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Nature vs. Nurture One of the oldest controversies in psychology and other subjects, dating back from the Roman Greeks to the present, is the Nature vs. Nurture debate. Fundamentally, the question is which is the most important factor in human behavior? Is it a person’s natural (genetic) tendency that he/she is born with or is it the person’s environment, upbringing, life experiences? Are we the product of our surroundings (Nurture), or of our hereditary tendencies (Nature)? In other words, would a serial killer have been the same person if he/she had grown up in different surroundings? Furthermore, if two identical twins were separated at birth, would they grow up to be different? According to the lecture discussion, one of the most popular supporters of the Nurture position was John Locke. John was a seventeenth century philosopher, who saw a baby’s mind as a “Tabula rasa”, a blank tablet, on which anything could be written through life experiences and education.
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