This is one of those questions that always makes me roll my eyes: It doesn’t matter what I think. This is a matter of what is, and my opinion makes not one whit of difference.
And what is, is… it’s both. The nature/nurture question is one psychological science has grappled with for 100 years or more, and philosophers for centuries. The roots of psychology are in biology and philosophy, so you know we love exploring this issue!
The science shows that you can’t answer an either/or question when it comes to this because even clearly inherited stuff like schizophrenia still expresses differently depending on environment and who you are may not express (like intelligence) if you don’t have the environment to support it. By the same token, the same stressful environment, as we discovered with Vietnam veterans and PTSD, isn’t going to have the same impact on everybody: Who you are can be protective or it can leave you more vulnerable.
So. Whether one is more powerful than the other is going to vary depending on where you are on a spectrum. Two spectra, really, that intersect like this:
So you could be on any place on there, with regard to any domain: Your X could mark the spot in one place for physical health, in another for intelligence, in yet another for mental health. For example, I’m disabled by a childhood illness that has nothing to do with genetics, as far as anybody knows. So my X for physical strength, stamina, and appearance would be in the upper left-hand quadrant. But I had smart parents and a good education, so for how intelligence expresses, like in academic and career success, my X would be somewhere in the upper-right-hand quadrant — not all the way out to the edges, because we don’t have any geniuses in the family tree, fevers like the one I had tend to knock off a few points, and I didn’t go to Harvard 😆
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