There are many different ways that psychology, the scientific study of behavior and mental processes, has been interpreted and studied.  The Greeks first brought up the ideas of Nativism and Empiricism.  Nativism is the viewpoint that people are the way they are because of genetics.  Nativists, who take this “nature” approach, believe that human characteristics, thoughts, and ideas are all gained hereditarily, through genetic code.  Empiricism, also known as the “nurture” approach, is the belief that experiences create who a person is and somewhat mold a person.  Empiricists think that a person’s beliefs and actions are a direct correlation to how they were nurtured and raised as a child. Empiricism and nativism are two opposite approaches to determining how people are “programmed” and in response how they act. This argument is often called “nature vs. nurture”. (Wede Psych 100 Lecture 2)

At first, thinking about nurture and nature, I would assume that nurture has the biggest impact on a person.  However, when thinking from personal experience, of being around my aunts who happen to be fraternal twins, I think that nature has the greatest effect on people.  Personally, I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that people are simply born programmed to be a certain way, but the facts around me that they are indeed are extremely evident.  My aunts were both born and raised in the same place and the same values were instilled in each.  Neither was favored over the other and neither excelled in school or athletics more than the other.  That being said, today they are polar opposites in every aspect of life.  If nurture determined how they acted and what they believed, then being brought up the same, theoretically, from an empiricism view, they should be the same.

Although they are twins, they differ in genetic makeup because they are fraternal.  My Aunt Becky happens to be very outgoing, lesbian, and democratic.  My Aunt Krista, on the other hand, is introverted, straight, and republican. They are both very independent, yet their lifestyles differ drastically.  Aunt Becky, for example, went to school for architecture and moved to Alaska on a whim; however, my Aunt Krista was an English major and is now a professor.  Krista leads a very organized life and keeps to herself, while Becky is outgoing and enjoys doing things that are unplanned.  The two were raised almost identically and yet those same experiences led to two completely different personalities.  Their ideas and characteristics must have been inborn, and nurture, while probably playing a tiny role, did not change their paths.  The two are so much opposites, that they often “butt heads”.  The views of nativism and nature have to have some sort of influence on a person.  Genetics is the only thing that could be used to describe the reasoning for such different personalities, beliefs, and thoughts between my aunts, if indeed it was an argument of nature vs. nurture.