Nature vs Nurture
Aja McBride
WRI 121/ Clement
Paper #2
2/13/13
Nature vs. Nurture Debate
Ever since I can remember, I have always wondered about the cause of actions. Why do we behave the way we do? As a child I didn’t know much about how to answer it, but I still pondered this questioned. I wondered why my older brother was always angry, why my father was always sad, and why I was always happy. What caused these certain feelings? My aunt was a very different woman, which I hadn’t noticed at the time because of my young age. She was always very frantic and anxious; she was always making up stories that, at the time, I completely believed. These stories ranged from the FBI tapping into her phone calls to them planting bugs in her house. When I am with my aunt now, I realize that her behavior is considered abnormal, in other words it is statistically rare and deviates from the social norm. I recently found out that she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which I could have easily detected on my own and makes a whole lot more sense now. My initial thought was how badly I felt for her, I then began to realize that there were more troubling matters at hand – was this hereditary? This is what lead me to the desire of what causes these behaviors; is it the product of nature or nurture? My interest in psychology took off at a rapid pace. I wanted to find out everything I possibly could about the human mind. I enrolled in International Baccalaureate (IB) Psychology in high school, and there was no class that could possibly compare to it. The lectures were so fascinating, learning about why people act the way they do was more than a guilty pleasure for me. The nature versus nurture debate was a very prominent topic throughout this course, with every disorder would follow the speculation of what factor had caused it. This debate was particularly present in many psychological disorders, mainly because not a lot of research had been conducted on this matter. The Journal of
WRI 121/ Clement
Paper #2
2/13/13
Nature vs. Nurture Debate
Ever since I can remember, I have always wondered about the cause of actions. Why do we behave the way we do? As a child I didn’t know much about how to answer it, but I still pondered this questioned. I wondered why my older brother was always angry, why my father was always sad, and why I was always happy. What caused these certain feelings? My aunt was a very different woman, which I hadn’t noticed at the time because of my young age. She was always very frantic and anxious; she was always making up stories that, at the time, I completely believed. These stories ranged from the FBI tapping into her phone calls to them planting bugs in her house. When I am with my aunt now, I realize that her behavior is considered abnormal, in other words it is statistically rare and deviates from the social norm. I recently found out that she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which I could have easily detected on my own and makes a whole lot more sense now. My initial thought was how badly I felt for her, I then began to realize that there were more troubling matters at hand – was this hereditary? This is what lead me to the desire of what causes these behaviors; is it the product of nature or nurture? My interest in psychology took off at a rapid pace. I wanted to find out everything I possibly could about the human mind. I enrolled in International Baccalaureate (IB) Psychology in high school, and there was no class that could possibly compare to it. The lectures were so fascinating, learning about why people act the way they do was more than a guilty pleasure for me. The nature versus nurture debate was a very prominent topic throughout this course, with every disorder would follow the speculation of what factor had caused it. This debate was particularly present in many psychological disorders, mainly because not a lot of research had been conducted on this matter. The Journal of
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