have pre-existing conceptions of the behaviour of objects. E.g. the fact that infants understand that unsupported objects will fall and will continue until they meet an obstacle.
• Werner and Smith 1992 and 2001 found that only 2/3 childen that were raised in ‘chaotic’ families that lived below the poverty line would show signs of a permanent detrimental
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