The personality of a human being is said to be the intangible aspect of a human being. Everything that defines them as the person that they are and all the things that go together to make up the individuality that is possessed by their specific unique personhood. Though the presence of the spiritual element that is the essence of everything in the universe is clear, what are the things that shape an individual’s personality?
Some say the primary factor in shaping someone’s personality is the genetic lottery that they end up with, i.e. the DNA that they were born with passed on from their hereditary lines. Others have come up with the theory that what plays a bigger role in cultivating the little components of personality to a human being is the different environmental factors that they experience throughout their whole life. And some still argue that there isn’t such thing as ‘personality’, as in reality, what we call ‘personality’ is only an expression of one’s unchangeable spiritual nature.
In this article, we’ll delve into figuring out what factor plays a bigger role in shaping up the personality of any individual in respect of what the different factors cause and how they go on to change the personality of the individual in question. Are there certain aspects of personality that we inherit from our parents that we can’t change no matter what? Or does going through an impactful enough event or sequence of events due to the environment that surrounds us enable the individual to be able to break through that barrier and become something else?
Environmental Effects On Personality
The way that an individual’s personality is molded to be can have magnanimous effects on that individual’s environment. After all, an environment and society are a collection of individuals. The different personality traits will have the individual interacting with his or her environment in a direct manner with a direct influence from the way the individual has his or her personality wired.
That means that the personality of an individual is what the environment around that individual is primarily dependent on for the interactions caused by the individual with the environment, which is part and parcel related to the fact that the environment is always subject to how any and each individual in that environment is treating and expressing themselves in it.
That having been said, a bigger question arises and that is about how the environment interacts with the personality of the individual instead. Does the environment have more effect on the personality of the individual or does the individual’s personality have more effect on the environment? It is believed that both have a significant effect on the other. The environment has more effect on the personality of an individual when they are in their main growing phase of establishing their identity and perspective on the world, and once they have completed that phase they can begin to have more of an effect on their environment. But we are here to review the effects that the environment can have on the personality of a human being.
The environmental effects on a personality will include any and all kinds of effects on the personality of an individual that are not related to hereditary effects or influences caused by genes. There are a huge amount of influences that can be drawn from the various aspects of the environment. These aspects can be anything from who are the people in our life, what role they play for us, what behavior they employ in their own lives as well as in reference to the behavior they employ towards the individual in question.
Generally, the people we surround ourselves with are our friends, family, teachers, employers, colleagues, cultural and political figures, and sometimes coaches and mentors. All these people play a different but integral part in the way that we happen to learn and respond to their behavior and that is shown by our own behavior in return to theirs. Similarly, the place we live in, the kind of financial bracket we fall in, the different physical features we possess and the way that other people respond and behave towards different notions of our personality and behavior all play a big part in the way that our personality and behavior are influenced and what they morph into.
How Different Environmental Effects Take Place
The environmental effects can be boiled down to the nurturing we get from our environment. Some people end up winning the genetic lottery, a commonly used phrase for people who are born with and show signs that fall in line with what is acceptable to the society and what is considered more favorable to the society. However, others may lack in certain areas and these things end up having a snowball effect on the individual as their life progresses. Are we defined merely by our own biology? Is that all there is?
Take the example of a good looking, straight, white, and intelligent male in his early years. Easily securing good grades in 2nd grade leads to his teachers in school singing high praises of him, which leads to his parents being proud of him and bestowing him with gifts and rewards. This system in which he is getting rewarded for a certain particular kind of action will encourage the child to continue to repeat the same action and repeated rewards will also have the child grow more confident in himself.
As this situation progresses, the child’s confidence helps him achieve more honors in life in a much simpler manner than one who is riddled with doubts about himself. Moreover, the confident intelligent child is good looking as well, so growing up he will get more attention and affection as well, further enhancing that individual’s confidence while an individual with looks that are not so easily acceptable will suffer at the cost of how the environment and people around him have reacted to something that he cannot even control.
In contrast to this example, let’s take an example of a child who is not so good looking, who gets average grades leading to concerns from teachers and parents, prompts to improve and warnings of terrible fates that he will have to live with if he does not improve. Again, he’s not ‘bad’ at any way, just not fitting how he ‘should’ be, according to the expectation of his environment. This type of behavior from people of position, people of authority, people that we look up to, and are important to us can have an extremely negative effect on a child as they are growing up.
Because the people that we look up to, are people that we expect to treat us with kindness, and to receive the opposite reaction from such people can make matters so much worse. The child who is being told not to act out might proceed to act out in a worse manner simply as an act of rebellion due to not receiving their very accurately expected behavior from adults they trust and look up to. Due to constant neglect, ‘soft’ verbal abuse of saying that they are not great (if not worse), and troubled images of themselves portrayed to them by the people that they trust over and over, they start to believe and form the perception that this is who they are.
It is quite an understood fact of how our beliefs play a huge role in shaping what actions we end up taking. A discouraged individual who does not believe good things about themselves, who does not believe that will be able to accomplish anything important in life is very unlikely to be able to accomplish that. The lack of motivation is a primary reason among others that are born due to the discouragement that they received as a child. Furthermore, even without attempting to accomplish anything, the world is losing a unique individual, only because he didn’t fit the ‘right’ boxes in his life as a child.
It is important to understand this way in which the environment can have a mostly negative effect on the personality of an individual but unfortunately, this understanding usually develops in an individual only in much later years, and sometimes it never does. But are the ‘good’ boy and the ‘bad’ boy really different? Aren’t we all god’s born sons and daughters, with unique characteristics and talents? If so, then our personalities shouldn’t be affected by our environment, as we should be confident enough to express our own voice, regardless of how our environment sees it.
Nurture Vs. Nature – Environment Vs. Spirituality
We’ve discussed how the environmental effects of nurturing plays a role in cultivating an individual’s personality. But what about the eternal foundation of that individual, that is the individual’s spirituality? Or what we can call the nature of the individual. The spirituality of an individual is associated with the soul of the individual. In essence, it is believed that the nature of the individual will remain the same despite the different effects from the environment on the personality of that same individual. Due to the fact that the soul of the individual is unique in its own way and that nature plays a huge part in defining and subjugating what that person is inherently attuned to.
It is true that we learn, experience, and see, can heavily impact our personality traits but some things can be beyond the effects of the environment. The genetic makeup of a person combined with the innate qualities attached to their soul can be said to play a bigger role in shaping the behaviors of the person as that is coming from the inside of the person. As the individual grows and learns to be able to trust the inside rather than the outside, they are able to understand their inner workings and what binds with their soul better.
When you are starting to ask questions about our true nature as human beings, of what we are supposed to do, of our purpose, there could be many answers. But if you’re looking at it from a spiritual point of view, of understanding that you are more than this body or mental identity, that you are not your thoughts, you might be awakening into a new reality, awakening into a new awareness.
