Chapter 5
Dylan Langston
Nature Versus Nurture
There has been a heated debate on wether nature or nurture helps us develop.
Heredity -Characteristics include body build, hair type, eye color, and skin pigmentation.
Birth Order - People born first or last in a family have a different perspective than people born the middle.
Parental Characteristics - Parents who are in their early twenties when their children are born are likely to relate differently to their offspring than parents who are in their mid to late thirties.
The Cultural Environment - Generally, the cultural environment determines the basic types of personalities that will be found in a society.
Isolation During Childhood
Feral Children are wild or untamed and the book discussed 3 different kids with different experiences. Anna was cut off from people early in life. It would be hard for her to come back from this experience as a child because of the lack of human interaction in her life. Isabelle was alone with her deaf mother, so they could only communicate through hand gestures. She couldn’t grow and develop like other human beings, but with help she finally achieved the same level of development as other children her age. Genie was isolated for so long that she almost lost what made her human. She had a disability with learning because she had a lack of human interaction.
The Social Self
John Locke - English philosopher from the 1600’s that suggested that each newly born human is a “tabula rasa”, which means clean slate. He believes that we are born without personalities and we can be molded into any type of character based off of our social experiences.
Charles Horton Cooley - He was one of the founders of the interactionist perspective in sociology. He is noted for developing the idea of the primary group and for his theory explaining how individuals get a sense of self
George Herbert Mead -. He believed that we see ourselves as we imagine others see us as we start to take on roles. We also internalize the expectations of the people closest to us and it could even change how we see ourselves.