While I believe that both nature and nurture play a role in human development I often think nurture plays a large part. By nature and nurture I mean Nativism and Empiricism. Psychology Dictionary online defines Nativism (nature) as “Nativism implies that the brain has certain structures which play a role in the creation and development of knowledge and that part of this process is simply innate.” (psychologydictionary.org) In more simplistic terms, Nativism can be understood as a person is born with a preconceived personality, how they will behave, see things, etc., based on how the brain s structured during fetal development. On the other side we have Empiricism (nurture), which is defined as, “… the approach to epistemology holding that all knowledge of matters of fact comes from experience or needs experience for validation” (psychologydictionary.org). This basically means that a person is who they are based on how they were raised, where, and the experiences they’ve had in those developing years.

In my opinion, Empiricism is a stronger influence on a person but Nativism is involved, just not as much. I feel this way because of years of observing the difference between my family and my best friends family. By family I primarily mean how my best friend and I grew up (we are only two days apart in age) and how her brother and my brother (who are only a few months apart in age) grew. Although both are families lived in the same town and we attended the same schools we were raised very differently. My home being colder, religious, strict, and putting strong emphasis on college and a career vs. my friends family; very warm, family oriented, laid back, and putting their emphasis on togetherness. While me and my brother have different basic personalities, instilled in my opinion due to our brain structure, many things and life choices have been made I believe because of how we were raised, and same goes for my friend and her brother – personality different and yet, many are the same. I came to this conclusion during my first month here at school. I called my friend and asked her to come visit me at school. She responded by saying, “I can’t. Everyone in my house is sick (mind you two 40 something, able-bodied adults, and a 24 year old man), I have to take care of them.” I remember being so angry at that response. I said, “Dude, you’re 20. They’re all adults, they can survive without you making them soup-like are you serious?” and she responded with, “It’s just how I was raised Sarah, I don’t know what to tell you”. I remember calling my mom immediately after, very annoyed by my friend’s response, and I told her, “Mom, if you’re sick, honestly, I don’t care. I haven’t lived with you in 3 years. (Both my friend and her brother live at home still). I just expect you to take care of yourself, likewise as you would me”. And my mom simply responded the same way as my friend, “well sweetie, that’s just how they were raised” and I then thanked my mom for not treating me that way.

As I thought about this more I realized that me and my brother did a lot of things similarly as did her and her brother. Yes our basic personalities were different, as I believe all people are born with Nativism but we grew up the same as our siblings, our views of certain situations, our beliefs, our relationships with one another and our families have all to do with how we were raised and what we experienced-Empiricism.

Work Cited

 Psychology Dictionary: (Empiricism)

http://psychologydictionary.org/empiricism/#ixzz2sRvxLpea

Psychology Dictionary: (Nativism)

http://psychologydictionary.org/nativism/#ixzz2sRwhaqhh