ABSTRACT
If we could ask one of the alumni of our developmental sciences courses to identify a topic that he or she still remembers long after his or her graduation, most likely the topic of the intellectual confrontation between nature and nurture would be recalled. Indeed, this is one of the most fascinating issues in our field, and the battle for supremacy of genes (G) vs. the environment (E) has been long and hard fought. Unfortunately, researchers on either side of the issue have been guided by the assumption that genetic influences on individual characteristics can be isolated from environmental influences and vice versa. This assumption has justified a preoccupation with partitioning of variance into tidy packages labeled as either “genetic” or “environmental” influences. Partisans on either side of the nature/ nurture debate often point to these summary statistics as evidence that their preferred “cause” is the primary influence on a given behavior. Hopefully, this will no longer be the view among social scientists once they read this work by David Reiss (this volume). Reiss’s recognition of the complex ways in which genetic and environmental influences play out over time should help to end the polarized rhetoric about the rival influence of nature versus nurture and finally move the field forward.
