Adoption Studies

Question 1

What are adoption studies used for?

Answer 1

Another method used to establish whether a behaviour is due to nature or nurture (biology or environment). Adoption studies compare concordance rates between adopted children and their biological relatives, and between adopted children and their adoptive relatives. These studies are often longitudinal, over a long period of time to study the children.

Question 2

Describe adopted children and their characteristics (biological or environmental cause).

Answer 2

They share no genes with their adoptive parents, but share the same environment. If their are similar to their adoptive parents in characteristics, it is assumed to have an environmental cause.
Adopted children share their 50% of genes with each parent, but don’t share the same environment. If they are similar to their biological parents, it is assumed to have biological cause.

Question 3

What are strengths of adoption studies?

Answer 3

• Adoption studies can help to establish whether a behaviour is due to nature or nurture. This can be useful for finding genetic components to behaviours such as mental health disorders, as early diagnoses and early interventions can be put into place.
• They are more useful than twin studies as the impact of nature and nurture can easily be isolated (as the adopted children share genes with one set of relatives and environment with another set of relatives, with no cross over).

Question 4

What are the weaknesses of adoption studies?

Answer 4

• It is impossible to truly isolate nature and nurture. It is rare for children to be adopted immediately after birth, therefore they will have spent some time with their biological parents (shared environment).
• Gathering information about people’s traits and biological families can be sensitive, particularly for adopted children to find out they share personality traits with their biological parents.