What makes us humans? It is well established that our physical traits like height, eye colour and complexion are determined by our genes, but what about our cognitive abilities? Our behaviour?

Scientists have raked their brains over this poser since time immemorial and the age-old nature vs nurture debate rages on. Those for nurture believe the environment plays the major role in determining behaviour while those for nature root for the bigger role of genes.

American psychologist John Watson famously said: “Give me a dozen healthy infants… and I’ll take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist...regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race.” Another nurturist, B F Skinner, taught birds to dance and play sports.

But the nurturists have come under heavy fire of late. MIT psychologist Steven Pinker, in his seminal work The Blank Slate slams the nurturists, arguing that cognitive abilities are largely shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations over generations. Ethologist Richard Dawkins postulates that it is the interaction between the “selfish genes” that determine behavioural adaptations.

While little doubt remains about environmental influence during formative years in shaping our psychological make up, the influence of genes cannot be undermined. Congenital twins, even when they are raised in different environment,

exhibit similar traits. The offspring of depressed parents tend to be depressed themselves.

My experiences prompt me to side with the nurturists. I get many personality traits from my ancestors, but who I am today is largely the result of my upbringing. This traumatic episode, that fateful day; the influence of kith and kin, teachers, heroes — all so fateful!

I believe we inherit the penchant for all emotions: joy, sorrow, anxiety, pity, euphoria, doom, among umpteen others. But the degree to which each is manifest is, by and large, determined by how we are trained to react to a particular stimulus. Genes do not determine who we are, but only aid the expression of a particular trait. The biological factors are not be all and end all of human cognition. We shape our own destiny.

March on, mankind.