Effects of Heredity

 Some of the scholars who supported heredity theory are Galton, Karl Pearson, Mc Doughall while the champions of the environment have been G.B Watson and other behaviorist authors. Gallon in his pioneer work on hereditary genius has sought to show that the probability of the occurrence of greatly gifted children is vastly higher when the fathers have superior intelligence. Karl Pearson had also concluded that the influence of the environment is far less than that of heredity in determination of importance of human differences. According to him it was possible to measure the relative efficiency of the two.

He had given evidence to show that for people of the same race within a given community hereditary is more than seven times more important than environment. Like Pearson many other researchers have shown that the groups within the higher social or intellectual rating have produced more persons of genius or distinction. For instance royal families produce in proportion more geniuses than others.

The sociologists have been making controlled experiments to solve the nature- nurture problem and to ascertain the influence of environment over heredity or viceversa.They have held one of the factors as constant and the other varied on the principle that the differences so revealed can be attributed solely to the variant factor. Twins have been put under different environments and the differences in their behavior have been attributed to environment. Conversely children of different heredities have been placed together under the same environment and the differences in their behavior have been attributed to their hereditary differences.