Introduction
In psychology, figuring out how nature and nurture affect each other is critical to understanding how people grow and change. Through personal reflection, I look back at my life to figure out how nature and nurture affect different parts of human growth. My personality and mental health have been affected by both nature and nurture, which is what this piece is mostly about. I want to show how genetic predispositions and sociocultural factors significantly impact people’s growth and development by looking at personal stories and psychology theories.
Personal Experience
When I was growing up, I was always interested in the complicated parts of psychology and mental health, which came from my journey of trying to make sense of these parts of my life. One painful memory that sticks with me is when I was a teenager and had to deal with social anxiety. Even though I naturally tend to be shy, the constant pressure of social norms and expectations made my anxiety worse and threw me into a downward spiral of loneliness and self-doubt. I felt profoundly inadequate and out of place because I was afraid of being judged and had to conform to social norms all the time. From what I can see now, this challenging event sparked my desire to understand how personality develops and mental health problems work. For some reason, it made me want to learn more about the core factors affecting people’s behavior and mental health. I started on a journey to learn more about myself because I wanted to understand how innate tendencies and outside factors affect the human experience. There were many insights and discoveries for me as I made my way through the maze of my mind. As time went on, I realized that both genetics and my surroundings had a significant effect on how my personality and mental health developed. I was naturally shy, which made me more likely to have social anxiety. However, it was the way society, family, and cultural expectations all worked together to make it worse and more noticeable.
Understanding Nature and Nurture
In psychology, it is essential to understand the ideas of nature and culture to understand how people change over time. Nature includes the genes and natural traits people get from their parents, which can affect eye color, personality, and ability (Mackey, 2022). These genetic predispositions determine the traits and skills that a person may have. Nurture, conversely, includes what people do and see in their surroundings throughout their lives. These include upbringing, social interactions, schooling, and cultural background. What these inherited traits look like and how they grow is shaped by nurture. It is important to remember that nature and nurture do not operate alone; they combine in complex ways throughout a person’s life. Because of this interaction, each person has a unique mix of genetic traits and life events that shape their personality, behavior, and mental health. It is essential to understand this interaction to know how complicated human growth is and what makes people different.
Studying the Impact of Nature and Nurture
Different research methods examine how genetics and the surroundings affect how people grow and develop when studying the effects of nature and nurture. Researchers often use twin studies to look at the similarities and differences between fraternal twins (who share about half of their genetic material) and identical twins (who share all of their genetic material) (Saad et al., 2020). Researchers can determine how much genetics and environment affect certain traits or behaviors by looking at the results of these two types of twins raised in different environments. Adoption studies are another way to look at the similarities between adopted children and their biological cousins as well as their adoptive families (Danzak et al., 2021). This lets experts compare how genetic and environmental factors affect different parts of development. Longitudinal studies, which track individuals over a more extended time, also provide helpful insights into how genetic and environmental factors cooperate to influence developmental outcomes throughout the lifespan. These study methods help figure out how nature and nurture interact. This complicated process gives us important information about what affects our behavior, thinking, and emotional health. Psychologists can help us learn more about how people grow and develop and help shape solutions meant to improve things using strict scientific methods.
Psychological Theories
Psychological theories are constructive for understanding how complicated human growth is as they give us helpful information about how both nature and nurture play a role. Piaget’s cognitive development theory is a well-known idea in developmental psychology that says people actively build their understanding of the world through cognitive processes. Piaget says that genetics affects how people see and interact with their surroundings, affecting how they grow their minds (Chatué & Ngoune, 2023). However, Piaget also stresses how vital experiences in the world are for shaping cognitive development by showing how innate tendencies and outside influences constantly change and interact.
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is another important one which stresses how early childhood events and social interactions shape personality development. Freud thought that people go through different stages of psychosexual growth and that each stage has its problems and solutions (Spielman et al., 2021). Along with societal expectations and cultural norms, these events help shape personality traits and patterns of behavior. Freud’s theory shows how innate drives and outside influences can affect each other in complicated ways. It shows how important it is to understand genetic predispositions and environmental factors to understand human behavior and growth.
Analysis of Personal Experience
Looking at my own experience with social anxiety shows how complex the relationship is between innate tendencies and outside factors. In the beginning, my genetic tendency toward introversion and high sensitivity made me more likely to develop social anxiety. Being born with these traits made me feel awkward and uneasy in social situations. However, it is also essential to consider how societal standards and cultural norms affect people. The push to live up to societal norms and standards made my anxiety worse by making me feel more self-conscious and afraid of being judged. The constant criticism and observation from my peers and society as a whole made my symptoms worse and kept me in a cycle of worry and stress. This means that even though my genes made me more likely to have social anxiety, my surroundings had a significant impact on how bad and how often my symptoms showed up (Hull et al., 2021). This complex understanding shows how important it is to look at both nature and nurture when trying to understand psychological problems like social anxiety.
Conclusion
Finally, thinking about your own life can help you understand how nature and nurture affect your growth very complexly. By thinking about my struggles with personality and mental health, I have learned more about how genetics and the surroundings affect how people grow and change. Moving forward, knowing how nature and nurture affect each other is essential for developing more complete ways to understand and help people with mental health problems. Recognizing that human growth is multifaceted can help us develop empathy, compassion, and resilience as we deal with life’s difficulties.
References
Chatué, J., & Ngoune, G. C. M. (2023). Cognitive and Didactic Intellectualism in the Genetic Epistemology of Jean Piaget. American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR), 7(9), 94-101.
Danzak, R. L., Gunther, C., & Cole, M. (2021). Someone else’s child: A co-constructed, performance autoethnography of adoption from three perspectives. The Qualitative Report, 26(3), 637-651.
Howitt, R. (2020). Decolonizing people, place and country: Nurturing resilience across time and space. Sustainability, 12(15), 5882.
Hull, L., Levy, L., Lai, M. C., Petrides, K. V., Baron-Cohen, S., Allison, C., … & Mandy, W. (2021). Is social camouflaging associated with anxiety and depression in autistic adults? Molecular autism, 12(1), 1–13.
Mackey, D. A. (2022). What color are your eyes? Teaching the genetics of eye color and color vision. Edridge Green Lecture RCOphth Annual Congress Glasgow May 2019. Eye, 36(4), 704–715.
Saad, G., Sejean, R., Greengross, G., & Cherkas, L. (2020). Are identical twins more similar in their decision-making styles than their fraternal counterparts? Journal of Business Research, 120, 638-643.
Spielman, R. M., Dumper, K., Jenkins, W., Lacombe, A., Lovett, M., & Perlmutter, M. (2021). Lifespan theories. Psychology-H5P Edition.
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