Dear Tipsters,
Jeffrey Nagelbush pointed out two interesting articles in Psychological
Bulletin, one of which is on the nature-nurture debate:
> The author, Mike Stoolmiller, argues that, for adoption studies, shared
> environmental effects are significantly underestimated while genetic and
> nonshared environmental effects are overestimated due to the severely
> restricted range of family environments typically found in these studies.
> If corrections are made, shared family environment is found to be an
> important factor influencing child development.
Jeffrey then reminds us of the debate about Judith Rich Harris' book "The
nurture assumption" and the connection to the findings above:
> She relies heavily on the fact that shared environment seem to
> matter little to support the need for an alternative explanation for
> environmental effects, namely peers.
I just wanted to add that Mrs. Harris would probably be very happy with
Stoolmiller's findings. She mentioned in a discussion at the Psychology Place
that she definitely believes that *extreme* environmental conditions like abuse
and violence *have* an influence on child development (which was a common
criticism against her book, mostly from persons who hadn't read it).
But apart from these extremes, she maintained that "normal" styles of parenting
are very similar to each other; in other words, in the majority of studies the
variance between different environments is very small, and cannot explain the
large variance on developmental outcomes.
So I would think she would be quite contented with the newer findings.
On a different point, I found the debate about her book almost frightening (for
a scientific discussion): many persons, including a well known developmental
psychologist (Jerome Kagan, if memory serves right), freely and destructively
criticised it in public admitting at the same time not having read it.
Teaching relevance: This could make an example of failure to use critical
thinking/principles of scientific debate, similar to the old Little-Albert
example (see: Samelson, F. (1980). J.B. Watson's little Albert, Cyril Burt's
twins, and the need for a critical science. _American Psychologist, 35(7)_,
619-625).
Please note: I do not want to imply that Jeffrey Nagelbush endorses any of these
views and criticisms against Judith Rich Harris' book; if this post could be
read that way, please attribute it to my being a non native speaker of English.
Rainer Scheuchenpflug
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Dr. Rainer Scheuchenpflug
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Office:
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Institut f. Psychologie Tel.:(+49) 941/ 943-3820
Universitaet Regensburg Fax: (+49) 941/ 943-1995
93040 Regensburg
Germany
