Behavior geneticists seek to understand behavior as the result of genes and show that people are born with tendencies to feel and act in certain ways
Nature is the physical world around us, including its laws and processes. It includes the entire world that would be there even if no human beings existed. Nature includes trees and grass, bugs and elephants, gravity, the weather, hunger and thirst, birth and death, atoms and molecules, and all the laws of physics and chemistry. Nature made people too. (People who believe that the original humans were created by a divine power still recognize that the natural processes of reproduction and childbirth create today’s people.)
Those who use nature to explain human behavior invoke the sorts of processes that natural sciences have shown. For example, neuroscientists look for explanations in terms of what happens inside the brain (chemical reactions, electrical activity). Behavior geneticists seek to understand behavior as the result of genes and show that people are born with tendencies to feel and act in certain ways. Above all,however, the advocates of nature in psychology turn to evolutionary theory to understand behavior patterns. Th e next section provides an introduction to this style of thinking.
