“Parenting is the number one influence on a child’s success or failure in life.”

Nurture… like a boss.

Caitlyn FarnumSasha Dierdorff

The Nurture Theory

The influences and experiences we have growing up impact who we are more than the genes we

are born with.

Tabula Rasa

“The mind begins as a blank slate” –John Locke

• Everything we are and all of our knowledge is determined by the experiences we have.

The Orphan Albert

“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...regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and

race of his ancestors.”-John Watson

• American psychologist John Watson demonstrated that phobias are acquired through our experiences, not genetics.

• We can learn things our parents have never done.

B.F Skinner and the dancing pigeons

Harvard psychologist, B.F. Skinner developed an experiment on pigeons…He successfully taught pigeons to dance, do figure eights and to play tennis.

Feral Children

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PyUfG9u-P4

• About 100 known in the world• Raised by animals• Not raised by humans, don’t act human

Think of a baby…

• Attachments are formed in response to the love and attention one receives.– Oxana: love and attention from dogs= attachment

to dogs• Language is learned as an imitation of the

speech of others. -Oxana: dogs barked or howled, she learned to mimic them

Why nurture?

• The link between a gene and a behavior is not the same as cause and effect.

• While a gene may increase the likelihood of someone behaving in a particular way, it does not make people do things….

• We still get to choose who we'll be when we grow up.

• http://psychology.about.com/od/nindex/g/nature-nurture.htm

• McLeod, S. A. (2007). Nature Nurture in Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html

• http://genealogy.about.com/cs/geneticgenealogy/a/nature_nurture.htm

• Video-“Feral Child- Oxana Malaya raised by dogs” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PyUfG9u-P4