nurture debate; whether our personalities are a product of an environment or rather that we are simply characterized by what we inherit from our parents. Skinner believed all the knowledge we have has been acquired solely from our environment through operant conditioning, whereas another prominent psychologist, Sigmund Freud, held the contrasting view that human behavior is exclusively credited to our inborn oedipal drive, however this excessive debate about if nature or nurture is the sole cause of our actions is akin to asking someone if males or females are more important to the survival of any given species. Both questions do not take into account the interdependence of the two sides, with a lack of reproduction any species (that is not asexual or hermaphrodite) will go extinct; just like how the ability to learn from our environment is only possible because of our hereditary traits that make it even possible to survive. Nature vs. nurture is a crucial component for understanding development of a child’s moral sense. While parents can’t control our own genetics, current research suggests the imprint of our moral sense is substantially attributed to the conditions of our environment and parental guidance received in …show more content…
Research of U.S and Japanese cultures suggests that despite their differences in child raising and the values passed down do not impede a child’s ability to learn a sense of duty and self-control. Despite entirely different methods of child raising neither method has shown to be a factor in delinquency as both Japan and Israel have similar crime rates. It cannot be stressed enough that consistency is crucial for child rearing, even though japanese culture encourages ridicule and negative reinforcement as response to negative behavior, children are statistically just as likely to engage in delinquent behavior when compared to the markedly different Israeli culture and method of parenting. George De Vos argued that Japanese child rearing methods relying solely on negative reinforcement leads to dependence on maternal approval and bottled up emotions. Despite japanese culture plausibly increasing the rate of introversion and other traits that may be valued less in western culture, the values instilled in japanese culture are not pernicious to their society regardless of the downfalls these cultural values still teach the moral sense. Different techniques of taking care of infants varies across cultures but in study after study it has been