Angel Taylor

February 15, 2019

Research Proposal

Nature vs. Nurture

I chose the topic Nature Vs Nurture because we were having a debate in my Psychology class on which has a greater impact when analyzing someone’s behavior, nature or nurture. This topic is also one of the oldest debates on physiological issues. When speaking of nature, nature is what we think of as genes and hereditary factors that have an impact on who someone is as an individual and other biological factors such as our appearance and or our personality. Nurture is what we are exposed to after conception, being our environment influences who we are as a person such as things we experienced during our childhood, how we were raised, the company we keep, and the culture.

Different parts of psychology have different focuses, biological psychology focus on the importance of biological influences and genetics. Then you have behaviorism which focus on the impact and different influences one’s environment have on its behavior. When my psychology teacher presented this question in class some argued that nature played a big role and the other side argued that nurture had the most important impact on behavior.

During this research I hope to find out do genetic factors or environmental factors have a larger influence on behavior. Is it the thing that you inherit or could it be life experiences that have a larger impact when it comes to defining who you really are as a person?

Being that experience is one of life biggest taught lessons. Being a behavior analysis major, I would have to say that my personal beliefs on this topic would have to be, that nurture has the biggest influence on a person’s behavior. I side with this decision because I feel that we as humans, we react on things based off experience. I believe that how we were raised and what we surround ourselves by influence us on how we answer, approach, and react. I feel as if when we are speaking on nature, or genes and what inherit from our parents or ancestors that plays a small portion of who we are but it doesn’t really determine our personality.

For example, I grew up in what some will call a lower class environment with a broken family. My mom is very outgoing, hardworking, focused, conservative, well-rounded and a college graduate. She raised us up in ways no one would’ve ever known we lived in the projects. My mom has no criminal background record and has never been in trouble with the law. She has two children, myself and my brother. We are total opposite of my mother, my brother is a high school dropout, has an extensive record, he’s been in and out of trouble with the law since he was 15, he’s super lazy, and doesn’t have any work ethic. Myself, I carry some of my mom traits, I am also very outgoing, conservative but ghetto as hell, I’m easily distracted, no criminal background record, and I’m also pushing towards being a college graduate. I say all of this to get you to see my view on why I chose to side with nurture. Our appearance and personality (nature) doesn’t shape us as a person, I feel like the way we respond to situations and the life experiences we learn, as well as the company we keep define us as a person. My mom could be a sweet quite successful person but if I surround myself with loud, party going, bubble gum popping criminals, then myself will soon pick up those bad habits and I will then be classified as the same.

During this research I can already predict that I will run into many contradictions upon myself because while just describing my mom and us, I also asked a few of my peers, “How would you define me as a person?” Mostly some spoke on my appearance and my personality and only just a few spoke on me as an individual and how a respond to things.

Even though this is one of the oldest debates today, it is said to believe that majority of experts believe that both nature and nurture impact behavior and development. But somehow this is still an ongoing issue in many areas of life, such as the debate of homosexuality and intelligence of a person. Even being, they also stated that nature and nurture interact in important ways all throughout life.