PSYC A333F

Current Issues in Psychology

Lecture 9
Heredity and environment
 The debate about the roles of heredity and
environment (nature and nurture) is
controversial debate both inside and outside
psychology
 It is concerned with one of the most fundamental
question about human beings:
Introduction:  “How do we come to be the way we are?”
 “What makes us develop in the way we do?”
framing the
 Are these questions concerned with the human
questions species as a whole (relative to other species), or are
they concerned with individual differences
between humans (relative to each other)? E.g.:
 “Is language an inborn ability that is unique to human
species?”
 “Is it a ‘natural’ (biologically given) ability that will
appear in people with normal brains under normal
environmental conditions?” 2
Clearly, if language is a species-specific ability, then the focus
of theory and research will be on the nature of the language
ability
 E.g. “What exactly in language is biologically “given?” “How the
brain is specialised for language?” etc.
 Chomsky’s (1965, 1968) Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is perhaps the
prime example of such approach
Similar questions have been asked about perception and
aggression
 “Are human beings the naturally most aggressive species on the
planet?” (represents the species-level question)
 On the other hand, “Why are some people more aggressive than
others?” (represents the individual difference-level question)
 →According to Plomin (1994), the nature-nurture debate takes
place in the latter sense (i.e. individual differences)
3
Nativism, empiricism and interactionism

4
Nativism and empiricism are the philosophical
roots of the nature-nurture debate:
1. Nativism (represented by René Descartes)
Refers to the philosophical theory that sees nature (i.e.
heredity) as determining certain abilities and
capacities, rather than learning and experience
2. Empiricism (represented by John Locke)
Refers to the opposite of nativism, suggesting that
human mind is a “blank state”, which is gradually “filled
in” by learning and experience
5
These 2 positions represent polar opposites
They take the view that it is either nature (nativism) or
nurture (empiricism) that accounts of human abilities
 → They are either innate or learnt
Most psychologists today would reject such an extreme
approach to such a complex issue
 Because they are oversimplifying the question into “Is it nature
or nurture?”
According to Dunbar (2008), the nature-nurture
debate came to a stop in biology since 1960s:
“… biologists began to realise that the question [Is it
nature or nurture?’] was actually meaningless: everything
is the product of the interaction between both nature and
nurture…” 6
Despite this, nativism and empiricism have
considerable impact on psychology, particularly in
its early days
1. Nativism:
Gestalt psychologists believed that the basic principles of
perceptual organisation are innate
 And perceptual experience have very little influence
A pioneer of child psychology, Gesell (1925), introduced
the concept of maturation:
 Refers to genetically programmed sequential patterns of
change
 All babies and children will pass through the same series of changes,
in the same order, and at similar rate
A third, and more recent, example is Chomsky’s LAD 7
2. Empiricism:
Empiricism impacts psychology in many different
forms
An early and extremely influential empiricist theory is
behaviourism:
 “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own
specified world to bring them up and I’ll guarantee to take any
one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I
might select — a doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and,
yes, even into beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents,
penchants, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors.”
(Watson, 1925)
8
Watson (1928) also claimed that “there is no such thing
as an inheritance of capacity, talent, temperament,
mental constitution and character”, and:
“… there is nothing from within to develop. If you start with
the right number of fingers and toes, eyes, and a few
elementary movements that are present at birth, you do not
need anything else in the way of raw material to make a
man, be that man genius, a cultured gentleman, a rowdy or
a thug.”

9
So, if extreme nativism and empiricism choose between
nature and nurture, a more complex question to ask is “How
much?”
 (Of course, this presupposes that both nature and nurture are
involved, and is a view that most psychologists would support)
 This question is also inevitably linked to the issue of “individual
differences”
“How much?” is concerned with trying to quantify the
contributions of genetic and environmental factors
 This has been the focus of behavioural genetics, which attempts
to establish the extent (i.e. quantify) to which individual
differences (such as in intelligence and personality) are due to
differences in genetic make-up
 Methods used include twin studies, adoption studies, and studies of
family resemblance 10
A much more difficult, third question about the
nature-nurture relationship is “How do they
interact?” (Plomin, 1994)
This is concerned with qualitative issues — the ways in
which heredity and environment influence each other
For now, it is probably unbelievable for most
psychologists to accept that there is no interaction
between nature and nurture

11
The nature of “nature”

12
In genetics, “nature” refers to what is typically thought of as
“inheritance”
 This denotes (differences in) genetic materials which are
transmitted from generation to generation
 The father of genetics, Mendel (1865), explained the difference
between smooth and wrinkled seeds in terms of different genes
 Similarly, in modern genetics, the focus is on genetic differences among
individuals
“Nature” in this context does not refer to the common
nature in genetics for human species, but refers to
genetically-produced differences among individuals within
the human species
 (This was how the term “nature” was used by Galton, who coined
the phrase “nature-nurture” in 1883 as used in science)
13
 The raw materials of evolution is genetic
variability
 → Individuals with genes that help them to survive
the environmental conditions will be more likely to
produce offspring, while those lacking such genes
won’t
 In this way, new species develop (from mutation), and
Genetics and they possess characteristics (including behaviours) that
evolution enable them to evolve and survive
However, the links between evolution and
genetic variation may be less obvious than it is
often assumed (Plomin, 1994)
 It is easy to mistakenly assume that evolution
implies genetic variation within a species, and vice
versa 14
Take language as the example again:
 If language acquisition is a human species-specific behaviour,
pre-programmed by evolution to occur if the appropriate
environment is present, then we can say that we are natural
language users
 However, this does not imply that differences in language ability
among individual persons are also genetic in origin
 → It is possible that such differences is entirely due to environmental
factors (Plomin, 1994):
 “The causes of average differences between species aren’t necessarily
related to the cause of individual differences within groups. Moreover,
characteristics that have been subject to strong directional selection will
not show genetic variability because strong selection exhausts genetic
variability. In other words, when genetic variability is found among
individuals within our species for a particular trait, it is likely that the
trait was not important evolutionarily, at least in terms of directional
selection…” 15
 The basic unit of heredity
transmission are genes
 Genes are large molecules of DNA, an
extremely complex chemical chain
comprising a ladder like, double helix
structure (Watson & Crick, 1953)
Heredity:  Genes occur in pairs and are situated
chromosomes, on the chromosomes (found in the
genes and nucleus of living cells)
 The total set of genes is called “genome”
DNA  Normal humans inherit 23 pairs of
chromosomes (one from each parent
for each pair)
 22 pairs are the same in males and
females, and the 23rd pair are the two
sex chromosomes
 XX for female, and XY for males 16
Ridley (1999) suggests we can imagine that genome is a
book:
The book comprises of 23 chapters (23 chromosomes)
Each chapter (chromosome) contains thousands of stories
(genes)
 The no. of genes is found to be about 23,500 (Le Page, 2010)
Each story (gene) is composed of paragraphs, words, and
letters (bases; approximately 3 billions)
Genomes are entirely written in 3-letter words, using only
four letters:
 A (adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine), T (Thymine)
In the right conditions, the genome can “photocopy” itself
(replication) and “read” itself (translation)
17
“Replication” works because of the property of
the 4 bases:
 “A” only pairs with “T”, “G” only pairs with “C”
 So a single strand of DNA can copy itself by
assembling a complementary strand
 E.g. “T”s attaching to all “A”s on the chromosome, “C”s
attaching to all “G”s on the chromosome
 Then, make a copy of the complementary strand to
get back the information of the original strand
 “ACGT” (original) → “TGCA” (complementary) → “ACGT”
(replication of the original)
 Replication takes place through “mitosis” in non-
reproductive cells (e.g. skin, blood, muscle cells),
and “meiosis” in reproductive cells (ovum and
sperm)
18
“Translation” begins with the text of a gene being transcribed
into a copy by the same base-pairing process as described
 But this time, the copy is made of RNA (a slightly different
chemical)
 RNA can also carry the codes and uses the same letters as DNA
 (Except that it uses “U” instead of “T”)
 This RNA copy (called messenger RNA) is then edited by removing
some unnecessary parts in it
 Ribosomes then move along mRNA, translating each 3-letter
segment with different amino acids
 This consists of 20 different “amino acids”, each brought by a different
version of molecules called transfer RNA
 Each amino acid is attached to the last to form a chain in the same order
 When the whole message has been translated, the chain folds up to form
a “protein”
 Protein is almost making up everything in the body (e.g. hair, hormones) 19
 Mistakes can occur when genes are replicated
 E.g. a letter is occasionally missed out, or the
wrong letter is inserted
 Whole segments of genes are sometimes
duplicated, omitted or reversed
Mutations:  → These are called “mutations”
when Many mutations are neither harmful nor
replication beneficial
goes wrong  According to Le Page (2010), 85-95% of our DNA is
useless, without any demonstrable function
 Humans accumulate about 100 mutations per
generation
 While this does not seem much given that we have
million of genes in the genome, even a single mutation
can be fatal if it occurs in certain place 20
The nature of nurture: what is the environment?

21
When the term “environment” is used in a psychological
context, we normally think of all those influences that lie
outside the person’s body
 It may be in the form of other people, stimulation and social
interaction, and physical situations of the person’s life
 For most young children, the immediate family is the
environment in which their development takes place
 (Although this immediate environment is shaped by the wider social
and cultural setting in which the family exists)
In order words, we normally view the environment as:
1. External to the person
2. Post-natal (becomes important after birth)
3. A whole set of influences on the passive individual, shaped by
his/her environment
22
Regarding the first 2 points,
while the nature-nurture
debate is normally
conducted at the level of the
immediate family, and the
level of society and culture:
 “… opportunities for gene-
environment interaction
arise long before the birth
process… [and] individual
differences in environmental
conditions have a modifying
influence upon the
expression of genetic
inheritance.” (McGurk, 1975)
23
 For example, with repeated mitosis,
a cell has a specific location within a
cluster of other cells
 But that location is forever changing,
as the cell’s environment (the total no.
of cells around it) continues to grow
 (At a more microscopic level, the cell
nucleus has the cytoplasm as its
surrounding environment)
Rose (2005) claims that “the environment” is as much a myth
as “the gene”
 Environments exist at multiple levels:
 For DNA → the rest of DNA in the genome, plus proteins, enzymes, water
etc. surrounding it
 For a cell → adjacent cells, extracellular fluid, blood, other substances
24
Strictly speaking, “heredity” refers only to the particular set
of genes that combine at the moment of fertilisation
 Anything that occurs after that moment is environmental
 This includes all influences acting on the developing embryo
 E.g. hormones, mother’s diet, drugs taken by mother, accidents etc.

25
From a psychological perspective, the importance of this
pre-natal, biological environment, relates to the damaging
effects that it has on the unborn child’s brain development
 E.g. alcohol is the most harmful kind of commonly taken drugs
 Toxic to brain cells during first 10 weeks of pregnancy
 May lead to intellectual impairment, hyperactivities and attention
difficulties of the baby (Rutter & Rutter, 1992)
The view of the environment as impinging on a passive
individual applies to the social (cultural) environment as
well as the physical
If it is inaccurate to say that the person is totally passive,
then should ask:
 “In what ways does the individual influence or contribute to
his/her environment?” 26
Watson’s extreme belief of environmentalism sees the
“environment” as existing largely independently of the person
 The person is a passive container for environmental influences
(assuming that nurture contributes totally to individual differences)
An alternative view of “what the environment is” (assuming
that both nature and nurture contributes to the development
of individual differences) is to see people as making their own
environment (Scarr, 1992)
 (This view is opposite to what most parents believe about the
impact they have on their children, as well as what mainstream
developmental psychology teaches)
 Scarr argues that:
 “… each child constructs a reality from the opportunities afforded by the
rearing environment, and… the constructed reality does have considerable
influence on variations among children and differences in their adult
outcomes.” 27
 One way in which people influence their
environments is through eliciting certain
responses from other people
This may be done by behaviour, or by
particular biological characteristics (e.g.
gender)
Eliciting a If people have stereotypes and expectations
response regarding differences between boys and
girls, then these are likely to be expressed
through different ways of relating to boys
and girls, simply because they are male or
female
 → This was demonstrated in the “baby X”
experiments (e.g. Smith & Lloyd, 1978) 28
In the “baby X” experiments, babies were dressed in unisex
snowsuits and then given names to indicate gender
 Half the time in line with their actual gender, half the time not
 → When adults played with the babies, they treated them
differently according to what they believed the baby’s gender to be
What this demonstrates is that a person’s make-up becomes
part of his/her environment
 → Because other people’s reactions to our biological make-up is
part of our (social) environment
 Indeed, anything about us that may form the basis for others’
stereotypes and reactions towards us is much a part of our
environment
 E.g. physical attractiveness, ethnic, racial or national background, or any
physical disability
 However, these examples all relate to “static” aspects of our make-up
 What about the more “dynamic” aspects, such as temperament and behaviour? 29
  Children with a cheerful, easy-going disposition are more likely to
elicit friendly interactions with others than those perceived as
miserable or “difficult”
 Aggressive boys not only behave more aggressively, but also elicit more
hostile behaviour in other boys
 Their actions create a vicious cycle of negative interactions
 When aggressive behaviour meets with a hostile response, this makes it more likely
that further aggression will occur (Rutter & Rutter, 1992)

All these characteristics are influenced by genetic factors to

some degree, e.g.:
 Aggressive children tend to experience aggressive environment
because they tend to evoke aggressive responses in others
 This illustrates “active gene environment correlations”
 On the other hand, the “static” examples of gender and physical
appearance illustrate “passive gene-environment correlations”
 → Looking at the environment in this way helps to explain why
30
different people have different experiences (Plomin et al., 1977)
 When environment is being discussed as a
set of influences on the individual, it is
often broken into certain factors:
E.g. overcrowding, poverty, socioeconomic
Shared and status, family break-up, marital problems
non-shared In studies of (e.g.) intelligence or aggression,
psychosocial children are of often compared with each
environments others in terms of these environmental
factors
 For example, it may be concluded that children
from low SES backgrounds are more likely to
behave in antisocial ways and to be labelled as
juvenile delinquents
31
When families are compared in this way, it is assumed that
children from the same family will be similarly affected by
those factors (“shared environment”)
 However, most children within the same family are not very similar
 Often quite varied in personality, abilities, and psychological disorders
 E.g. 2 adopted children brought up in the same family are usually little
alike, not very different from any 2 people chosen from the general
population at random (Plomin, 1996)
 The substantial within-family variation is consistent with the idea
that non-shared influences are actually the crucial ones
 → Differences between children in the same family are associated
systematically with differences between their experiences
 In a major study of this relationship, Dunn and Plomin’s (1990)
argue that family-wide influences (e.g. SES) cannot influence
behavioural development unless their impact is experienced
differently by each child 32
A more specific way to explain these findings is by
distinguishing between “relative” and “absolute”
differences between children in how they are treated
Dunn and Plomin (1990) found that the way that parents
respond differently to their different children (relative
differences) may be much more influential than the overall
characteristics of the family (absolute differences)
 E.g. it may matter very little whether the children are brought
up in a family that is less loving than average, but it may matter
considerably that a child receives less affection or more
punishment than his/her brother or sister

33
These findings imply “that the unit of environmental
transmission is not the family, but rather micro-environments
within families” (Plomin & Thompson, 1987)
 Provided that children are brought up in good-enough, non-
deprived/abusive/neglectful environments, the family
characteristics make very little difference to their personality and
intellectual development
While most families provide sufficiently supportive
environments for children, their individual genetic differences
would develop (Scarr, 1992), which can account for:
1. Temperamental differences between children
2. Why parents treat different children differently (the relative
differences)
3. Differences in the experiences of different children
34
Are shared environment really that unimportant?
 Dunn and Plomin’s findings represent a very important explanation
of how experiences of different individuals might differ; and if their
experiences differ, their environments are different
 According to Scarr (1992), assuming a “normal” environment,
genes will express their potential
 Environmental variations within the normal range are functionally
equivalent
 Only if the environment is outside the “average expectable environment” it
will significantly alter behavioural outcomes
 Scarr’s theory implies that children could be reassigned to different
families, without significantly affecting how they turn out to
become
 E.g. differences in parenting style make little difference, provided that the
parents are “good enough”
 (But she did not specify what is meant by “good-enough” parenting)
35
But according to Baumrind (1993):
“All non-abusive environments above the poverty line are
not equally facilitative of healthy development.”
Also, Scarr’s theory excluded people with disadvantaged
circumstances and restricted life choices (Slee & Shute,
2003)
For Baumrind (1993), such “excluded” individuals are in
fact the norm worldwide:
 “Absence of disadvantage” is not the same as “having a rich
environment”
 Also, what is “normal” or “expectable” in one culture can be
totally unacceptable in another
36
 Dunn and Plomin’s finding showed that it
is pointless to define environment
independently of the person experiencing
it, as everyone’s experience is different
But an extreme behaviourist approach
The would see experience as given in the
constructionist environment, shaping the individual
view regardless of who they are
However, according to constructionist view,
people shape their own experiences
 → We do not merely response passively to the
environment, but actively create our own
experiences
37
According to Scarr (1992):
“Different people… interpret and act upon their
environments in different ways that create different
experiences for each person. In this view, human
experience is a construction of reality, not a property of
a physical world that imparts that same experience to
everyone who encounters it.”
→ This constructionist view can be related to what
Plomin et al. (1977) call “active gene-environment
interactions”
38
 A further way of trying to answer the “How do
gene and environment interact?” question is to
consider “vulnerability” to environmental
influence
 According to Horowitz (1987,1990), a highly
facilitative environment (with loving and
responsive parents) provides rich stimulations to a
Facilitativeness child
 Facilitativeness of the environment can interact
with a child’s initial vulnerabilities, e.g.:
 A resilient child may do well in poor environment
 Or, a vulnerable child may also do well in a facilitative
environment
 But a vulnerable child in a poor environment will do
really poorly
39
 The interactionist view is
demonstrated in a 30-year
longitudinal study (Werner,
1989):
 “As long as the balance
between stressful life events
and protective factors is
favourable, successful
adaptation is possible. When
stressful events outweigh the
protective factors, however, even the most resilient child can have
problems.”
→ The findings challenge the traditional assumption
regarding a simple and direct link between early experiences
and later development 40
 Although we are not free to choose which
family we are born at or the school we go, it is
clearly not our genes that determine these
Some  However, as we have seen, the environment
provisional comprises more that such “macro environments”
 We are free to choose and create our “micro
conclusions environments” that form many of our immediate
regarding the experience
gene-  As Plomin (1994) says:
environment  “Socially as well as cognitively, children select, modify,
and even create their experiences… Children modify
relationship their environments by setting the background tone for
interactions, by initiating behaviour, and by altering the
impact of environments… Children can… create
environments compatible with their own propensities,
niche-building…”
41
Behaviour genetics: going beyond the nature-nurture
debate

42
Behaviour genetics (BG):
To explore the origins of individual difference in complex
behaviours (Pike & Plomin, 1999)
To quantify how much of the variability of a given trait (e.g.
intelligence, schizophrenia, aggressiveness) can be
attributed to:
 Heritability
 Shared environments
 Non-shared environments
So BG addresses both the “How?” and “How much?”
questions
43
But modern geneticists regard the “Which one?” question
as meaningless and the “How much?” question as dull
(Jones, 1993):
 “Nearly all inherited characteristics… involve gene and
environment acting together… An attribute such as intelligence
is often seen as a cake which can be sliced into so much ‘gene’
and so much ‘environment’. In fact, the two are so closely
blended that trying to separate them is more like trying to
unbake the cake…”
Plomin (2001) agrees with this position, but for different
reasons:
 During 1980s to 1990s, psychologists became much more
accepting of genetic influence, since when BG became much
more “mainstream”
44
But besides demonstrating the importance of genetics
throughout psychology, BG research also demonstrated
that environmental influences have similar importance on
individual differences in complex psychological traits
 (… which seems paradoxical)
 In fact, Plomin maintains that BG research “provides the
strongest available evidence for the importance of
environmental factors”
BG researchers like Plomin suggest that genes are
“primary”, but tie them into the environment (rather than
looking at them in isolation)
 This satisfies most psychologists’ “need” to put the environment
into the explanation
 (Although Plomin also thinks that the accepted view for explaining
psychopathology inclines too much toward genetic determinism than
environment 45
 A relatively recent direction taken by
(biological) researchers is an attempt to
identify specific genes that are
Molecular responsible for individual differences
genetics: going Some research in molecular genetics is
back to nature directed at psychological disorders (such as
schizophrenia and autism)
 E.g. Rutter and Monaco (1998) has identified a
region of chromosome 7 that may be linked to
autism

46
The claims to have discovered the genes for complex
behavioural traits are currently widespread, but they
are very misleading
According to Claridge and Davis (2003):
 “Genes code for very precise, literally microscopic, bits of
biological material (proteins)… But it is unlikely that there are
genes, or sets of genes, ‘for’ impulsivity, the preference for
gay relationships, religiosity, anxiety, or even serious mental
disorders, such as schizophrenia. The route from genes to
behaviour is likely to be much more tortuous than that and…
to involve a multitude of genes and interactions among them
— as well as an interplay between genes and environmental
factors…”
47
The belief behind molecular genetic research is that
phenotypic characteristics (such as behaviour) can
be found to be associated with a particular sequence
of DNA at certain location of chromosome
(Phenotype: a characteristic as result of a certain DNA
sequence)
→ There are variations in DNA sequence
(polymorphism), and this variation can be expressed as a
certain behaviour
Also, a gene may depend on other genes in producing
its effect
 “… Gene expression changes depend both on the internal
environment (including the other genes present in the
organism), and the external one in which the organism
48
develops…” (Rose, 2001)
 While identifying connections between
genes and phenotype is relatively easy for
easily identifiable diseases, this is much
The problem more difficult for those characteristics
with studied in psychology, such as personality
phenotypes: and intelligence
what is Reasons:
schizophrenia?  Their core features may not be all that obvious
or agreed by different researchers
 They may not cause huge differences between
people so the influence cannot be easily
identified
49
Twin studies and family resemblance studies have
shown the contribution of genetic influences in
schizophrenia, even though researchers could not
identify specific genes (Gottesman, 1991)
Claridge and Davis (2003) claim that genetic influence is
one certain fact about schizophrenia
 But they also claim that it is equally certain that environment
factors must also be important

50
However, there are some puzzling findings:
When the same sets of monozygotic (identical) twins
were assessed for schizophrenia using some broad
criteria, the heritability was 50%
But when they were assessed in another occasion
according to Schneider’s (1959) first rank symptoms
(thought disturbances, hallucinations and delusions
etc.), the heritability estimate was 0%
 → This suggests, when we ask about heritability of
schizophrenia, it depends on the definition
In other words, defining and diagnosing schizophrenia is
more complex and less straightforward than for physical
diseases
51
Different studies have even produced heritability
estimate of schizophrenia ranging from 0 to 90%
According to Claridge and Davis (2003):
 “Is it possible that the value of 50 per cent now generally
quoted is merely some average of a range of heritabilities for
entirely different psychotic disorders, different variants of
schizophrenia, or just illnesses of different severity?”
These genetic research reveals that the clinical diagnosis
may be a very blunt, inaccurate phenotype for exploring
heritability
 → Maybe we should look for more basic, narrow behaviours
that underlie a clinical disorder
 E.g. many schizophrenic patients have problem in following a
swinging pendulum with smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM)
 (But of course, it does not mean that everyone who shows this
inability is schizophrenic) 52
  Gross, R. (2014). Themes, issues and debates in psychology
(4th ed.). Hodder Education. (Chapter 10)

References

53