Nature vs. Nurture

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When I was in undergrad, the debate of nature vs. nurture intrigued me. My niece had just turned three, and I was interested in guessing how she would turn out. Her mother’s family was incredibly different from her father’s family (my family) to the point that my brother was granted legal custody of my niece. I had always thought that her mother’s genes would dominate her biology – she looks just like her mother – but that my brother’s environment would also shape her personality. It was interesting watching her life unfold. The nature vs. nurture debate is similar to the chicken or the egg debate – it could go either way depending on your viewpoint and the evidence that you pick to best fit your views. However, pinpointing an exact explanation for behavior, personality, or other developmental topic isn’t that simple. Crandell, Crandell, & Vander Zanden (2009) cite Anne Anastasi as she asserts that “neither heredity nor environment exists separately.” In fact, Anastasi believes that nature and nurture work together to produce behavior. I have seen evidence of both working in my niece, especially when it comes to determining right from wrong. Moral development is the “process by which children adopt principles and values that lead them to evaluate given behaviors as right and others as wrong and to govern their own actions in terms of these principles” (Crandell, Crandell, & Vander Zanden, 2009). Cognitive Learning Theory suggests that “children acquire moral standards in much the same way they learn any other behavior, and social behavior is variable and dependent on situational contexts,” (Crandell, Crandell, & Vander Zanden, 2009). Simply put, the theory suggests that my niece would learn how to behave by watching others. This is why my mom always said to watch what I say and do around young, impressionable minds. Once, a friend was smoking at my house in

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