Determining the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ can be difficult without nurture
to construct our morals. Basic morals can be gleaned from certain stories or
experiences which grant us our cognitive psychology, humanism and behaviourism.
Without nurture our nature reveals our primitive, savage personalities that are
currently defined as ‘bad’ in today’s society. With people such as Sigmund Freud
and Abraham Maslow to explain how nurture is needed in order to survive in a
modern world, with such theories that go as far as claiming that everyone is born
‘bad’ and requires nurture in order to determine the ‘goodness’ of an individual.
Without our cognitive psychology, humanism and behaviourism, our ‘goodness’
cannot be determined.
Instinctive mental composition such as schemas, perception and reminiscence are
perpetually modified by one’s environment and assist in determining the individual’s
moral codex, which divides nature from nurture. The branch of psychology that
primarily concentrates on the way people interpret incoming information is commonly
known as cognitive psychology and is responsible for the process of the knowledge
that we receive, transferring it into a reception where this information regulates our
actions, behaviour and responses. A simple way of putting it is that cognitive
psychology is the configuration of what occurs within our minds and connects the
stimulus and the response together. Just think of nature and nurture as the human
body, nature is the empty shell made up of bones, skin and muscle, it’s useless
without everything, isn’t it? It needs the nervous system, organs and body systems to
put everything into effect and make it operate properly. Nature is the basis of our
behaviour often called our ‘instincts’ and can’t function in today’s society without
nurture to guide and shape that unacceptable etiquette into something that would in
present times be identified as ‘good’ just as the body wouldn’t function without those
three essential segments. We see how important our cognitive psychology is in ‘Lord
of the Flies’ where once the environment was changed, so was the mentality of the
group. Although it undertook a slow process, the vast majority of the group reverted
to that simplistic primitive mental composition where their perceptions, reminiscence
and schemas were altered by the environment they were contained within.
Humanism is a psychological perspective that reinforces the importance of the whole
person. Abraham Maslow accentuated fundamental physical needs that according to
him enforce five essential necessities; Self-actualization, esteem, love/belonging,
safety and physiological. Although the vast majority of characters within ‘LOTF’
experienced a loss in self-actualization, the remainder of those who could keep in
touch with their moralistic conscience were able to keep their grip on reality and not
conform to barbaric behaviours. It is stated that society is the primary influence on an
individual’s s...
