Who are you? What do you need most from life?
What life needs from you?
What concerns us most?
What are areas we don't know about ourselves and how others see these areas sometimes better than we do?
What makes us happy and why? What is happiness after all? Is it better to be happy or content?
When you first come to this life, some think you're a blank sheet upon which life imprints whatever you're going through.
According to Jung, you come to this life with the collective subconscious of all those ancestors who inhabited earth before you come to life.
So, how do we develop this unique identity we have, when did all this started, and how? how long it takes us to be what we are now, is our personality imprinted in our genes and we are destined to be what we are today no matter how we try, or is it the situations we go through, the social circle around us and the environment we grow in are what made us the way we are?
Environment affects brain development and our interaction with the situations we face and events we go through; good days, good people, difficult days, difficult people, challenges and motivations; all work together to make us what we are now. so, yes, genes and environment work together toward personality development.
There are different theories of personality development and different schools of personality research exist which study difficult topics.
Are we fixed the way we are since our childhood, or we change over time, grow into mature people and wise seniors?
Personality and situations interact through our development over years, even decades, to shape us to what we are or what we will become. So, yes, we can change, it is possible, and we are able to do that if we have the spirit, support, and suitable environment.
We are not the sum of the parts we're made of, the whole is bigger than the sum. Some of us have great spirit and grit to change what they would like to change. to become the best version of themselves.
Learning and experience carve out our personality to make us the way we are.
When we are still infants, we may show some temperaments as emotionality and activity. This may stay with us till we become adults as positive or negative emotionality.
Do we become extraverted adults if we were active children in our past?
Are we growing to be emotionally unstable if we were whining too much as kids?
Temper does predict adult personality, although our personality during our childhood years maybe somewhat unstable. Our brain depends on both our genes and environment to develop, and genes may become active at different ages manifesting as personality change as we grow.
Cognitive and social processes are vital to our personality development.
What is cognition?
It is our mental process of knowing. This includes awareness, perception, reasoning, intuition, and judgment.
Extraversion and neuroticism are associated with inclination of cognitive functioning that confer on aptitude for acquiring social skills in extraverts, and heightened threat awareness in people with higher degrees of neuroticism.
Extraversion and neuroticism are two of the Big Five personality traits that we will talk about later.
Our cognitive development takes place within a social context.
This may potentially affect personality in relation to exposure to role models, internalization of cultural norms allowing them to shape our attitudes and beliefs, exposure to educational experiences.
So, neural, cognitive, and social factors work together shaping our personality over our lifetime.
Our internal vulnerabilities, like genetic predisposition to illness; and psychosocial vulnerability, our vulnerability to external factors as life stress or work stress, all work together to further carve into what we are and what we might become. Cognitive factors such as embracing health- promoting coping strategies may mediate these vulnerabilities. So, there may still be hope after all.
Our emotional competence develops as learning and education interact with our temperament as children further shaping our emotional response.
Differences in our brain systems regarding how we handle reward and punishment stimuli could affect whether the child will grow as cheerful person or distress prone one. Still, we can grow up to be better adapted if we learn effective strategies from our parents, caregivers, teachers, and peers to cope with our vulnerability to negative emotions.
Our language capabilities also affects how we understand and express emotion.
Emotional intelligence emerges from interaction of these complex processes.
Attachment Theory
John Bowlby thought that the child's pattern of relationship with the primary care-giver affected adult personality.
Secure attachment to the care-giver promoted healthy adjustment in later life.
Attachment type could be due to a combination of biological, cognitive, and social factors.
Three styles of attachments were premised: secure, anxious, and avoidant.
Social Psychology
Social Psychology focuses on the interplay between personality and social relationships. The reciprocal influence of personality on social relationships and the role of culture on modulating these relationships.
And, as it was said long ago, personality is a window on the brain.
So let's peer into this window and see what we will find.
Please follow my coming posts if you are interested to know more.
