Nature Vs. Nurture In The Devil In The White City

John Locke, English philosopher and physician, believed that all things that humans do are shaped solely from nurture. His idea was that people were born blank, like a blackboard, and who they became was a result of their collective experiences. When exploring various topics of humanity, brain activity, and the concept free will, we can observe acts of nature and of nurture. As shown in Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, Shankar Vedantam’s The Hidden Brain, and “Free Will” by Matt Ridley, people are malleable. In life, humans behave like their peers, but have a few natural genetic tendencies. When it comes to personality traits, genetics play an even smaller role as your personality is shaped by your thoughts of ideas. The controversial

In The Devil in the White City, serial killer H.H. Holmes, also identified as Mudgett, experiences a strict childhood with many extensive repercussions: “Mudgett’s parents were devout Methodists whose response to even routine misbehavior relied heavily on the rod and prayer, followed by banishment to the attic and a day with neither speech nor food” (Larson 40). Holmes lived a troubled childhood which introduced him to the ideas of both justice and punishment. As he kills, he does so in a tortuous manner: one that makes you feel like he is punishing the victim for a wrongdoing, similar to the response of his parents. In The Hidden Brain, the author states the idea that all behaviors, especially those of human interaction, are all learned through observation: “The vast majority of rules of human interaction are not written down or even articulated. There is no rule book that tells you when it is appropriate to knock on someone’s door and suggest a drink” (Vedantam 50). These silent rules are not put in your genes, they are taught by example. In our everyday lives, your parents insist you be polite and whether or not you listen, you realize politeness is the most socially acceptable course of action; therefore, you are polite. This can also be reflected as a move toward assimilation, but simply put as peer pressure. Behavior is not the only part of our lives affected by