Final answer:
Genetic determinism focuses on innate behaviors driven by genetics, while cultural determinism highlights the role of cultural influences in shaping behaviors, including learned adaptations. Modern approaches like evolutionary psychology and epigenetics suggest a complex interaction between genes and environment in influencing human behaviors.
Step-by-step explanation:
Genetic Determinism vs. Cultural Determinism
Genetic determinism is the hypothesis that biological factors are the main drivers of human behavior and personality traits, emphasizing innate behavior and fixed behavior patterns that are hardwired into one's genetic makeup. This perspective suggests that certain psychological phenomena like fear or movement and migration patterns are instinctual responses that have evolved over time to enhance survival and reproduction rates. On the other hand, cultural determinism posits that behavior is shaped largely by cultural influences, which include the beliefs, customs, art, traditions, and the social environment of a particular society that are transmitted through language and socialization. It implies that personality traits can vary across cultures, and behaviors can be learned and adapted according to environmental changes, not solely based on genetics.
Evolutionary psychology and sociobiology contribute to the debate on how much genes or culture determine behavior, with contemporary views recognizing a complex interaction between genetics and environment (epigenetics) in shaping behavior. Notably, behaviors that are ostensibly innate can still be influenced by environmental factors, as is evidenced by the study of epigenetics, which examines the changes of gene expression during a human lifetime that can lead to phenotypic variations due to environmental influences and mutations.