Speach

What makes you, you? Is it your upbringing, does your family and the world around you shape you, or is it genetic, are you preprogrammed from the moment of conception? This question has been a topic of debate since the early 17th century. In her 1818 book, ‘Frankenstein’ Mary Shelly explores this idea of Nature Vs Nurture through the life of the “Creature”, the being created by Dr Frankestien. The Nature side of the argument is that our DNA and genotype will determine our personality and traits we will have, essentially that our characteristics are predetermined at the moment of conception. The nurture side, however, takes the exact opposite stance they argue that we are born a ‘blank slate’ and everything about our personality and the traits we display are based on our experiences and interacting with the world around us.

Nature over nurture focus around this simple idea, we are built from approximately 37 trillion individual cells and each of these cells has the exact same genetic code, so therefore they must determine who we are as they make up every part of us. In 1983 a study called the Minnesota Twin Family Study or MTFS for short was established to conduct research on pears of same-gendered twins both fraternal and identical, the results of this study strongly support the nature side of nature vs nurture. One particular experiment in the study involved photographing twins and comparing there stance and posture, it was found that identical twins had an almost identical stance and posture as each, whilst fraternal twins had varying postures and stances. Because all twins study for this section were raised together and only identical twins displayed similarities in stance and posture it supports the idea that the traits we display are based on our genetic code rather than our environment. The MTFS conducted research on a pair of identical twins Jim Springer and Jim Lewis, often referred to as the Jim twins, who were separated at birth. The MTSF researchers found that both men lived scarcely similar lives. They had both married and divorced a woman named Linda, both remarried a woman named Betty. Both have an interest in mechanical drawing and carpentry, same favourite and least favourite subjects at school, maths and english, they both drink and smoke the same brands and the same amounts. However, the most astonishing part of the research into the Jim twins is that they both have chronic headaches at the same time as one another. Seeing as both twins were raised independently in different households with different living conditions, beliefs and ideologies, the similarities between each of the twins must be because of their near-identical DNA.

The Nurture side of the debate is based on the idea that all humans are born ‘black slates’ with no predetermined characteristics or personality traits, and that all parts of our nature as an individual, form the way we look to the way we think, are determined with our interaction with the world and those around us who raise us. In 2008 the North Carolina State University conducted research on research on the blood of 46 different Moroccans who live in three distinctly different climates, desert, mountains, and coastal urban areas resulting in a wide range of different lifestyles but all have a very similar genetic makeup. They found that ⅓ of all their genes were differentially expressed depending on the where and how they lived their lives. As all of the Moroccans in this study have very similar genetics to one another but they express their genes differently depending on their climate it supports the idea that the world around us dictates how we develop and this makes sense why would somebody who has lived their whole life in the mountains need to have the same traits as someone who lives in a city, it makes sense that their body activate specific traits as needed. After further close research on the samples collected the North Carolina State University it was found that urban dwellers had dramatically more restoration based genes expressed than the mountain and desert-dwelling groups, and again this makes sense as the urban dwellers are going to come into more contact with pollution and other substances that will damage their respiration system, therefore, requiring the body to focus on maintaining and supporting the respiratory system. This supports the idea that nurture, the environment around us in particular, determines how we as human beings develop.

I believe there is no simple answer to the nature vs nurture debate, it is not one or the other. Both work in unison to develop us as individuals, a 1979 study conducted by Dr Thomas J. Bouchard Jr. showed that identical twins separated at birth have a greater than 50% chance to share the same personality, interests, and opinions as each other. From this, it is easy to conclude that similarities between twins must be due to the fact they share close to 100 % of their DNA and any difference in their personality is caused by their different living situation. If this wasn’t the case we wouldn’t be who we are, we would be carbon copies of those around us it is because of this combined effort that we ended up the wonderful, random, unique, human beings we are today.