Are we humans the product of nature or nurture?

Nature is how much of your personality is genetic, what you were born with. Nurture is how much of your personality was caused because of your environment, how you were raised. So does nature or nurture contribute more to someone's personality and behaviour? Or do they both play a role in shaping our lives? I hope to come to a conclusion with this debate in the end of my thesis.

With nurturing, people tend to observe others actions and behaviour, and try to be like others. As a result, the human behaviour is the result of experience and imitating. The social learning theory suggests that we learn through imitation and observation. It also suggests that people learn within the environment and get approval from the public by learning through an influential model. Bandura, a known psychologist found that according to this theory, a model can be the main cause for learning new actions. However, when there is a role model that illustrates bad behaviour, that behaviour could be imitated by young children. A few psychologists criticised Bandura’s theories- where children behaved more aggressively after observing violent acts from their family members. This meant that children, who witness their parent’s aggressive behaviour, have a higher risk of being abusive later on in their life. This theory is also questionable as there could be other factors, like genetics, which affect the behaviour.

Our behaviour is more influenced by the genes we inherit than the environment we are brought up in. When socialisation does affect our identities, genetic and hormonal factors have a greater impact. For instance, there was a twin study, where the research twins had been separated at birth and adopted by different families. They both had met a wife with the same name, and their dogs had the same name, with many other striking