Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Genes vs. Environment
- Genetic Influence
- Intelligence
- twin and adoption studies suggest
that a large component of the variation
in IQ is due to genetic factors
- however, there's equally strong
evidence for the effects of nurture
- Flynn effect; the observation that IQs all over the
world have increased by 20 points in 30 years
- must be due to environmental enrichment
- Mental illness
- twin and adoption studies show that the closer 2
individuals are genetically, the more likely that both
of them will develop the same mental disorder
- EG. concordance rate for
schizophrenia is 40% for MZ
and 7% for DZ
- however, clearly a significant
environmental component
- diathesis-stress model; individuals who have a
genetic vulnerability (diathesis) for a disorder only
develop is under certain conditions (stress)
- Evolutionary explanations
- natural selection; behaviour that leads to increased
survival/reproduction will be selected and passed on
via genes to subsequent generations
- however genetic behaviours
are modified by culture
- Buss found 22% of
females did NOT
value ambition an
industriousness
more than males
(cultural relativism)
- Environmental Influences
- Aggression
- Bandura's view was that
aggressive behaviour is mainly
learned through observation
and vicarious reinforcement
- the key concepts of
social learning theory
(SLT)
- Bandura suggested
that this enables us to
learn the specifics of
aggressive behaviour
- however, a person's
biological make-up creates
a potential for aggression
and it is the actual
expression of aggression
that is learned
- Coccaro (1997) studied twin pairs
and found that nearly 50% of the
variance in aggressive behaviour
could be attributed to genetic factors
- Neural plasticity
- the ability of the brain, both in development and
adulthood to be changed by the environment
- Pascual-Leone (1995) - the region of the
brain that controls finer movement
increased in size in PP's required to play
a piano finger exercise daily over 5 days
- Edwards and Cline (1999) - studies with
non-human animals have observed the way
neurons shrink and grow in response to
changing environmental conditions