Page "Nature versus nurture" Paragraph 5

To disentangle the effects of genes and environment, behavioral geneticists perform adoption and twin studies.

These seek to decompose the variance in a population into genetic and environmental components.

This move from individuals to populations makes a critical difference in the way we think about nature and nurture.

This difference is perhaps highlighted in the quote attributed to psychologist Donald Hebb who is said to have once answered a journalist's question of " which, nature or nurture, contributes more to personality?

" by asking in response, " Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?

" For a particular rectangle, its area is indeed the product of its length and width.

Moving to a population, however, this analogy masks the fact that there are many individuals, and that it is meaningful to talk about their differences.