Genes vs. Environment (This essay is about nature vs. nurture)

I generally regard myself as a disorganized person. I believe this is an innate trait for me. As far as I can remember, I've always been disorganized. But throughout my life, I developed some ways to cope with it, especially after having some negative experiences. So what was the main factor that made me disorganized person? I strongly believe that it was a combination of both nature and nurture, but if I had to choose one, I would have to say that the genes that came from my father have a big impact on this trait.

My father is also a disorganized person. I am very much alike to him in this regard. On the other hand, my mother is extremely organized. She's someone who tries to keep everything as organized as possible. Obviously, saying that one of my parents also shows this trait is not enough evidence to support this theory, but there's more.

The most important reason I believe the nature is the primary factor is my brother. He's four years younger than me and just like my mother, he's one of the most organized people I've seen in my life. He's my absolute opposite. But the fact is, we have been brought up in the same house, with the same parents. Most of the time, we even shared the same room. And our parents' behavior towards us was almost identical. As I was interacting constantly with my brother, one would think that either my or his behaviors should have been changed in one way or another. But it's not the case. Of course there could be some minor changes that I could not observe but in general, we always have been completely different in terms of being organized. This is the main reason that I believe heredity is the dominant factor.

The other reason is my parents' behavior toward us. I've read some theories claiming that people are disorganized because nobody taught them how to be organized. It was definitely not the case with me. When I look back to my childhood to see whether I have been taught about the organizational skills or not, I can easily say yes. My mother tried really hard with me from the early ages. She tried to influence me by explaining how my school and personal life would be more easy and effective by being organized. Also, even though my father is a disorganized person, he was no different than my mother. He told me some of his own negative experiences because of him being disorganized and how it would be more effective for him if he did not have this trait. I even remember him giving me a book on this subject. So, it was not that I was not taught but it was just that I did not want to. I always felt like spending time on these issues was a big waste of time, and ignored them.

When it comes to my own personal experiences and their effects on this trait, I believe it's a little more complex. First of all, nearly all experiences I've had were negative ones. From my childhood to mid-adolescent years, I've lost a lot of important stuff due to being unorganized and suffered some negative consequences either in my personal or school life. Of all these experiences, one of them had a great impact on me. I was about eleven years old and really into playing basketball. Then I received a new pair of basketball shoes for my birthday from my parents. They were all that I was dreaming for. I still remember my joy after opening the gift box. But unfortunately, all this happiness lasted only for three days. I lost them after forgetting to put them back in my backpack when leaving the school's gym. To this day, I still don't know how I could forget something that was so important for me but when I realized and ran back to the gym, they were long gone. This particular event had a tremendous emotional impact on me. It was not only losing the shoes that devastated me but also more importantly, it was the great guilt that I developed towards my parents. They were very expensive shoes, which was a big issue for me at that age, and also it was a birthday present. Even though my parents were trying really hard to downplay the situation, I could sense (or maybe imagine) their frustration because it was not the first time that I was losing something important.

But at the end, even this negative experience could not directly alter my attitude by turning me into an organized person. But instead, I believe what it did was, shaping it in a different way. First of all, it made me more conscious. I was still not organized, but in the unconscious level, I think I started to develop a schema in my mind and became more aware of my surroundings. On the outside, I was still the same person with my untidy room, and everything but somehow I was more alert and began to organize things in my head. That is a trend still goes on today. I'm still an disorganized person and every now and then I suffer some consequences. But I learned to live with it and still be effective so that the negative experiences diminished significantly.

A lot of research has been done in the behavioral genetics field trying to find out the relations between heredity and human behavior. Dr. Dean Hamer's researches are only one example. Hamer has studied the role of inheritance in human behavior, personality traits, and cancer risk-related behaviors such as cigarette smoking. His discovery of genetic links to sexual orientation and the temperamental traits of sensation seeking and anxiety have changed the way people think about human behavior and raise a host of important scientific, social and ethical issues. According to his studies, some personality traits like novelty-seeking and smoking are 53% heritable and that there are different genes for starting and continuing this traits. Some of these genes may directly affect nicotine sensitivity whereas others probably act indirectly through personality traits. Also an upstream regulatory region polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene has been associated with anxiety-related traits that contribute to the persistence of addictive behaviors. All of these make me to believe that almost all personality traits, including being disorganized, should be connected to a combination of genes in one way or another.

In conclusion, I believe our genes don't necessarily predetermine our faith. But they can create a predisposition towards a trait that gets triggered something in the environment. For example a child may have a genetic tendency towards shyness. And if faced with a domineering teacher, the child may become even more withdrawn. In my personal case, my genetic tendency was towards being disorganized, which was a result of the genes that came from my father. And I believe this tendency was dominant enough that even my parents' well-intentioned efforts to canalize me towards being organized did not work. Maybe that even backfired because of my adolescent emotions and parent-child conflicts. So, in a way, the same environmental factors that worked positively for my brother did not work for me. And this leads me to believe that nature played the most important role on this trait. Environment could only shape it to an extent.