Nature v Nurture

Understanding Fields of Human Development

The nature versus nurture debate refers to the cultural anthropology, bio-genetics (epi-genetics), human development and population studies inquiry to the competing outcomes of genetic influence on culture and cultural influences on genetics. At the level of the individual, the nature versus nurture dichotomy considers the role of heredity and social learning to human development, while at the macro level of human society, nature versus nurture contemplates the ways in which human cultural evolution can profoundly influence gene frequencies in the total population.

In specie, the nature versus nurture debate evaluates the experiential outcomes of human predisposition in terms of nativism and social learning across correlated fields of human development.

Table 1: Fields of Human Development

Human Nature: Genetic influences on Culture

Human nature is widely recognised as characterised by a causal bias for survival, nurturance (belongingness), and social organisation (culture). From early life (foetus, infancy, childhood), the compelling factors of human development pertain to an intricate balance of physiological and psychological growth leading into adolescence and adulthood when life experiences and the competing demands of social learning predominate.

Human nature thus refers to formative factors such as genetic endowment, the prevalence or absence of trusting parental and familial attachments, and the acquisition of native language syntax. These ‘idiopathic’ precursors subsequently contour the dynamics of psychological development of personality, morality, social milieu, and cultural habits. Empirical studies indicate that early attachment significantly influences the developing person’s sense of safety and willingness to experiment, motivation and impulse to activity, regularity and rhymicity of behaviour, intensity of mood, persistence, sensitivity and adaptiveness.

In addition to the popularised ‘Big 5 Factors of Personality Traits’ (Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness), human nature is also characterised by the functional tenets of (a) human motivation (physiological v psychological, push factors v pull factors) and (b) human emotion (positivity, self-esteem).

Human Nurture: Cultural influences on Genetics

Human nurture means the net product of environmental influences on the developing person and is token to ethnographic assays in culture and civilisation. In 1897 Sir Edward Tylor, the founder of cultural anthropology, defined culture as ‘’… that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’. Given this definitional term, culture per se may be distinguished from ‘civilisation’, a term appropriate to denote a particular kind of culture. Thereby, concepts in human nurture are intimately bounded by the deterministic propensities of environment, social learning, and historicism.

More recently, however, cultural anthropologists have gone further to integrate evolutionary precepts of the ‘dynamic past’ and contemporary exigencies of the ‘dynamic present’ as a complex and hermeneutic form of communal (or universal) cultural endowment. Termed ‘Dual Inheritance Theory’ (DIT), human nurture is arrayed to larger enculturation mechanisms of gene-culture co-evolution. The interplay of gene-culture co-evolution is itself explained to be regulated by processes of cultural transmission which may be: (a) vertical (parents to sibling), (b) oblique (elder to youngster), or (c) horizontal (intra-population). Accordingly, human nurture may moreover be deemed contextualised by selectional mechanisms of random variation, cultural drift, guided variation, natural selection of cultural variants, and transmission bias.

An objective appraisal of the contemporary person in environment configuration (PIEC) thus posits headline conventions (or negotiation spaces) of human nurture: (a) Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) the potential social learning; and (b) Dual Inheritance Theory (DIT), the potential ethnocultural endowment.

Biopsychosocial Synthesis: The resolve to Nature v Nurture

The biopsychosocial resolve to the nature versus nurture debate yields to the confluence of the biological clockwork of nature and the social clockwork of nurture to argue the didactic that biology and environment equals development [Equation form: Heredity + Social Learning = Human Development].

Through the recent 20th century, his concept of a biopsychosocial personhood has evolved by the cumulative work of social development theorists to consolidate the empirical knowledge assembled over three distinct periods of the developmental sciences.

• Emergent period (1890-1919) New systematic empirical studies of child social development

• Middle period (1920-1946) Growing awareness of the significance of the parent-child interactions in social development. Formulation of psychodynamic theory, attachment theory and behaviourism

• Modern period (1947+) Refocus on socio-cognitive theories. Aggrandisement of cognitive development theory, social cognitive theory, and social information processing theory

In the prevailing setting of the 21st century, developmental science has since converged on new human agency principles of biopsychosocial development such as (a) the bi-directional nature of the parent-child relationship; (b) an eco-systems (micro, meso, macro) approach to social learning for example via peers, schooling, and mass media; and (c) the intermediating effect of personal cognition and value systems that may moderate the effect of socialisation and enculturation processes.

Altogether, as applied to the biopsychosocial growth of the developing person, individuals are ascribed as both subjective and objective exponents of their own human development. This is depicted in contemporary biopsychosocial growth models: (a) Self Concept Theory: the intermediating role of self-concept and self-esteem; and (b) Ecological Systems Theory: the influential role of the dynamic eco-system.