Editing Nature versus nurture (section)

==== Purist behaviorism ====
[[John B. Watson]] in the 1920s and 1930s established the school of ''purist [[behaviorism]]'' that would become dominant over the following decades. Watson is often said to have been convinced of the complete dominance of cultural influence over anything that heredity might contribute. This is based on the following quote which is frequently repeated without context, as the last sentence is frequently omitted, leading to confusion about Watson's position:<ref>[[John B. Watson|Watson, John B.]] 1930. ''Behaviorism''. p. 82.</ref>{{blockquote|Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.}}During the 1940s to 1960s, [[Ashley Montagu]] was a notable proponent of this purist form of behaviorism which allowed no contribution from heredity whatsoever:<ref>[[Ashley Montagu|Montagu, Ashley]]. 1968. ''Man and Aggression'', cited by [[Steven Pinker|Pinker, Steven]]. 2002. ''[[The Blank Slate|The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature]]''. New York: [[Penguin Books|Penguin]]. {{ISBN|1501264338}}. p. 24.</ref> {{blockquote|Man is man because he has no instincts, because everything he is and has become he has learned, acquired, from his culture ... with the exception of the instinctoid reactions in infants to sudden withdrawals of support and to sudden loud noises, the human being is entirely instinctless. }}In 1951, Calvin Hall suggested that the dichotomy opposing nature to nurture is ultimately fruitless.<ref>Hall, Calvin S. 1951. "The Genetics of Behavior." Pp. 304–29 in ''Handbook of Experimental Psychology'', edited by S. S. Stevens. New York: [[John Wiley and Sons]].</ref>

In ''[[African Genesis]]'' (1961) and ''[[The Territorial Imperative]]'' (1966), [[Robert Ardrey]] argues for innate attributes of human nature, especially concerning [[territoriality]]. [[Desmond Morris]] in ''[[The Naked Ape]]''  (1967) expresses similar views. Organised opposition to Montagu's kind of purist "blank-slatism" began to pick up in the 1970s, notably led by [[E. O. Wilson]] (''[[On Human Nature]]'', 1979).

The tool of [[twin study|twin studies]] was developed as a research design intended to exclude all confounders based on [[behavioural genetics|inherited behavioral traits]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Rende|first1=R. D.|last2=Plomin|first2=R.|last3=Vandenberg|first3=S. G.|date=March 1990|title=Who discovered the twin method?|journal=Behavior Genetics|volume=20|issue=2|pages=277–285|doi=10.1007/BF01067795|issn=0001-8244|pmid=2191648|s2cid=22666939}}</ref> Such studies are designed to decompose the variability of a given trait in a given population into a genetic and an environmental component. Twin studies established that there was, in many cases, a significant heritable component. These results did not, in any way, point to overwhelming contribution of heritable factors, with [[heritability]] typically ranging around 40% to 50%, so that the controversy may not be cast in terms of ''purist behaviorism'' vs. ''purist [[Psychological nativism|nativism]]''. Rather, it was ''purist behaviorism'' that was gradually replaced by the now-predominant view that both kinds of factors usually contribute to a given trait, anecdotally phrased by [[Donald O. Hebb|Donald Hebb]] as an answer to the question "which, nature or nurture, contributes more to personality?" by asking in response, "Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?"<ref>Meaney M. 2004. "The nature of nurture: maternal effects and chromatin remodelling." In ''Essays in Social Neuroscience'', edited by J. T. Cacioppo and G. G. Berntson. [[MIT Press]]. {{ISBN|0-262-03323-2}}.</ref>

In a comparable avenue of research, anthropologist [[Donald Brown (anthropologist)|Donald Brown]] in the 1980s surveyed hundreds of anthropological studies from around the world and collected a set of [[cultural universals]]. He identified approximately 150 such features, coming to the conclusion there is indeed a "universal human nature", and that these features point to what that universal human nature is.<ref>Pinker (2002), pp. 435–439.</ref>