Whereas other theorists have argued that is is the way we are brought up and influenced by our surroundings that makes an individual the way they are. Nature means the genetic and biological influences that affect our growth and development. The nature side of the debate believes that it is inherited factors which have more impact on your life and development. For example, the colour or type of your hair, your eye colour, the pigmentation of your skin, and also genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis are all the result of the genes we inherit. These biological factors are said to determine an individual’s development and characteristics .
The nature or nurture debate is concerned the with the contributions of genetic inheritance, and environmental factors to human development. The nature theory says, although traits such as as eye and hair colour and genetics diseases are determined by genes, that there are also different qualities, for example, Intelligence, Personality, Homosexuality. Some others would say that, we learn or discovers all them above. We learn and improve our intelligences, we probably inherit certain personality traits from the things/people around us and some people may be curious of their preferences,
Allport also believed that humans are not only organisms that react to rewards and punishment instead humans can interact with the environment and vice versa (Feist & Feist, 2009). Allport’s theory is optimistic of human nature and emphasized the importance of free will and the ability for humans to grow at any age. Psychology of the individual theory focused on the uniqueness of individuals and not too much on the similarities of a group. To describe the structure of personality, Allport referred to the most important structures as permitting description of a person as individual characteristics known as personal dispositions (Feist & Feist, 2009). Allport defined a personal disposition as” a generalized neuropsychic structure (peculiar to the individual), with the
Biological Psychology Name PSY 340: Biological Foundations of Psychology Date Biological Psychology The beginning of behavior, emotion, and thought all begin in the brain and this is the foundation of biological psychology. Biological psychology is the scientific study of the physiological bases of human behavior and mental processes. Biological psychology is also known as behavioral neuroscience and physiological psychology. Biological psychology focuses on the relationship of underlying physiological events and psychological processes. This form of psychology is involved with the mind-body dispute and researchers how they affect one another.
Foundations of Psychology PSY/ 300 9/15/2014 In today’s society, there are many foundations of psychology. The major schools of psychology are Functionalism, structuralism, behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, humanistic, and cognitive Psychology. In this paper, I will examine the many different factors that help play crucial roles in the lives of human beings through culture and biology. The first known school of thought in psychology is structuralism. According to our text, psychology sixth addition Titchener (1867-1927) describes structuralism as an attempt to use introspection as a method for uncovering the basin elements of consciousness and the way they combine with each other into ideas (Kawaiski
Behavior, genes, and evolution play a major role in determining the biological foundations of psychology linked to behavior. When children are born certain characteristic, are inherited from their parents such as eye color, height, and hair color, behavioral characteristics are also inherited. With regard to behavioral characteristics some traits are stronger than others such as emotional stability, temperament, and mental ability. Society, environmental exposure and family structure play a major role in how these characteristics are developed and expressed. Two key concepts explain evolution of behavior: ultimate and proximate.
Biological factors that affect personality “This is a few of the biological factors that can influence a person’s personality. Biological factors determine the individual's "temperament", the group of personality characteristics that seem to be present in some form from early life onward and that make us consider people as having individualized personalities. Temperamental characteristics are expressed in different ways as the person matures, but are always there, no matter whether experiences tend to encourage or discourage them (2009, Jean Mercer)”. “One example of a temperamental factor is activity level. This does not refer to so-called "hyperactivity" in a pathological sense, but simply to the preferred amount of activity with which an individual feels comfortable.
Carl Rogers states ‘ The organism has one basic tendency and striving- to actualize, maintain and enhance the experiencing organism’ (Rogers, 1951, p487). But for a person to be able to grow and self- actualise they need to be in an environment that provides them with congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathy. The Psychodynamic Theory works with feelings that are in the unconscious mind, the subconscious and it is about going back into the clients past and understanding the causes of their beliefs, ways they then behave, thoughts and feelings. People throughout their lives may build up shields to mask these painful feelings, but they still will affect the way the person is as they are often hard to face. These shields are demonstrated in behaviour.
With the right environment, nurture, and determination I’m sure one can excel to their full capacity in traits such as intelligence or athleticism. I may be incorrect and I even might have my own bias but that is what I truly think and believe. Before we tackle on this longly debated predicament, we must understand that there are many different perspectives on the nature versus nurture topic. A biological psychologist might approach the problem focusing on genetic, hormonal, and neurochemical explanations of behavior, leaning more towards
The biosocial theory. The term ‘culture’ encompasses the knowledge, beliefs and values shared by a society that are passed down the generations through imitation and communication. By looking at research through a variation of different cultures we can distinguish between universal features, which suggest an innate basis for gender therefore supporting the nurture side of the argument, and culturally specific features, which suggest gender is learned and so support the nurture side of the argument. A famous piece of cross cultural research on gender was the Six Cultures Study by Whiting and Whiting (1975) studied child rearing processes in North America, the Philippines, India, Mexico, Kenya and Japan. Researchers integrated themselves into the societies and conducted systematic 5 minute observations of the children’s daily lives.