Psychological Controversy: Nature Vs. Nurture

Nature v. Nurture
For centuries, there has been a psychological debate on what alters and affects a person’s personality and behavior. Is it the pressure of society or the way a parent raises a child that causes a child to develop into a successful adult? Is it the genetic inheritance and biological building blocks that humans are born with that makes a person who he/she is? The things that happen to a person that is beyond the control of a parent is nature. The love, compassion, and discipline (or lack of) that a child receives from a parent or society is nurture. Nature and nurture work togeth-er to help a child grow and become a productive adult.
Nature is defined as “pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other bio-logical
factors” by simplypsychology.org. Nature is important because it makes a person who they are physically and mentally. Human Nature is a combination of many things; Ridley lists the combination as:
“Darwin’s universals , Gaston’s heredity, James’s instincts,De Vries’s genes, Pav-lov’s reflexes, Watson’s association, Kraepelin’s history, Freud’s formative expe-rience, Boas’s culture, Durkheim’s division of labor, Piaget’s development, and Lorenz’s imprinting” (6).
It encourages people to see and accept differences in appearances in others; however, these appearances can cause people to judge each other because they are not the same. Some psy-chologists believe that certain actions are simply behavioral instincts. For example, Sigmund Freud believed that aggression was just instinctive and not taught, as though, it is just a part of human nature (McLeod). Although nature is important, nurture also plays an immense role in per-sonality development.
“Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception, e.g., the product of exposure, experience and learning on an individual” (McLeod). Being nurtured allows people to adjust and adapt to different situations as well as people; nurture allows one to become flexible personally as well as sociably. Nurture is what a person learns from his/her environment and experiences. Nurture is essential to personality development because simple experiences can change a person’s entire look on life. In Frankenstein, the creature states “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” (Shelley 114). This statement shows that although nurture can shape a person into a good human being, it can also cause someone
to go down a destructive path. The novel Frankenstein exhibits Nature v. Nurture in many cases.
Shelley showed how nature could cause a person a great deal of harm.
When the creature met humanity for the first time, they all rejected him and hurt him because of his appearance. Victor created the creature to be a superior being; the creature was approximately eight feet tall (Shelley 54). With the story being told from the creature’s point of view, the reader is not able to see the fear in the villagers. It is nurtured to be afraid of the unknown, yet it is human nature to try to destroy what is considered a threat as a form a protection. Although nature and nurture seem to be very different, they work together to produce productive people of
society.
Nature and nurture are inseparable because one without the other is simply chaos. Nature helps a person understand and appreciate their genetic makeup while nurture allows a person to learn new things and develop their own consciousness and responsibilities. “Genes [Nature] are designed to take cues from their nurture” (Ridley 4). Nature and nurture depend on each other to create people’s personalities.

Works Cited
McLeod, Saul. “Nature vs. Nurture in Psychology” Simply Psychology, 2015. 22 October 2017. www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html
Ridley, Matt. Nature Via Nurture, Genes Experience, and What Makes Us Human. New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2003. Print.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Clayton: Prestwick House, Inc, 2005. Print.