The Nature of Nurture with Professor Jay Belsky
2/20/20261 hr 16 min
In today’s episode I sit down with developmental psychologist Dr. Jay Belsky to explore a question so many parents wrestle with: is temperament destiny? We talk about why children differ in how deeply they’re shaped by their environments, what “developmental plasticity” really means, and why the same parenting can land so differently depending on the child. We discuss the difference between sensitivity and susceptibility, the limits of attachment research, and why focusing only on long-term outcomes can distract us from what matters in the here and now.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsJay Belsky· Guest0:01
The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
Aliza Pressman· Host0:04
[on-hold music] Welcome to Raising Good Humans. I'm Dr. Lisa Presman, and today is just a thrill for me because I have a very brilliant developmental psychologist on, Jay Belsky, who just published The Nature of Nurture: Rethinking Why and How Childhood Adversity Shapes Development. And we had such an interesting conversation, and we're really talking about amazing concepts, like differential susceptibility and how different kids have different plasticity levels. So some are gonna be more sensitive to their environment. We've talked about that. And this differential susceptibility means that their plasticity in some of the kids means they're, they're going to be malleable in positive growth ways and negative, depending on their environment. And it's a really interesting conversation about evolutionary adaptation, differential susceptibility, which is particularly important if you have more susceptible kids. So we're talking about that. Have a listen, and of course, send me a DM with questions. Go to my Substack or reach out to me there, drlisapresman.substack.com.