heretability of attitudes essays

heretability of attitudes essays The Heritability of Attitudes After researching and reading The Heritability of attitudes- a Study of Twins done by James Olsen, Philip Vernon, Julie Harris, and Kerry Lang, a study done to test how attitudes are obtained in our personalities, the results seem to prove a point thought of for many years: that genetics and the individuals environment are the causes for how they develop their attitudes on subjects. This goes to support the nature nurture discussion and proves that they both play a leading role in attitudinal development among children. To begin we see that, as stated previously s this study was done to test heritability and environmental effects of attitudes by testing 195 sets of monozygotic twins and 141 sets of same sex dizygotic twins. It was conducted to try and answer the question whether attitudes in individuals are inherited genetically, or are environmental effects the cause of peoples opinions and attitudes on various subjects and topics. Prior to the test the scientists hypothesis was that attitudes are learned and caused by the environment and that attitudes develop through experience and are therefore determined by environmental factors (life experiences) Some of the major major themes played in the study included the nature/nurture debate, does environment affect attitudes, socio-cultural influence on children, and how does socio-cultural context affect development and individual differences in development. This study is of interest to me because being a twin, I like to see how twins are used to confirm of disprove tests and studies. I was also interested in the study as finding the cause of attitudes and various behaviors was of interest to me. These issues in the study seem to be of importance to society as they uncover much needed information regarding how peoples attitudes are formed, and be learning how they are indeed formed, we can begin to take a look...