We often hear about nature vs nurture, but did you know that science can pinpoint specific personality traits that can be traced to the environment we grew up in? How much of our adult personality has its roots in not who we were born, but where?
We often think about qualities like patience or risk-taking as a function of our nature: something innate about us that we're pre-disposed to before we're even born. But the work of Dr Dorsa Amir, an anthropologically-minded psychologist at UC Berkeley in the US, is suggesting something very different: that lots of the behaviours we think about as the essence of "us" are not down to who we are, but where we are.
Dorsa's research explores the impact of culture on the developing mind, and how children develop and behave across diverse societies. She's investigated these dynamics in both industrialised societies (like India, Argentina and the US) and forager societies, like the Shuar people in Amazonian Ecuador. She's joining us in The Garden to help us work out: how would we be different, if we'd grown up somewhere different?
Read this talk's transcript50 minutes
30 minute talk
20 minute Member Q&A
Dorsa is an anthropologically-minded psychologist, whose research explores the impact of culture on the developing mind. She's currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, in the US.
How does where you grow up impact who you become?
How does where you grow up impact who you become?
How does where you grow up impact who you become?
We often hear about nature vs nurture, but did you know that science can pinpoint specific personality traits that can be traced to the environment we grew up in? How much of our adult personality has its roots in not who we were born, but where?
Romeo and Juliet are often held up as the romantic ideal, willing to risk it all for their one great love. But if Shakespeare really agreed that this is what true love looks like, why are so many of his favourite couples distinctly... middle-aged?
The law has to decide at what age someone should be held accountable for their actions. What does neuroscience tell us about when that should be?