Nature-Nurture Controversy

For millennia, scholars, philosophers, and poets have speculated on the origins of individual differences in behavior, and especially the extent to which these differences owe to inborn natural factors (nature) versus life circumstances (nurture). The modern form of the Nature-Nurture debate took shape in the late nineteenth century when Sir Francis Galton, based on his empirical researches, concluded that nature prevails enormously over nurture. However, Galton's interest in eugenics undermined early research into the genetic origins of behavior, which did not reemerge until the latter half of the twentieth century when behavioral geneticists started to publish again their findings from twin and adoption studies. Current consensus is that nature versus nurture represents a false dichotomy and that progress will require the investigation of how both genetic and environmental factors combine to affect the biological systems that underlie behavioral phenotypes.