Francis Galton was a polymath who wrote on many subjects. He was born in England and considered a child prodigy. He devoted his life to measuring physical and psychological characteristics, devising mental tests and writing. He received many awards for his work – including a knighthood. He had many gifted relatives, including Charles Darwin. He was interested in the extent to which abilities, talents and intelligence are either inborn or learned. Before his idea and work on the “nature vs. nurture” concept, other people’s work had paved the path for this way of thinking. John Locke, a british philosopher, proposed that the mind of every child is a blank slate (1690). Charles Darwin suggested that all human development is the result of adaptation to an environment (1859) and William James claimed that people had genetically inherited tendencies or instincts. Galton’s idea is that personality is composed of elements from two different sources. Nature is that which is inborn and inherited and nurture is that which is experienced from birth onwards. We can improve some of our skills and abilities through training and learning but nature sets the limits of how far we can develop out talents. He thought that nature and nurture both play a part in our personalities, but nature is the determining factor. Galton later studied twins looking for resemblances in many ways. He found that while physical traits such as height, weight, hair and coloring were always the same or similar, twins always seemed to have different handwriting – proving his nature vs. nurture idea. He also found that twins, as apposed to siblings, were either incredibly similar within their personalities, or incredibly dissimilar. Siblings on the other hand tended to be a little similar – on the middle of the scale if you will. Here, he found evidence which went against his ideas – a shared upbringing and genes found in twins did not guarantee a similar personality. Nowadays people have different opinions on the whole nature vs. nurture debate. Some people think that children are born blank slates, and some people think that everything is determined by genes. What do you think?
Sources: The Psychology Book, Dorling Kindersley Limited.
