Blog Post #5 - Nature, Nurture, & Human Diversity

There were many things that I have learned from this chapter. One of the more intriguing things that I learned from this chapter is the fact that Fraternal twin are genetically no more similar than brother and sister. I had always thought that there was something more between even fraternal twins but really fraternal twins are just like me and my brother. Twins are generally though of by me as a genetic oddity but really there is nothing different about them and regular siblings, fraternal twins anyway. On another surprising note about twins I had never thought of the Olsen twins as fraternal because they look so much alike, but I found out, courtesy of my Psychology text book, that they are not identical twins.

Nature vs. Nurture, the largely debated topic which is the focus of this chapter. When it comes to personality there is not one that is more important than the other in molding it. They both influence the type of person you become. Our appearance, determined by genes influences how our peers react to us and influence us. Genetics and Environment are hand-in-hand in our development.

I read this one section about seperated twins. I was shocked when I read the similarities between this one pair who were seperated at birth and were apart form 37 years. It seems impossible that those kinds of things could happen. This also gives support to the Nature side of nature vs. nurture. With Identical twins the similarities are astounding and it seems they must be influenced at least partly by their genes.