AllBestEssays.com - All Best Essays, Term Papers and Book Report
Search

Nature-Nurture - Describe Both the Psychological Principle and How Your Example Illustrates or Relates to the Principle?

Essay by   •  October 7, 2011  •  Essay  •  612 Words (3 Pages)  •  1,997 Views

Essay Preview: Nature-Nurture - Describe Both the Psychological Principle and How Your Example Illustrates or Relates to the Principle?

Report this essay
Page 1 of 3

Describe both the psychological principle and how your example illustrates or relates to the principle.

In this week's essay I am going to be touching bases on the NATURE-NURTURE issue, and how it is demonstrated in my life. As stated in our Introduction to Psychology book, "How differences in behavior relate to differences in heredity and environment?"

Nature, more specifically heredity, is defined as the transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to offspring. And how it applies to me is this:

A majority of my family members ranging from my aunts and uncles to both of my grandparents on my mother's side are all diagnosed with Mixed Bipolar. While, bipolar has thought to be mainly genetic, it can have a continuing trigger in the form of stress, extreme unpleasant occurrence, or even an abrupt change in sleeping habits. While I do show numerous signs of the illness, it isn't as apparent while I am away from my family for long periods of time, as opposed to when I am in constant environmental contact with them. Currently all of my family lives across the US on the east coast, and while I am not around them, I still show similar signs. Yet, since childhood through present day, I haven't had much physical family contact with one of my uncles, yet his episodes/trigger mechanisms are extremely similar to mine.

As for the second term, Nurture, is defined as the "environment" that which we live in influences characteristics of our each other. Nature applies to me in the following story:

In the norm, it is the generic culture in the US that young male children usually dress in jeans and a t-shirt, while young female children are in sun-dresses. Or in my example, women take care of all of the cleaning, while the majority of the housework/manual labor is left for the "man of the house" to take care of. I was raised in a single parent home as an only child. Within that, as I started to grow and mature while still a child, I took on certain responsibilities in the house. A few times a week, it was my duty to either clean the kitchen, dust the living room, or wash windows. I had little male or father-like contact while growing up and going through changes to become an adult. And while I didn't have that male "influence" out of my family environment that I grew up in exposing me to the co-culture of male jobs, I still found a desire to pursue a norm based male job.

While I believe that the environment that in which we grow up in influences us, there several variables that cannot just shape or re-shape how we are, but also who we are. In my opinion, I would put the term Nature in with co-culture or norm. Ie, the young boy plays with toy trucks. If the young boy happens to live in a farming community, he might play with something a little more specific like a toy tractor. There are certain hereditary

...

...

Download as:   txt (3.3 Kb)   pdf (60.7 Kb)   docx (9.9 Kb)  
Continue for 2 more pages »
Only available on AllBestEssays.com