Conversely, advocates of the "nurture" perspective believe that people are essentially blank slates, devoid of any preset programming inherited from their forbearers, who are shaped instead by the multitude of environmental factors which affect them from birth onward. In the case of Jamaican sprinting dominance, the nurture argument would claim that "any gene-centered explanation also dismisses the importance of a whole host of psycho-social and cultural factors that are likely to be major contributors to the success of Jamaican sprinters" (Kelland, 2012), including the prominence of short-distance sprinting in Jamaica and the country's substantial investment in training programs for promising young sprinters. This conception of identity also serves to explain one of history's more confounding conundrums, that of siblings, or even twins, who while sharing the same genetic makeup, end up following distinctly dissimilar paths through life. The nurture side of the debate was eloquently stated in 1973 by Ashley Monatgu, who stated in her book Man and Aggression that "man is man because he has no instincts, because everything he is and has become he has learned . . . from his culture, from the man-made part of the environment, from other human beings" (Montagu, 1973).
Project Management, Sustainability and Whole Lifecycle Thinking
Module 5 Case -- the Research Essay
For nearly the entirety of human civilization, thinkers, philosophers, and indeed most human beings, have struggled to determine the most elusive aspects of identity. Balancing the essence of human nature against the effects of environmental influence eventually formed the foundation of the ongoing debate concerning nature vs. nurture. With the advent of remarkable technology capable of mapping the human genome, most people in today's modern world believe that their genetic makeup holds the key to their future health, personality traits, intelligence quotient, and even their fears. The unique confluence of factors that combine to form the personality traits, behavioral patterns, and ethical boundaries exhibited by every human being has spawned two distinctly divergent theories, with the majority of people advocating the influence of genetics over external environment. Proponents of the "nature" point-of-view assert a person's physical appearance, mental acumen, moral compass, and adaptive abilities are wholly derived from genetic predisposition and inherited traits. According to this viewpoint, the actions we take today are inherently linked to those of our ancestral predecessors, to such a degree that is nearly impossible to resist the inexorable pull of genetic predilection. This perception has led many to examine cultural differences from a genetic perspective, and indeed, "it does seem baffling that the tiny island nation of Jamaica with a population reaching barely 2.8 million can consistently produce world-beating sprinters, while the whole of Europe can hardly register more than a handful of athletes in the top 100" (Kelland, 2012).
Conversely, advocates of the "nurture" perspective believe that people are essentially blank slates, devoid of any preset programming inherited from their forbearers, who are shaped instead by the multitude of environmental factors which affect them from birth onward. In the case of Jamaican sprinting dominance, the nurture argument would claim that "any gene-centered explanation also dismisses the importance of a whole host of psycho-social and cultural factors that are likely to be major contributors to the success of Jamaican sprinters" (Kelland, 2012), including the prominence of short-distance sprinting in Jamaica and the country's substantial investment in training programs for promising young sprinters. This conception of identity also serves to explain one of history's more confounding conundrums, that of siblings, or even twins, who while sharing the same genetic makeup, end up following distinctly dissimilar paths through life. The nurture side of the debate was eloquently stated in 1973 by Ashley Monatgu, who stated in her book Man and Aggression that "man is man because he has no instincts, because everything he is and has become he has learned . . . from his culture, from the man-made part of the environment, from other human beings" (Montagu, 1973).
The nature vs. nurture debate has become marked by continual controversy, and vitriolic assertions from both sides, precisely because of the question's universality. It is now quite clear that "people's beliefs about the relative importance of heredity and environment affect their opinions on an astonishing range of topics," (Pinker, 2004) including the analysis of adolescent behavior, the aesthetics of artistic expression, and the limits of athletic achievement. Because the whole sphere of human endeavor necessarily hinges on the question of what motivates human behavior, answering the question of nature or nurture has become a chief concern for the scholarly community and social scientists, as well as the parents and teachers charged with rearing the next generation. The nature or nurture debate may provide extremely telling answers explaining the extraordinary diversity of the human experience, lending reason and structure to the workings of a species that can appear maddeningly random at times. How can people from the same family lineage act so differently, with one brother abstaining from alcohol for their entire lives, while the other willingly succumbs to drunken addiction? Why are certain civilizations more advanced than their counterparts, and what are the factors dictating this disparity? The answers to these age old queries are at the heart of the nature or nurture conversation, and by reviewing a pair of research studies conducted by renowned scientific figures, it is possible to gain a greater awareness of the invisible forces which actively dictate your every thought and action. While the studies were both designed to measure and quantify the influence of genetics vs. environment, each uses a unique set of parameters to prove its own hypothetical construct, with the first study advocating heredity over environment, and the second study attempting to broker a compromise between both positions.
The first study, engineered by psychologist Robert Plomin and his colleagues in 1975, sought to determine the link between adopted children and their biological parents, despite the fact that the children in question were raised by another familial unit. By employing a 20-year longitudinal study of 245 adopted children and their parents, both adoptive and biological, the Plomin and his team explored the competing influences of each child's environment and their genetic makeup. The key component of Plomin's study is the concept of resemblance, in which a child begins to exhibit cognitive abilities, emotional attributes, and physical characteristics similar to those shown by their parents. Over the course of their research, the authors of the study consistently observed that "adopted children resemble their adoptive parents slightly in early childhood but not at all in middle childhood or adolescence," while "in contrast, during childhood and adolescence, adopted children become more like their biological parents, and to the same degree as children and parents in control families" (Plomin, Fulker, Corley & DeFries, 1997). This conclusion clearly supports the notion that genetic traits, passed on through hereditary lineage, ultimately govern the future behavior of children far more than environmental variables.
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