The Environment (Nurture) How much does it affect us?

Percentages of Influence  Genetic Influences constitute 40 to 50% of our individual variations in our personality traits.  Parental Influence and the community constitute whatever is leftover.  Siblings who grow up in a shared environment share typically 10% of personality traits, but they do share far more beliefs and values.

Prenatal Environment  “Nurture” begins in the womb.  Some identical twins share the same placenta, and thus share a more similar prenatal environment.  Twins who develop different placentas are exposed to different prenatal environments and are somewhat less similar in their psychological traits.

The Importance of the Prenatal Environment  Remember: It is all about the placenta (nutrition), blood flow, and avoiding toxins.  Researchers suggest that our prenatal environment is the most influential to our physical and psychological development.  “The influence upon our intelligence of events that happen in the womb is three times as great as anything our parents did to us after birth.” Genome by Matt Ridley

Experience and Brain Development  Experience helps our brain develop neural connections.  A stimulating and enriched environment usually leads to a heavier and thicker brain cortex ( Rosenzweig, Bennet, and Diamond).  Infants that are touched, massaged, hugged, etc. (“handled”) gain weight more rapidly and develop faster neurologically (Harlow).

Experience and Brain Development  During childhood the brain establishes and provides an abundance of neural connections.  Experience makes new neural connections and preserves already activated ones.  Unused connections degenerate.  By the time an animal reaches puberty there has been a massive loss of unemployed connections.  For the Mature Brain: Use it or lose it!

Experience and Brain Development Analogy  The neural connections in the brain are like pathways to through a forest. The less traveled paths gradually disappear, and popular paths are broadened and become easier to travel on.  The inspiration you should take from this analogy: You can pick your path and walk down it. No matter how hard it is the first time, every time after that will be easier.  Experience nurtures nature. (Long Term Potentiation)

Peer Influence  Experiences with peers powerfully socialize children and youth.  Part of the similarity to peers may result from a “selection effect.” Kids seek out peers with similar attitudes and interests.  In the long run we are destined to play with, work with, and mate with peers.  If your child is intertwined into a toxic environment, that climate- not just the child- needs reforming.

Parental Influence  Parental nurture is like nutrition.  It is not as important how the parent chooses to raise us, it is more important knowing that there is someone we belong to who cares about us.  Remember: Kids choose their friends, but parents choose the neighborhoods and schools that supply the peers. Parents are more likely to influence… Peers are more likely to influence…  Education  Discipline  Responsibility  Charitableness  Treatment of Authority Figures  Cooperation  Popularity  Social Interaction  Style

Culture  Culture is the behaviors, ideas, and attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.  The most amazing gift we have as humans, creatures of Earth, is our ability to learn and adapt.

Cultural Analogy  “Riding along with a unified culture is like riding a bike with the wind. As it carries us along, we hardly notice it is there. When we try riding against the wind we feel its force.  Face to face with another culture, we become aware of the strength of cultural winds. What are some norms and memes for the world? US? Georgia? Atlanta? Alpharetta? AHS?

Norms  Norms are the rules for accepted and expected behavior.  These norms can feel stifling and confining, but at the same time can free us from self- preoccupation.  Norms preclude awkward situations by letting one know exactly what to do in a given situation.

Personal Space and Memes  Personal Space is the portable buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies.  Memes are self-replicating ideas, fashions, and innovations passed from person to person.  The term meme, coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins, refers to a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another. Dawkins said, Examples of memes are tunes, catch- phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.Richard Dawkinsinformation  Proponents of memes suggest that memes evolve via natural selection. For example, while one idea may become extinct, other ideas will survive, spread and mutate — for better or for worse — through modification.evolvenatural selectionextinctmutate

Environmental Influence  Experience affects brain development ( Rosenzweig, Bennet, and Diamond ) Impoverished environment Rat brain cell Rat brain cell Enriched environment

Environmental Influence  A trained brain (long term potentiation)