Meaning of Environment:

Environment includes all the forces that act upon the individual from the outside.
The environmental influences begin even from the time of conception, in the
mother’s womb. During the pre-natal period, the nutrition received by the
embryo has influence upon its development. In the post-natal period, the
environment is of two types – physical and the social.

P. Gisburet: “Environment is anything immediately surrounding an object and

exerting a direct influence on it.”
Douglas and Holland: “The term environment is used to describe, in the aggregate
all the external forces, influences, and conditions, which affect the life, nature,
behaviour, and the growth, development and maturation of living organisms.”

Physical Environment:
Physical environment includes all the geographical features that have an effect on
the individual. Thus the physical environment includes the place of residence, the
temperature and climate of the place, food and other resources for comfortable
living, the natural relief features. Even in the pre-natal period the human embryo
is surrounded by the physical environment of the womb, where it gets food and
nourishment.

Social Environment:
This includes the social associations that the child has from the very beginning.
Under the social environment, we include the influence of home, neighbourhood,
school, and the social surroundings. It further includes the cultural atmosphere of
the society with its religion, folk-lore, literature, art, music, social conventions and
political organizations. Every individual inherits the cultural traits from the social
environment. The term ‘social heredity’ is thus significant, as it emphasizes the
act of transmission of social and cultural patterns to each new generation.
Education is also included in transmission of culture or of social heredity.
Heredity is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring, either through
asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms
acquire the genetic information of their parents. Through heredity, variations
between individuals can accumulate and cause species to evolve by natural
selection.

Mendelian inheritance (or Mendelian genetics or Mendelism) is a set of primary

tenets relating to the transmission of hereditary characteristics from parent
organisms to their children; it underlies much of genetics. The tenets were initially
derived from the work of Gregor Mendel published in 1865 and 1866

Mendel’s Law of Dominance

In a heterozygote, the allele which masks the other is referred to as dominant,

while the allele that is masked is referred to as recessive.it states that dominant
alleles are expressed exclusively in a heterozygote, while recessive traits are
expressed only if the organism is homozygous for the recessive allele.

Mendel’s Law of Segregation

Mendel’s Law of Segregation states that a diploid organism passes a randomly

selected allele for a trait to its offspring, such that the offspring receives one allele
from each parent. Each gamete acquires one of the two alleles as chromosomes
separate into different gametes during meiosis.

Mendel’s Law of Independent Assortment

Independent assortment allows the calculation of genotypic and phenotypic

ratios based on the probability of individual gene combinations. Mendel’s law of
independent assortment states that genes do not influence each other with
regard to the sorting of alleles into gametes; every possible combination of alleles
for every gene is equally likely to occur.
Heredity plays a key role in the development of traits and is transmitted through
genes. The traits we inherit help shape our behavior, are determined by genes,
inherited from the parent.

Genes are the building blocks of heredity. Genes are found in threadlike
structures called chromosomes, which are made of DNA. Most normal human
cells have 46 chromosomes divided into 23 pairs. In each pair, one chromosome is
from the father and one is from the mother. The twenty-third pair determines
gender. When a child is born without all 46 chromosomes, physical and
behavioral disorders may result.

As we review the continuous history of life on the earth, we are struck by two
great tendencies which seem to be co-extensive with life itself. Heredity describes
the tendency of continuity of the characters of organisms; it is the expression of
the great (but relative) stability which marks the species of animals and plants
over long or short periods of time. Variation is the tendency that designates the
changes which appear in the species or in the individual; any departure from the
type or norm we call a variation. Some variations are striking and unusual,
however, most of us differ in less obvious and more subtle ways-in physical
features of size and shape and color; in habits, both physical and mental; and in
peculiarities which we call temperament, disposition, and ability. Many of these
differences are obviously acquired. They appear as the result of the special
conditions under which we live-our early environment, occupation, and
education, and the diverse opportunities which we encounter. But many of them
are inborn and in our study of heredity these variations hold chief interest.

Interdependence of Heredity and Environment – C.N. Shankar Rao

Conditions of worth – Carl Rogers

Conditions of worth are the conditions that an individual perceives are put upon
them externally by those around them and which they believe have to be in place
for them to be seen as worthy. It is these conditions of worth that Rogers
believed could explain much of the distress (incongruence) experienced by
people. The theory is that individuals self-actualise in a way that is congruent with
their conditions of worth, meaning that they ignore or distort messages and
experiences that don’t support these conditions of worth or the self-concept
these conditions have contributed to. Therefore, the aim of counselling is to assist
clients in utilising their innate actualising tendency rather than the actualising
tendency influenced by external conditions of worth.