1. Unit 2: Nature v Nurture
3.1.16
Notebooks out please!

2. Entry Task: Free Write
What has been the one most important influence on your life?
USA Today study:
½ said nobody influenced them more than their parents
Most said parents influenced them most as a child, but peers did most as a teen

3. Part 5:
Parents & Peers

4. Parents and Peers
We have looked at how genes influence our developmental differences.
What about the environment?
How do our early experiences, our family, our community and our culture affects these differences?
We begin with the prenatal environment

5. Prenatal Environment
Embryos receive differing nutrition & varying levels of exposure to toxic agents
2/3 of identical twins share a placenta
Identical twins who share the same placenta (b) are more alike than those who do not (a)

6. Experience & Brain Development
Experience helps develop brain’s neural connections
1984 study showed that rats raised in enriched environments developed thicker cortexes than those in impoverished environments

7. Experience & Brain Development
Babies who are touched gain weight more rapidly & develop faster neurologically
If neural connections are not activated & preserved through stimulation, they die
Example: Genie (If not exposed to language by adolescence, they will never master language)

8. Experience and Faculties
Early experiences during development in humans shows remarkable improvements in music, languages, and the arts.
Courtesy of C. Brune

9. Brain Development & Adulthood
Brain development does not stop when we reach adulthood. Throughout our life, brain tissue continues to grow and change.
Both hotos courtesy of Avi Kani and Leslie
Ungerleider, National Institue of Mental Health
A well-learned finger-tapping task leads to
more motor cortical neurons (right) than baseline.

10. Parental Influence Parental influence is largely genetic.
Shared environments influences less than 10% of personality differences
Although raised in the same family, some children are greater risk takers.
Miquel L. Fairbanks

11. Peer Influence
Children, like adults, attempt to fit into a group by conforming (conformity behavior)
Significant influence on day-to-day behavior
Selection effect: seeking out those who have similar attitudes & interests
Preschoolers who disdain a certain food despite parents’ urgings often will eat the food if put at a table with a group of children who like it.
A child who hears English spoken with one accent at home and another in the neighborhood and at school will invariably adopt the accent of the peers, not the parents.
Ole Graf/ zefa/ Corbis

12. Peer Influence
Peers are influential in such areas as learning to cooperate with others, gaining popularity, & developing interactions
Parental influence also affects peer influence – parents choose what neighborhood to live in and school to go to

13. Cultural Influences Humans have the ability to evolve culture
Culture: behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values and traditions shared by a group
Kevin R. Morris/Corbis

14. Variation Across Culture
Cultures differ. Each culture develops norms: rules for accepted and expected behavior
Ex: Men holding hands in Saudi Arabia is the norm (closer personal space), but not in American culture.
OBJECTIVE 20| Describe some ways that culture differ.
Jason Reed/ Reuters/Corbis

15. Variation Over Time
Cultures change over time. The rate of this change may be extremely fast. In many Western countries, culture has rapidly changed over the past 40 years or so.
This change cannot be attributed to changes in the human gene pool because genes evolve very slowly.
Consider changes in our culture since 1960:
Middle-class people can now fly to places they could only once read about
has replaced snail-mail
Workplaces now have airconditioning
Online shopping has almost replaced in-store shopping
Families eat out twice as much
Marriages are more likely made from love than economic need
Doubled rate of divorce
Tripled rate of teen suicide
Quadrupled rate of juvenile violent crime
Quintupled prison population
More depression
Americans spend more hours at work, fewer hours sleeping, & less time with friends & family

16. Culture and the Self
If a culture nurtures an individual’s personal identity, it is said to be individualist, but if a group identity is favored then the culture is described as collectivist.
Individualism: giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals & defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.

17. Culture and the Self
Collectivism: giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly.
A collectivist support system can benefit groups who experience disasters such as the earthquake in Pakistan.
Individuals within a culture vary and cultures include varying subgroups.
But cross-cultural psychologists have discovered some variations across cultures, ranging from the individualism found in the US to the collectivism of rural Asia

18. Culture and the Self
Both Individualistic cultures and Collective cultures have benefits & costs

19. Unit 2: Nature v Nurture
3.2.16
Notebooks out please!

20. Entry Task
Handout 3-8
Write a number next to each statement to indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with each one.
1=strongly disagree
5=strongly agree

21. Scoring
Reverse the number you put next to #s 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, & 15
Add up all of the numbers
You should have a total score somewhere between 15 & 75
The higher the score, the greater your collectivist tendency.

22. Discovering Psychology
Episode 26: Cultural Psychology

23. Culture and Child-Rearing
Individualist cultures (western) raise their children as independent individuals whereas collectivist cultures (eastern) raise their children as interdependent.
Jose Luis Palaez, Inc./ Corbis

24. Culture and Child-Rearing
Westernized Cultures
Asian-African Cultures
Responsible for your self
Responsible to group
Follow your conscience
Priority to obedience
Discover your gifts
Be true to family-self
Be true to yourself
Be loyal to your group
Be independent
Be interdependent
Child-rearing practices reflect the values of the culture (individualist or collectivist)

25. Discussion Please read ‘Event 1’ Read ‘Event 2’ Read ‘Event 3’
Handout 3-7

26. Developmental Similarities Across Groups
Despite diverse cultural backgrounds, humans are more similar than different in many ways.
We share the same genetic profile, life cycle, capacity for language, & biological needs.
Copyright Steve Reehl