Home > Encyclopedia of Psychology > Nature-Nurture Controversy

Colloquial term for the two views of human development, one emphasizing heredity and the other environment.

The nature-nurture controversy is an age-old dispute among behavioral psychologists, philosophers, theologians, and theorists of consciousness as to the source of the creation ofhuman personality: Does it develop primarily from biology (nature), or from the environments in which we are raised (nurture)? People have been pondering the role of nature and environmentsince the time of Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.). He, for instance, linked human behavior tofour bodily fluids, or humors: yellow bile, blood, black bile, and phlegm. Hippocrates classifiedpersonalities into four types related to these four humors: choleric (yellow bile), or hot-tempered; sanguine (blood), or confident; melancholic (black bile), or moody; and...