Is it Nature? What Influences the Behavior of a Person the Most

By: Chiara Bellini

Nature versus nurture is one of the greatest psychological debates that has been going on for centuries, but what exactly is it about? Although genetics (nature) have a big influence on the physical characteristics of humans, a person is defined by how they behave and act towards others. The environment (nurture) where you grew up, your childhood experiences, how you were raised, your social relationships, and your surrounding culture determine the way you talk, behave and respond to the things around you.

Nurture is a major contributing role in the way you respond to things around you, such as mental illness. For example, even though bipolarity is more likely to be developed if there is a long family history of the condition, it also depends on the environment (nurture) you have grown up in. Certain behaviors can prevent the condition from developing or it can develop but with less intensity. In a movie called “Three Identical Strangers,” as the title suggests, three triplets that were separated at birth all carried a tendency of having a mental illness in their genes. David and Bobby, two of the triplets, grew up in a nurturing and loving environment which helped them become successful adults and may have been effective at preventing them from fully developing the traits of their mental health problems. Eddie, on the other hand, grew up in a demanding environment in which the relationships he had with his family weren't overwhelmingly positive. It is thought that due to this, he was the only one who developed a major bipolar depression disorder that later causes him to commit suicide. After the tragedy, it is seen how even the two brothers couldn't help noticing the differences in how they were both raised and how that might have affected their life choices. Eddy’s elderly father even said, “I often wondered if I didn’t teach him something…how to live life or something…that bothers me.”

During the Holocaust many twins were studied, most of whom grew up with mental traumas due to the hash experiences they endured. Scientific studies show that people who experience their childhood during the Holocaust and survive, are more likely to commit suicide and have the highest percentage of suicide attempts. Hitler did nazi experiments to make offspring perfect, this experiment is known as the Lebensborn Project. Aside from exterminating Jews and making the German country pure again, he wanted to build a super race, children that in the future will lead the country. These children had to have specific traits such as blond hair and blue eyes, the Superman look. The women who were going to give birth to these children needed to prove to be 3 generations of Pure Aryan ancestry. The young women who weren't even married were injected with the sperm of SS officers so they could produce offspring. These children were raised by their parents or in well-heeled orphanages or in nazis foster homes. The experiment didn't quite work because it is not all about genetics. When these children grew up and found out who their birth parents were, they were scarred for life. Their parents killed millions of innocent civilians and according to the BBC, this was something that the children were against, proving that one’s way of thinking and personality is not heritable. Instead, they wanted to cut all sorts of identity relations with their parents.

Fraternal twin sisters, Uliyana and Ksenia, who were separated at birth and reunited again after 35 years are another examples of nurture over nature. Galina Shilov gave birth to twin daughters in the Russian city of Perm in 1982. She took one girl, Uliyana, home but the second twin was too weak to leave so she left her at the hospital. Days later she was given a different girl than Knesia, due to a mix-up that happened in the hospital. According to sources, Galina wasn't aware she had a girl from another woman, but she suspected it wasn't her biological daughter. Uliyana was raised by her real parents in a loving family of teachers in the city of Perm, Russia. On the other side, her twin sister, Ksenia, was given to the wrong mother, a woman who was stripped of her rights to raise children. Knesia’s life was miserable, she was sent to an orphanage at an early age and without parents nor sisters just her brother Dimitry, she had to survive life inside the orphanage and that affected her character. She was never chosen for adoption and she needed to take care of her brother, she was alone in this world. While Uliyana had a happy life in a stable home with her biological parents. We can see how the environment that Knesia grew up in affected her growth as a person. Her childhood was taken away from her, it was a totally different environment from the one Uliyana grew in, and when they met aside from being physically alike, their personalities and interests were different. Ksenia was a more independent woman while Ulilaya was a more loving and caring woman.

Personality development can be influenced by various factors or aspects that mainly have to do with the environment where the person grows, such as childhood experiences, social relationships, and how you were raised. The factors that influence personality development are environmental situations external to the person who can cause people to adapt their behaviors and thoughts to these situations. Thus, in terms of environmental factors influencing the development of personality, we should consider culture and experiences as defining aspects of that development.