Identity: Nature or Nurture?

Our identity is who we are. There are many different factors affecting our identity, such as our friends, family, culture, etc. All of these factors can be put under ‘nurture’. Nurture is based on our upbringing. On the other hand, nature is based on our genetics. Identity can be influenced by both nature and nurture, but I believe that nurture shapes us more than nature.

Aristotle proposed that humans are born with ‘tabula rasa’ (a blank slate.) According to him, humans were not born with knowledge, they acquire it through experience. He believed that nurture shapes your identity more than nature. I agree with this as all the experience that I have experienced have shaped who I am. Scientists did an experiment on baby rats to see whether their habits were based more on nature or nurture. The researchers compared two rat moms, one that licked their baby a lot, and one that didn’t. They found that when the babies grew up, they carried their mom’s habits with them. And they passed it on to the next generations. The researchers wanted to know whether the babies’ habits to like their kids, or to not lick their kids, we’re a part of their genes. The researchers then switched the babies of a low licking mother, and a high licking mother. The researchers found out that if the mother is a high licker, then the babies turned out to be high lickers as well, whether the mothers were genetically related to the kids or not. This experiment proved that the upbringing of these rats shaped the rats more than their genetics.

Plato’s theory of nature was that all knowledge is present at birth. He believed that nature shapes your identity more than nurture. Take David Reimer for example, he was born a male, but he was raised as a female. In the end, he decided to turn back into a male. This show that nature is plays a significant role in gender identity. David identified himself as a male, despite the fact that he was raised female. This is all because he was born a male with male genes. 

Despite all the evidence for how nature affects your identity, I still believe that nurture has a greater effect on your identity than nature does.

 

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