Those who support the “nature” side of the conflict believe that our personalities and behaviour patterns are largely determined by biological factors. That our environment has little, if anything, to do with our abilities, characteristics and behaviour is central to this theory. Taken to an extreme, this theory states that our behaviour is predetermined to such a great degree that we are almost completely governed by our instincts (本能).

　　Proponents of the “nurture” theory, or, as they are often called, behaviourists, claim that our environment is more important than our biologically based instincts in determining how we will act. A behaviourist, B.F. Skinner, sees humans as beings whose behaviour is almost completely shaped by their surroundings. The behaviourists’ view of the human being is quite mechanistic. They state that, like machines, humans respond to environmental stimuli (刺激) as the basis of their behaviour.

　　Socially and politically, the consequences of these two theories are far-reaching. In the US, for example, blacks often score below whites on standardized intelligence tests. This leads some “nature” proponents to conclude that blacks are genetically lower in status than whites. Behaviourists, on the contrary, say that the differences in scores are due to the fact that blacks are often robbed of many of the educational and other environmental advantages that whites enjoy, and that, as a result, they do not develop the same responses that whites do.

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