Discussion

Abstract

There seemed to be two major themes in the preceding papers. The first was the old chestnut “nature versus nurture.” We heard a great deal about the relative roles of constitution (genetic inheritance and prenatal and perinatal influences) and life experience in the actual development of a phenotype from the genotypic blueprint. Dr. Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s paper covered this issue and talked about how ethological studies in animals can sometimes dissect out the necessary or critical contributions of one or another. His written manuscript also discussed very interestingly how cross-cultural studies can attempt to do the same thing.