Identity code: what do we get from our parents and change ourselves
For decades, psychologists have been trying to figure out which influences a person's personality more strongly — heredity or life experience. Today, most researchers believe that the answer is much more complicated. How a personality is formed, what we receive from parents and why even children from the same family can grow up completely different — in the material of Izvestia.
Personality does not appear from birth
When talking about personality, many people imagine a set of qualities like sociability, kindness, or responsibility. However, in psychology, this concept refers to a much more complex system. The American Psychological Association defines personality as a relatively stable set of features of thinking, emotions, motivation, and behavior that makes a person unique. At the same time, it includes not only individual character traits, but also interests, values, habitual ways of responding to events, and even how others perceive us.
Despite the common expression "born this way," modern psychologists believe that personality does not arise in a ready-made form from the moment of birth. A baby is actually born with certain biological characteristics, such as different emotional sensitivity, activity levels, or reactions to new stimuli. These innate features are commonly referred to as temperament. It is he who becomes a kind of foundation on which the personality is gradually built.
As the child grows up, he begins to interact with the world around him. He learns to build relationships with his parents and peers, experiences his first successes and failures, and forms an image of himself and others. In an article published in the journal Psychological Review, psychologist Carol Dweck suggests considering personality as a system that develops around a person's basic psychological needs — the need to understand what is happening, feel their own competence and be accepted by other people. Gradually, based on this experience, stable beliefs, emotional reactions and behavioral patterns are formed, which eventually become part of the personality.
Today, most personality research is based on the "Big Five" model. According to her, individual differences can be described using five broad characteristics: openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, extraversion, benevolence, and neuroticism—the tendency to experience negative emotions more often. These traits do not divide people into categories, but exist as continuous scales, so each person combines them in their own unique proportion.
What do we inherit from our parents
The question of the role of heredity remains one of the most discussed in psychology. Intuitively, it seems that if parents are calm, sociable, or, conversely, anxious, then their children will be the same. In fact, scientists are talking about a much more complex picture. It is not ready-made personality traits that are inherited, but biological predispositions that only increase the likelihood of developing certain behavioral traits.
The main source of knowledge about the influence of genes has been twin studies, one of which is published in the journal Genes, Brain and Behavior. Comparing identical twins, which are almost identical in DNA to fraternal twins, the researchers concluded that heredity explains about 40-50% of the differences between people in basic personality traits. However, this does not mean that "half of the personality is written in the genes."
Heritability is a statistical indicator that describes differences within a large group of people, rather than the fate of a particular person. Even high heritability does not make a personality unchangeable.
Modern genetic research shows that a person does not have one or more "main" genes. In a review article in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, scientists note that personality has a polygenic nature: it is influenced by thousands of genetic variants, each of which has a very small effect. Moreover, the effects of these options depend on the environment and can change over the course of a lifetime. Therefore, researchers are increasingly talking not just about the polygenic, but about the polygenic and at the same time "polyecological" nature of personality.
In other words, genes do not determine in advance whether a child will become an introvert, a leader, or an optimist. They only create certain prerequisites, which then interact with upbringing, life experience, culture, and even random events. That is why children who have inherited similar characteristics can grow up to be completely different people.
Why two children in the same family can be different
At first glance, it seems logical that siblings who grew up in the same house and were raised by the same parents should have similar personalities. However, research shows the opposite. Even identical twins with an almost identical set of genes begin to differ markedly in character, habits, and outlook on life over time.
Psychologists explain this by the existence of a so-called inseparable environment. According to a study in the Journal of Personality, unlike the shared family environment, which is really the same for all children, an inseparable environment includes a unique experience for each person. These are friends, schoolteachers, relationships with peers, successes and failures, illnesses, chance encounters, hobbies, first job, and thousands of other events that cannot be completely repeated even within the same family. It is these differences that gradually accumulate and begin to change the personality.
In addition, children perceive the same events differently. One child may consider a strict teacher to be a source of motivation, while another may consider it a cause of constant stress. Even the attitude of parents is rarely exactly the same: adults often unconsciously react to the characteristics of each child in different ways, and the children themselves interpret this through their own temperament and previous experience. Therefore, a personality is formed not only under the influence of external circumstances, but also due to how a person perceives them.
Finally, the person himself gradually begins to choose an environment that corresponds to his inclinations. Sociable people are more likely to make new acquaintances, inquisitive people are looking for new experiences and knowledge, and cautious people prefer stability. Over time, the personality not only depends on the environment, but also begins to form it itself, creating a kind of vicious circle of development. That is why modern psychology has practically abandoned the idea that personality is determined solely by upbringing or solely by genes.
Where did personality types come from
Attempts to explain why people differ from each other appeared long before the emergence of modern psychology. Even the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates suggested that behavioral features are associated with the predominance of one of the four "vital juices" in the body. This is how the theory of four temperaments arose — sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic. Later, this concept was repeatedly revised, but the very idea of dividing people into several categories turned out to be surprisingly tenacious.
The four temperaments of personality
In the 20th century, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung offered his own view on the psychological differences between people. He believed that people differ in how they receive information, make decisions, and interact with the world around them. It was his ideas that formed the basis of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test, developed by Catherine Briggs and Isabelle Myers. Today, this test remains one of the most popular in the world: millions of people take it, and some companies use it in employee training and team building.
What is MBTI?
However, the scientific community is much more cautious about MBTI. One of the main complaints is that the test places a person in one of the harsh categories. For example, a person is considered either an introvert or an extrovert, although numerous studies show that most people are somewhere between these extremes. In addition, the MBTI results are not always reproduced when the test is repeated after a while.
That is why the "Big Five" model is much more often used in modern personality research. Numerous papers published in the Annual Review of Psychology and the Journal of Personality have shown that the five main personality traits better describe individual differences between people and allow for more accurate predictions of behavior, academic success, health, career, and relationship quality. Instead of answering the question "what type of person does a person belong to," the researchers estimate how strongly each of the five traits is expressed. This approach is considered more flexible and better reflects the real diversity of human personalities.
Is it possible to change the identity
For a long time, there was an opinion in psychology that after a certain age, personality practically ceases to change. Research in recent decades shows a more complex picture. Although the basic personality traits do become relatively stable in adulthood, they continue to change gradually throughout life.
In reviews published in the journals Annual Review of Psychology and Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, it is noted that almost all major life events can influence personality. Starting an independent life, studying, working, romantic relationships, having children, serious illnesses, losing loved ones, moving to another country or retiring can gradually change habitual patterns of behavior and emotional response. Most often, such changes occur slowly, over many years.
A separate area of research is devoted to the question of whether it is possible to consciously change one's own personality. Current evidence shows that this is possible, although it takes time. Psychotherapy, long-term work on habits, regular practice of new behaviors, and even consciously set goals can lead to gradual changes in individual personality traits. For example, a person can become more organized, react more calmly to stress, or engage in social contacts more easily if such changes are regularly reinforced by life experience.
At the same time, the researchers emphasize that this is not about turning one type of personality into another in a few weeks. Personality is highly stable precisely because it develops over the years. Therefore, changes usually affect individual features and occur gradually, rather than in leaps and bounds.
What makes a person exactly like him in the end?
A few decades ago, the main question of psychology sounded like this: which influences a person more strongly — heredity or upbringing? Today, most researchers believe that the very juxtaposition of these factors is not entirely correct. Personality arises due to their constant interaction, and this interaction lasts a lifetime.
Genetics determines the functioning of the nervous system, emotional sensitivity, and some behavioral tendencies. The environment creates conditions in which these features can manifest themselves in different ways. But the person himself plays an equally important role. By making decisions, choosing friends, profession, hobbies, or place of residence, people gradually create their own environment, which then continues to influence their development. In modern psychology, this process is called the mutual influence of personality and the environment.
That's why even people with similar genes and the same upbringing never live exactly the same life. Each new experience changes a person a little, and the changed person begins to perceive subsequent events differently. It turns out to be a kind of continuous cycle in which heredity, the environment and one's own decisions constantly influence each other.
According to the review authors, it is this model that best explains the origin of personality today. It shows that a person is neither entirely a product of his genes, nor solely the result of upbringing. Personality is the result of a complex and continuous interaction of biology, life experience, culture, and one's own choices, which continues from birth to almost the end of life.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
