John Locke's View On Nature Vs Nurture

Personality can be accurately described by the American Psychology Association (APA) as “[the]individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving” (“Personality”, n.d.). A person’s personality is also the most complicated thing about them; it is a combination of all the qualities that could possibly describe a person. Therefore, one is bound to wonder what determines an individual 's personality, which brings us to the age-old argument of nature versus nurture. Philosopher John Locke introduces us to “blank slate theory” by expanding on an earlier theory introduced in the fourth century by Aristotle (Glass, n.d.). This is the most radical theory on the nurture side of the debate. Those who believe solely in nurture, empiricists, believe that, beyond basic instincts, a person’s personality is made up of his or her experiences. Research in the field of child development supports Locke’s theory by proving that experiences are a central part of brain development. When a child is born, he or she is completely untouched, or a blank slate; therefore, the only thing that has an effect on any given person’s personality is life experiences. A common example of this is when a child says please and thank you; this is a learned behavior from

Now, however, I would argue that an individual 's personality actually comes from a mixture of nature and nurture. Just like height, a child’s personality has ranges that are determined by genetics; before birth, doctors can predict the height range that a normal child will fall into based on its parents’ heights. In the same way, each personality trait a person possesses has ranges and there are different things that external forces (parents, for example) can do to manipulate where their child will fall within those given