Video:What Is Nature Vs. Nurture?

Transcript:What Is Nature Vs. Nurture?

My name is Max McDowell. I am a Jungian psychoanalyst her in New York City and before that I was a molecular biologist and did research in that field. I am here for About.com to discuss the question of Nature vs. Nurture.

Nature vs. Nurture is a Scientific Debate

And the question that we are talking about: it comes up in the form “What made you a musician?” Was it that you were born with a musical talent? Or was it that early on in your life you were exposed to a lot of music and that is why you became a musician.

Another way of saying it is: Was it the genes? Or was it the Environment? And the Nature argument for human beings is that human beings have evolved by a process that is a form of Darwinian evolution so that human qualities like musical talent, language, human language, human altruism, creativity – these must have been qualities which have evolved and evolution depends upon genes.

Genetics Supports the Nature Argument

The idea is that these qualities are somehow stored and encoded in our genes and it is our genes that make us human beings. That is the Nature argument. For example there has been the theory about brain development that the brain consists of functions which exist somehow in separate compartments and these compartments are somehow designed and provided for genetically.

Upbringing Supports the Nurture Argument

We know that the genes can only give information about the most elementary aspects about what it is to be a person. Almost all the information that goes into making us human has to be acquired in the nurturing of the baby maybe before birth in the womb and maybe after birth and so it's how the baby is held, how the baby is talked to, what the baby sees, what the baby hears. The kind of emotional relationship the parents have with the baby, especially the mother.

The structure of the brain, and the structure of the personality and the structure of the psychology are being organized and designed by virtue of the information that is coming in from the environment. So nurture in the broader sense refers to all that helpful, supportive or challenging and difficult information and experience which comes into the baby's personality, into the baby's brain through it's senses, through it's experiences. Without challenge, without experience, without love, without holding, the baby wouldn't become human.

So that's just a little bit of information about Nature vs. Nurture, obviously there's many things one could say about it. I'm Max McDowell and for more information about this you can visit About.com.