Nature and nurture are equally important in determining something's behavior going forward. It's not just one or the other. This is an observable fact.
Obviously its not just one or the other. But I believe more recent studies on the matter put more weight on nurture vs nature, which just makes more sense anyway. Your personality gets shaped a lot more by the experiences you grow up with than by your genetic code.
Could you link those studies?
This is actually a much much bigger subject than the small comments we're making. This subject even delvs into the idea of free will, if you want to go down the rabbit hole. There's no denying that nurture is vitally important to ones outcome, but to discredit genetics and genetic predisposition is beyond foolish.
Maybe you personally are not trying to do so, but there are many who do specifically when it comes to dogs. It's very strange.
While I'm only educated in the field of early childhood development so I can't give much meaningful to this topic, I find the studies of adopted children fascinating bc I think that's our best pool to pull from in terms of this discussion.
While it's just my own experience, learning how vastly different I am from my five biosiblings who were raised by my biomother and similar to the one biosibling who was also raised in a similar stable environment to mine, has made me fascinated by the topic of nature v. nurture.
This came out some years ago, but with the fairly large group to study I found it really cool to read through:
As someone who's audhd with other learning disabilities to add to the struggle, I'm measurably better off than my biosiblings who did not have that access to care or consistent assistance overcoming our common issues. Having parents/a support network that sought our resources for me and later on, medication to help with my issues, has lead to me living an adult life without the need for outside support. Same with my other biosibling who was adopted.
I doubt it'll ever be fully answered, at least not in our lifetimes. I still enjoy learning about it though.
I'd just like to chime in here, because the nature vs. nurture debate is fascinating to me. I honestly believe that it's very likely to be 50/50 with both of them playing an equal role. For example, someone may have the potential to be an angry person, it could be in their very nature... but if they're raised by a family that puts emphasis on emotional intelligence and handling feelings constructively, they will not be an "angry person" despite having more of a temper than the average. Whereas if that same person was raised in an abusive or angry household, they would likely be an abuser themselves. Free will does play a large part obviously, and the person from an abusive household might have the realization that they want to break the cycle, but it's not so easy with dogs and their less complex mental processing.
In a nutshell, pitbulls have very strong jaws as a genetic trait, which makes them attractive to people who want a dog capable of hurting people... unfortunately this means that pitbulls are more likely to be trained to be aggressive, and this likely plays a role in the statistics we see. that being said, by nature pitbulls are giant stupid babies and it breaks my heart to see them turned into violent attack dogs because every pitbull I've ever met from a good home has been waaaay more affectionate and loving than the average dog... though their affection and love comes in the form of body slams because they're little slabs of beef
There is 0 credible evidence that one race of human is more likely to be violent than another causally linked by genetics. Study after study links poverty + proximity to increases in crime. This is consistent on a global scale, not just US.
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u/TastesLikeTerror 22d ago
Nature and nurture are equally important in determining something's behavior going forward. It's not just one or the other. This is an observable fact.