Is human nature innate or shaped by our environment? The influence of nurture and nature, centered on the theories of sex and nature

In this blog post, we’ll look at the case of South Korean serial killer Yoo Young-cheol and the movie About Kevin to see how human behavior and intelligence are influenced by the environment.

 

We’ve all heard of the theory of sex and nature. It’s a very important issue in Eastern philosophy, and it’s one that’s discussed a lot. However, they both have one assumption in common: they emphasize that no matter what your nature is, it can change as you grow up, so you should be careful about your behavior and try to think the right thoughts. But are our personal traits really determined at birth, or are they more of an acquired taste? In this article, I’ll use two examples to illustrate this point.
In 2004, South Korea made waves when the Yoo Young-cheol serial murder case became publicized. He was diagnosed as a “psychopath,” a mental illness classified as antisocial personality disorder. The case sparked a surge of interest in psychopathy in Korean society, and the so-called psychopathy test has become commonplace, as well as interest in sociopaths, who are in the same category as psychopaths. It is often assumed that psychopaths are completely unaware of morals and ethics, while sociopaths are aware of them but feel no guilt in violating them. However, psychopathy and sociopathy are not official terms used in psychoanalysis and psychology and are still in the research phase. Officially, both cases are called Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD). Many believe that they must have exhibited ‘strange’ behavior from an early age and that these tendencies are innate.
About Kevin is a 2011 thriller movie based on the book of the same name. The movie centers around Kevin and his mother, Eva, and is quite disturbing. Kevin and his mother are at odds throughout the movie, and while Kevin plays the part of being normal to everyone else, he is very abnormal to his mother. As a child, Kevin is suspected of having autism because he doesn’t even respond to his mother’s calls, and later repeats the word “no” when asked to call her “mom,” and as he grows up, he acts as if his ultimate goal is to torment her. After killing his brother’s hamster and blinding his brother’s eyes with dish soap as if it were a mistake, Kevin shows no signs of guilt, and eventually, just before he turns 16, he goes to prison after shooting his father and brother with a bow and killing students at the same school who had never suspected him of anything or had no connection to him.
On the cover of the Korean translation of the book, sociopath is the word that defines Kevin. Was Kevin destined to become a criminal after all? Is ‘About Kevin’ just a story of an unhappy mother who gave birth to a son who turned out to be a sociopath? To answer this question, we need to observe his mother, Eva. If we observe her behavior, we can see that she was not an ordinary mother. When Kevin is a newborn, she carries him instead of holding him, calls him “hey” instead of his name, and stands next to the construction site to drown out his cries. Crucially, she also says things to him that she shouldn’t: ‘If I didn’t have you, I could be traveling and living a happy life.’ In other words, Kevin is not a weird kid who grew up alone.
There’s a lot of research on the influence of nurture and nature, but the most studied area is educational psychology, which is all about intelligence. Intelligence seems to be virtually fixed. Some people are geniuses from the time they’re young enough to be on TV, most people are average, and some people just don’t understand things as well as others. And as we grow up, this doesn’t seem to change much. This is because children who are good at school usually continue to be good at school, and it is rare for a child who is not very good at school to suddenly become good at school.
Intelligence is often measured by IQ tests. According to Richard Nisbet’s book Intelligence, IQ tests were originally designed to predict academic achievement, but they became a test of intelligence because the results of IQ assessments were similar to those of tests that assessed intelligence. Therefore, researchers have studied the effect of environment (upbringing) on intelligence by testing children for IQ in their early childhood and then testing them again years later. Surprisingly, the results of the study showed that IQ is not more influenced by genetics than by environment, but it’s not less influenced either – it’s about a 50/50 ratio. The environmental factors that affect IQ are the amount of money you can afford to invest in education, the amount of attention you pay to your child’s education, and the school you go to. Smaller class sizes are associated with better learning, and better teachers are associated with higher IQs.
Kevin was influenced by his mother, and IQ can change as you grow up. Since these two traits, which we thought were innate, ended up being influenced by the environment, we might conclude that people are influenced by their environment (nurture). However, antisocial personality disorder and intelligence are not the only traits in humans, and more research is needed to understand how other traits are influenced by the environment. But given that we are exposed to our environment from birth, and that no one but us can know the full story of a person’s life, it’s quite possible that we’ll never know who the true winner of this tug-of-war between nurture and nature is. But whatever the outcome, in the end, the study of nature and nurture is worthwhile because it can help us learn more about human beings, and it can give us practical suggestions on how to raise them.