A study of the article “Why nature & nurture won’t go away” by Pinker (2004), which explores the environmental influences on human behavior. The most influential components of environmental influenced behavior is described as being, the impact of parenting and peer groups through conditioning and conforming, cultural influences of social norm, and gender development in respect to the gender schema theory. Reflections on nature and nurture are touched upon to highlight briefly the importance of behavior genetics when considering the influence of environment on behavior, and illustrating with the example of human predisposition to language acquisition. The environmental factors responsible for psychopathology, such as Autism and schizophrenia.
Psychology defines behavior as the study of how human beings learn observable responses, and the most influential components of behavior are the relative contributions of biology and experience, also classified as nature-nurture. Pinker (2004) explored in his article “Why nature & nurture won’t go away” the influence of behavior genetics, which is the study of the relative power and limits of genetics and environmental influences on behavior, and the controversial issue of nature versus nurture. Though Pinker (2004) served nurture as solely an exemplum of environmental influence, i.e. every non-genetic influence, parenting, and peers, cultural influences, and gender development, Myers (2007) focuses on behavior as a product of a cascade of interactions between human genetic predispositions and surrounding environments. Nature and nurture both sculpt synapses, brain maturation provides an abundance of neural connections and experience preserves activated connections and allows those that are unused to degenerate.
Sights and smells, touches and tugs activate and strengthen some neural pathways while others weaken from disuse, putting forth the theory of nurture via nature, and stressing that early experiences, family and peer relationships, and all other experiences guide behavior development and contribute to individual diversity.
Pinker (2004) however pointed out that genes and environment are not always necessarily interlinked, he pointed out the following: Children exposed to a given language acquire it equally quickly regardless of their racial ancestry. Though people may be genetically predisposed to learn the language, they are not genetically predisposed, even in part, to learn a particular language; the explanation for why people in different countries speak differently is 100 percent environmental. (p. 5)
The power of the family environment also frequently appears in children’s political attitudes, religious beliefs, and personal manners. Culture influences human ability to learn and adapt, culture comprises of the behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next, supporting survival and reproduction with social and economic systems. Children, like adults, attempt to fit into a group by conforming. Peers are influential in such areas as learning to cooperate with others, gaining popularity, and develop in interactions. A social norm is an understood rule for accepted and expected behavior. Norms prescribe ‘proper’ behavior. The gender schema theory draws onto the cultural influence of behavior, it claims that children learn from their cultures a concept of what it means to be male and female and that they adjust their behavior accordingly, they thus become ‘gender-typed’ with the acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role. This goes in hand with the social learning theory, that social behavior is learned by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished. The combination of environment and genes can be further explored in abnormal psychological phenomena, Pinker (2004) considers this in the case of psychopathology, such as Autism and schizophrenia which are highly heritable but not determined completely by genes, environmental factors such as toxins, pathogens, and developmental accidents can induce the conditions. In conclusion, it can be drawn that behavior is influenced by complex environmental stimuli which human genes can innately respond to.
Genetics govern developmental differences, thus people with identical genes but differing experiences, therefore, have similar though not identical minds.
References
Myers, D. G. (2007). Exploring Psychology 7th Edition, Worth Publishers, Incorporated.
Pinker, S. (2004). Why nature & nurture won’t go away. Journal of British Psycharity, 1-15. Dædalus.