The hypotheses put forward in the Nurture Assumption inspired much needed research regarding the influence of parenting and peers, but were overstated

Abstract

The provocative hypotheses put forth in Harris (1998) spawned a great deal of criticism within the field of child development but far less in the field of behavior genetics, which generally found her arguments quite persuasive. I considered whether 21st century behavioral genetic literature and understandings continued to support her hypotheses, and generally concluded that they did not, at least in regards to child and adolescent psychopathology. Early interpretations of behavioral genetic findings were more limited in scope than they realized at the time, applied only to WEIRD populations, and may have overlooked key etiologic information contained in the mean. What’s more, even when restricting to standard behavioral genetic designs and interpretations in WEIRD data, there is good evidence that parenting behaviors do “causally” shape adolescent mental health outcomes to some degree, and relatively little evidence that peers socialize adolescents via non-shared environmental pathways. Put another way, although group socialization theory remains interesting and worthy of additional study, other key elements of Harris (1998) may have been overstated or have not stood the test of time.