Nature vs. Nurture

September 27, 2023

The psychological debate of nature vs nurture is centuries, if not millennia, old. Humans have questioned if people can be born or fated into their personal traits or occupational positions for as long as spiritual philosophy has existed, revived again in the early 20th century with the advent of psychology and genetics as scientific fields of study. I'm aware that my opinion on the matter will not add anything new of substance to the argument at large, but nearly all of my other opinions trace back to here somewhere along the line. This is a topic that I spend a lot of time and effort thinking about. I've had dozens of discussions and debates about it with different people online.

Primarily, I believe in nurture. In fact, I believe most arguments against nurture are ignorant, simple, and societally damaging. I don't not believe in nature, of course there are elements of life that are inherent to human development and even genetics. Obviously there is a natural process for the brain's creation and growth, but it is also proven that brain structure and neurology can be irreversibly altered by environments and events. However, when it comes to personality and behaviors, I believe that nature can only account for predispositions at most. There are no natural biological forces at birth that can compel someone to take an action in the present. People can have a genetic predisposition to certain behaviors, but ultimately people make decisions, rational or otherwise. Those decisions are not solely made by chemical composition, they are reactions made with one's interpretation of information, past and present, using their unique perspectives, morals, and values. Morals and values are learned from culture, and perspectives are shaped by a person's experiences and expectations. None of these concepts are spontaneously acquired at birth or through natural child development. While it is true that the capacity for morals and values naturally develops in children ages 8-14, no intrinsic information comes with it. Information about what is right and wrong is nurtured during that critical period. Behaviors, even subconsciously, are reactions dictated by a person's interpretation of information. This can apply to children of any age as well. Children constantly absorb information about reality and how to navigate it using their parents' behaviors as a guideline, so it would be an inaccuracy to say a young child inherits their mannerisms.

I go so far as to say that nature arguments are harmful for a few reasons. First, they are often needlessly reductive. Indeed, it is very simple and easy to assume the brain is just a fleshy mass of neurotransmitters and electrical signals, and that there are instinctual behaviors that must be preserved from evolution. Realistically, people consciously disobey "natural instincts" regularly, take fasting or suicide as examples. That simplicity is an intellectual trap, a fallacy, since perceptions are subjective. Psychologists in the field's infancy were observers with biology backgrounds, making conclusions based on their own assumptions of other peoples' patterns. Their own perceptions and biases influenced their conclusions, but they were the first of their kind, so they were accepted as authoritative truths by the layman, whom also has a proclivity to accept simple answers to begin with. The timing of this made it so the following decades of psych research were colored by this nature-tinted lens, giving even more credibility to the idea regardless of its reliability.

Second, nature arguments imply the existence of a natural order. I probably don't have to articulate much about eugenics, why it's horrible, and the kinds of people who subscribe to the idea. On the off-chance you're a believer of eugenics, though, consider the following. The concept of normality is socially constructed at its core, it is a concept born from a subjective observation of what the average is, or a subjective ideal of what the average should be. The definition of normal has no concrete meaning because it changes based on who you ask and who you're comparing against. A natural argument in psychology doubles down on this by saying humans have an objective normal and that it coincides with what is objectively normal in nature itself. Eugenics arguments consist of something along the lines of eliminating suffering, however, that ideal has been invoked for literally every totalitarian regime ever. You see these arguments come up occasionally in all kinds of social or anthropological issues, particularly gender roles, sexuality, scientific racism, and studies of history. Asserting that one's idea of natural order is correct comes from a place of superiority, either personal superiority over others or the assumption that they possess the right to judge a person's worth. These views are ignorant and misguided at best, while controlling and fascistic at worst.

Lastly, nature arguments completely lack empathy. Chalking up a problematic behavior to just the way someone was born is purely dismissive of anybody's autonomy, situation, thoughts, and feelings. There is no nuance or consideration of the individual. There is a sense of helplessness when it is framed as such. People are treated as abnormal demographics, no better than sick animals. Which, I should also mention, I believe nature arguments perpetuate harmful ideas about animal intelligence. It's never really made sense to me why we've invented a new term "conditioning" when they are in fact "learning", early behavioral scientists merely assumed animals were utterly incapable of thought. Nature arguments both disrepect animals and evolutionarily equate humans to this bastardized idea of them. In contrast, a nurture point of view considers the emotional responses of animals and equates their intelligence to ours, elevating their status relative to the popular nature opinion.

The consequences of nature arguments are far-reaching. Mental health stigma, overmedication, neglected diagnoses. Psychiatric health professionals have been educated wrong for the majority of psychiatric health history. Even something as common and pervasive as PTSD went under the radar for generations, and was stigmatized after its discovery anyway. The existence of trauma alone undermines the validity of nature-centric behavioral arguments. While it's nice now that there's more attention and awareness for mental health and previously misunderstood disorders, it's a shame that it had to be so bad for so long, and there's still much to be done. For instance, ODD as a diagnosis remains stigmatized as "bad kid disorder" that is inherent to their being, natural. People with this disorder are stigmatized by state institutions for disobeying authority, vague and relatively normal as that is. Not much thought, for now, is put into how people get to the point where they have deep distrust and paranoia when it comes to authority and power structures, even though the most straightforward causes are parental abuse or untrustworthy law enforcement from nurturing standpoints. We live in a time where it seems as if proper mental health practice is only beginning. The strictly scientific methods were sidelined in favor of individualized nurture approaches, i.e.; analyzing upbringings and circumstances.

As I said before, I don't completely discount nature arguments, I just feel strongly about them. It is an overrepresented concept that is easily weaponized against any group deemed undesirable. It's a fact that there are basic needs, and it's also true that critical periods in development are natural, things such as sleeping and language acquisition. Although, being able to learn a language effectively during the critical period is reliant on how nurtured the skill is by caregivers. Nature is responsible for the capacity and plasticity to learn, nurture is the information that is learned. In my opinion, the content of what is learned is more important than the ability to learn. The natural ability to learn is just that, natural and universal, while the learned content is different for everyone, interpreted differently by everyone, and is subject to misinformation or exploitation. I am hopeful for a world in which nurture overtakes the common consensus.