Essay
UNIT 4 - D1
- Institution
- OCR
health and social care complete essay
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Sheona ThomasD1 – Analyse the significance of genetic influences as opposed to the social factors in
human development.
“The nature vs. nurture debate is the scientific, cultural, and philosophical debate
about whether human culture, behaviour, and personality are caused primarily by
nature or nurture.”1So therefore, a genetic factor is when an individual inherits
something from their parents which may be your genes, this would be known as
nature. Whereas, social factors would be when the individual is influenced by the
environment around them so they experience things, which is known as nurture. Our
life course will have a huge effect due to both nature and nurture.
Nature has a huge effect on our physical development, “each cell in the body
contains 23 pairs of chromosomes. One chromosome from each pair is inherited
from your mother and one is inherited from your father.”2 Therefore, we have an
appearance which is very similar to our parents or not so similar, but our features will
always be influenced by them.
Some research does say that the colour of our skin varies due to nature as our origin
had a huge impact, as well as the climate changing but it is scientifically proven that
it “is due primarily to the presence of a pigment called melanin, which is controlled
by at least 6 genes.”3 However, some people say that the reasoning of the skin colour
is due to adaptation which is nurture, as our bodies can only withstand certain
temperatures and weathers, in more tropical latitudes, it is more likely the skin will
become darker the melanin acts against the UV rays from the sun as a protector. So
therefore, the reason genetics changes are due to the environment on nature has to
rely on nurture as it is at its strongest. Nature also has a huge impact on the colour of
our eyes, our genes make our eye colour as we will have a dominant allele as well as
how much melanin is produced in the iris. Nature also has its impact on our weight
and height. Our weight does determine on the body being able to adjust metabolism,
this is obviously in the hands of nature as it is determined by our genetics. However,
1 http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/nature-versus-nurture
2 http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Genetics/Pages/Facts.aspx
3 http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_4.htm
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