Arv eller miljö

Förutsättningarna styr

I människans värld anser många att det är fult och fel att tala om arvets betydelse för människors olika förutsättningar. Forskningen är entydig. Det enkla svaret är att våra ärvda  förutsättningar styr i mycket stor utsträckning. Det genetiska arvet, var vi växer upp och tillgång till kapital avgör i stor utsträckning hur livet utvecklas. Att det genetiska arvet har stor betydelse vet vi. Varför tror du att vi avlat djur så som vi gjort om det skulle vara annorlunda? Det vi också vet är att länder där man försöker utjämna olikheter, som i de nordiska länderna, finns en chans för starkt motiverade och hårt arbetande personer att gå från en socialt svag miljö till ett starkt socialt sammanhang. Det är en av anledningarna till att våra samhällen fortsätter att vara framgångsrika jämfört med många andra länder som har betydligt fler invånare men har kulturer som är mycket stelare. 

Nedan BBC reportage om hur vår identitet utvecklas är intressant. Självklart påverkas vi mycket av var vi växer upp och i vilken socioekonomisk miljö vi växer upp. Att över 50% av vilka vi blir är genetiskt betingat är inte särskilt förvånande.

"Would you be a different person if you had grown up somewhere else? A growing body of research is helping to answer this age-old nature verses nurture question and what it means for your identity."

"Having grown up in Sweden, albeit with an Indian mother, it wasn't something I had thought about before – vegetarianism was rare at the time, especially in Europe, and Swedish kids were accustomed to seeing cows as a source of food. My cousin, on the other hand, was a passionate animal lover with a habit of rescuing creatures she perceived to be in danger. She didn't eat meat. My visits to India were full of such moments, which made me realise just how much culture shapes the way we think, feel and behave. If I had grown up in India, would I have had a different set of morals? A different sense of humour? Different dreams, hobbies and aspirations? Would I still have been me?"

"In one sense, every human being's DNA is unique and its fundamental structure (in big-picture terms) does not change depending on where we go. But DNA alone does not make us who we are, says Ziada Ayorech, a psychiatric geneticist at the University of Oslo in Norway. Born in Uganda, Ayorech moved to Canada when she was three, spent most of her life in the UK, and then moved to Norway a couple of years ago. "When I think about all the places I've lived and all the ways they have influenced my perspective, I intuitively imagine there's no way that that couldn't have made a difference," says Ayorech."

"In one large 2015 analysis of nearly 50 years of studies about 17,000 different traits in 14 million twins all over the world – exploring education and political beliefs to psychiatric conditions – scientists concluded that genetics accounts for, on average, just 50% of differences."

"The environment shapes some traits more than others, of course. Research shows that IQ is on average over 50% heritable, with the caveat that genetics plays a larger role later in life than it does in childhood. While personality traits are roughly 40% heritable and therefore more influenced by the environment."

"A 2022 study comparing personality trait tests across 22 countries found that people living in a cluster of countries with cultures that place strong emphasis on self-discipline – such as Albania, India, Germany, France, Hong Kong and China – scored higher on measures of dutifulness and organisation. Countries with more egalitarian, flexible, and individualistic cultures – such as Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Philippines – demonstrated higher levels of agreeableness and openness to experience instead. Researchers have also recently identified that Western cultures are more likely to be monumentalist, viewing the self as a stable and unchanging thing, like a monument, says Vignoles. Flexible cultures, common in East Asian countries, on the other hand, view the self as more malleable."

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260206-is-our-identity-affected-by-where-we-live