Nature Or Nurture? The Long-Running Debate May Finally Be Settled

It's an age-old debate: do our genes make us who we are, or is it the environment in which we were raised? There's long been agreement that both "nature" and "nurture" play some role in determining many aspects of our physical and mental selves, from our height and weight to our intelligence and disposition. But as to which plays the bigger role in shaping us, scientists have never seemed to agree. That debate may now be over, thanks to a sweeping analysis of studies conducted around the world for more than five decades. The analysis -- involving more than 14.5 million twin pairs from 39 countries -- indicates that nature and nurture are virtually tied. Across all of our traits, in other words, genes and environment exert equal influence. "I’d say this settles the debate," Prof. Danielle Posthuma, a statistical geneticist at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and one of the researchers, told The Huffington Post in an email. Study design. For the analysis, Posthuma and her colleagues surveyed 2,748 twin studies published between 1958 and 2012, looking at more than 17,000 traits. The studies compared variation in identical twins, who share all of their genes, to differences between fraternal twins, who share half. The research investigated both physical traits (like weight, height, and metabolism) and psychological traits (such as temperament/personality, intelligence, and the likelihood of suffering from anxiety or depression). The researchers found that across all...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news