Are people a product of their enviroment?

Question

are people a product of their enviroment? such as who they live with, the media

Answer 1

Psychologists have spent many hours debating whether biology or environment (nature vs. nurture) determines the way someone is.  The conclusion finally was that both factors have an influence, though there is debate on which is more of a dominant factor.

Answer 2

Definately.  If you hang around crazy people you will become crazy.  If you hang out with crooks you will become a crook.  If you hang out with stupid people you will become stupid.

Answer 3

Indeed. Why else is the behavior and thinking for the worlds 1 billion Muslims so different from the worlds 1 billion Christians?

Answer 4

Yes i think they are... very interesting question. The environment does make the people, people are a product of what the environment makes..WOW!!! what an interesting observation Alan.

Answer 5

Well, one reasoned, balanced answer out of four is pretty good for social science. Humans are the product of of their nature via nurture.

Answer 6

Since one's environment forms their culture, yes we are products of our environment.

Answer 7

Human beings, along with other species, are influenced by both their environment and their genes; it's not an either/or thing, as both influence the other. It's a bit more complicated with people, as we have a cultural environment as well as a natural environment, and so cultural evolution as well as natural evolution drive changes in human behavior, and even biology.

The clearest example of the interdependence of environment and genetics is language. Basically, children are programmed to learn language. We're still learning the mechanisms of how they do it, but they learn language as naturally as learning how to walk. However, unlike learning to walk, they need input from the people around them talking (ie, their cultural environment). If they don't get this before a certain age, known as the critical period, they will never learn to speak properly. In sum, the potential for language is encoded somehow in our biological makeup (probably several genes), but the realization of that (what language, dialect, etc) depends on environment. There are several other cases of this which are less clear and obvious. For example, genes linked to a greater propensity for obesity (which have their very practical roots in surviving famine) only lead to obesity in an environment that favors it-- in other words, in the societies where food is plentiful and the culture leads to overconsumption of the wrong types of foods.

Answer 8

Most definitely. We all are.