“She's the spittin' image of her dad," I heard frequently in my family in reference to our youngest daughter.

I remember, years ago, watching our minister when his preacher dad came to visit and took the pulpit as a guest minister. They had the same mannerisms in body language and speech. As they sat in chairs opposite the pulpit, they even crossed the same leg over the other. It was eerie to watch.

How do we come by those mannerisms that identify us? The general consensus has been that it "nurture" — that we model the behavior of those we admire in childhood, and that is how we learn to live our lives when confronted with various situations and how we attempt to resolve problems. (I thought the younger preacher was just mimicking his dad, and it may have been in his genes.)

However, "nature," the other side of the behavioral coin, is now believed to be more influential than was previously thought by the academic community. "Nature" is the propensity and inclination to behave instinctively according to our DNA makeup. The understanding of the difference between "nurture and nature" is an important component to understanding yourself and how you communicate to the world. Are you modeling the behavior of others, or do you respond to life from a cellular level?

NUTURE

Nurture works in two ways. First, when children grow up with passive, aggressive, or passive-aggressive individuals, they tend to adopt a style that allows them to survive in that particular environment. For example, in response to a very passive parent, a child may become aggressive in an attempt to make SOMETHING happen. In response to an aggressive parent, the child may adaptively move into the passive mode, attempting to avoid attention and thereby escaping the wrath of aggression.

In response to a passive-aggressive parent, the child, understandably, may move into avoidance behavior, i.e., a passive mode, to escape the confusion s/he experiences around someone who "says one thing and does another" and who is subtly angry and always blames others. This causes pain and bewilderment in a child. Do you recognize a childhood background pattern for your characteristic behaviors?

The second way that nurture impacts our communication style is that we may model the behavior that we see in our childhood, rather than react to it. If one parental figure frequently goes on the attack, throwing "you" messages around and perhaps even striking blows, we may do the same.

If, conversely, a parental figure is one who seeks "peace at any cost" and never speaks, we may model that behavior. And frequently, a child may move into the (mal)adaptive style and then at a later time in childhood — even adulthood —shift to the style that seems more overtly obvious: the one that the parental figure directly demonstrated.

That is, in response to a very aggressive parent, the child may initially become passive and then after years of being exploited and abused in living within the passive communication style, s/he may become totally dissatisfied by rarely getting her/his own needs met, and the aggressive model may emerge full blown, emulating that modeled parental style.

NUTURE

Today, most adoption agencies prohibit separating twins at birth. However, late in the 1960s, some identical twins were deliberately separated because a psychiatrist thought it was in their best interest. I believe that identical twins share a special bond and that this action was deplorable and bordered on diabolical. By law, it is no longer allowed in most states.

Later, studies were done on those separated twins in the interest of learning the difference between nature and nurture.

Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited, by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein, October, 2007, is a book written by female twins who found each other in the third decade of their lives. I was fascinated by the tale told by this pair of identical twins. They intertwined details about the infamous secret study and about twins and genetics with their own story. Elyse and Paula were amazed by the similarities and by the differences.

They learned, for example, that they both had been editors of their high school newspapers, that both were filmmakers and that both had done some work as film critics. Furthermore, both Elyse and Paula had intentions to attend the same university in New York, and one actually acted on those intentions. The other twin, because of circumstances, had to "settle" for a state school.

Both were dangerously allergic to sulfa drugs, both had had a bout with depression in their late teens/early 20s, both had had acne, and both felt driven to succeed. Elyse and Paula learned that their mannerisms and nonverbal communication were very similar and that their taste in lipstick gravitated to similar hues. The theory of "nature" would explain that these characteristics were not surprising because they were heritable.

Their book also related information about others of the separated twins who found each other. One was the story of the "Jim twins," which further supported the "nature" theory. One of the Jims knew he was a twin. His adoptive parents encouraged him to do the search for his twin, but he waited until he was 39 years old before he actually began his search for his sibling. The other Jim's adoptive parents were told that his twin had died at birth.

Paula and Elyse write about the similarities of these male twins: Both drove the same make of Chevrolet, were chain-smokers of Salem cigarettes, enjoyed stock car racing, woodworking and football. Their weights, blood pressures and IQs were very close, and as children, each had had a dog named Toy. Furthermore, their first marriages were to women named Linda, and after divorces, they were married to women named Betty. Their likes and dislikes and their interests were "remarkably similar."

Which is more influential to our mannerisms and personality characteristics, i.e., our identity? Nurture or nature? The upshot of this is that many of those traits are inherited rather than modeled. Nature seems to outweigh nurture at this point. It is clear that the tendency to be a certain way can by "overwritten" by very abusive parenting, so that a person who is naturally positive and outgoing may become shy and passive.

One of life's goals is to become self-aware and therefore authentically "us" in our lives. We can also "override" traits that aren't effective and replace them with more effective actions. We can give up the addictions, and we can move toward assertiveness.

Rosemary J. Stauber, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in San Antonio and founding director of the Bexar County Women’s Center.