What the exam asks
- Concept application (MCQ & EBQ): Explain how a specific behavior or mental process is shaped by both heredity (nature) and environment (nurture), or explain how a behavior might have been favored by natural selection.
- Research methods and data interpretation (MCQ & AAQ): Compare correlations or concordance rates across identical twins, fraternal twins, biological relatives, and adoptive relatives to determine the relative influence of genetics versus environment.
- Historical and ethical evaluation (MCQ): Identify how evolutionary concepts were misapplied in the pseudoscientific movement of eugenics to justify discrimination.
Core ideas
Heredity, environment, and epigenetics
- Heredity (nature): The genetic transmission of physical and psychological characteristics from parents to offspring.
- Environment (nurture): Every non-genetic influence, from prenatal nutrition to family upbringing, culture, and stress.
- Interaction and epigenetics: Nature and nurture do not act in isolation; they interact. Epigenetics is the study of how environmental factors (such as diet, toxins, or trauma) can alter gene expression—turning specific genes “on” or “off” via chemical tags—without changing the underlying genetic code itself.
The evolutionary perspective and eugenics
- Evolutionary perspective: Explains behaviors and mental processes by examining how they may have helped our ancestors survive and reproduce.
- Natural selection: The evolutionary process by which heritable traits that enhance survival and reproductive success in a given environment become more common in a population over generations.
- Eugenics (misuse of evolutionary ideas): Historically, some scholars and policymakers distorted principles of natural selection into eugenics—a discriminatory, scientifically flawed movement that sought to “improve” the human population through selective breeding, forced sterilization, and immigration restrictions targeting marginalized groups and people with disabilities.