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Intelligence: Nature or Nurture This paper will focus on the nature/nurture controversary and the extent to which an individual?s intellectual level is determined either by inborn intelligence or by environmental factors. The relative powers of nature and nurture have been actively pursed by psychologists and biologists striving to determine how heredity and environment influence the development of intelligence. Psychologists study processes of sense perception, thinking, learning , cognition, emotions and motivations, personality, abnormal behavior, interactions between individuals, and interactions with the environment. No aspect of intelligence has been more hotly debated than the issue of heredity versus environment. The extreme nature view of intelligence asserts that intelligence is solely determined by genetics; the nurture view of intelligence emphasizes the influence of the environment. (Eggen p130) The debate over what was more important in shaping the human personality, nature or nurture, has been going on since the 1600?s.
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