NATURE V. NURTURE
This page compiles questions from previous chapters related to the nature-nurture issue. Using the questions as a guide, formulate YOUR position on this question. How important is nature?... nurture? Does their importance change with the domain one considers? Be sure to base your position on the evidence available in the chapters and on logical arguments.
From a previous section (Ch. 8): Is IQ innate? Is language (or language learning) innate?
ch. 9: Development
1. Learning potential some parents begin “educating” their children at very early ages, attempting to teach reading, math, music, even calculus etc. to 3-year-olds. One can even enroll one’s 3-year-old in special schools. (This is relevant to the question of “nature” v. “nurture”. How? What assumption about nature or nurture are these parents making?)
2. Nature v. nurture. Look through chapters 9 & 10. Make a list of developmental achievements that seem TO YOU to be genetic, inborn. Then make a list of developmental achievements that seem to be the result of nurture. Can you think of any examples where the INTERACTION between nature and nurture is important? (see p. 318).
8. How is language learned? Or is it? What is the evidence for the nativist position?
9. What is it that produces attachment (a) in geese; (b) in monkeys (what is the significance of being fed on a wire mother and still preferring a cloth mother?); (c) in humans? Why is attachment important? Is forming an attachment innate?
ch. 11: Sexuality
1. Are gender roles learned or innate? Describe any relevant observations or recollections of your own. Does your evidence fit with (a) psychoanalytic theory? (b) social learning theory? (c) or cognitive developmental theory?
6. How are males and females psychologically different (p. 364ff)? Are these differences innate or the product of environment? Are these differences important or trivial? What are the social implications of the differences that have been verified? Relevant to this question is the amount of variation found within versus between sexes. Draw two “bell curves” (one for males, the other for females) for any of the behaviors mentioned in Table 10.2.
7. Assuming we note many differences between males and females (gender role stereotypes p. 364), whereas psychologists have verified relatively few (Table 10.2), what factors might be responsible for this discrepancy?
ch. 12: Emotion/Motivation
3. What is an instinct? List some instincts you have observed in animals; in humans. Come to class ready to discuss your choices, especially for humans.
7. (a) Summarize the evidence in this chapter that emotions and emotional expression are universal (and therefore biological). What if this were NOT true -- could emotions still work as they do? (b) Emotion is a communication system. Compare it to language. Is it present at birth? Are its symbols (facial expressions or words) arbitrary? Is one required to LEARN to "speak the language?" (c) Is ALL emotion and emotional expression biological? Explain.