Evaluate the extent to which personality development is influenced by social, cultural and historical factors
Introduction
Does society, culture and historical factors determine the way a personality grows, develops and changes over the lifetime. To me personally , yes it does to a large extent. I am who I am because of where I was born, the society I lived in, how I grew up, who my ancestors are and the beliefs , tradition and religion that has surrounded me as I grew up.
Personality development
To understand how personality development is affected by any factor, one needs to understand the meaning of the word, personality . According to Helen Bee and Denise Boyd, “Personality is a pattern of the way children and adults relate to people and objects in the world around them. Individual differences in personality appear to develop throughout childhood and adolescents, based on a basic set of behavioural and emotional predispositions present at birth, Mc Crae, Costa, ostendord and Angleitner, 2000. These predispositions are usually referred to as temperament. Clear strong evidence, both from studies of children’s temperament, supports the assertion that temperamental differences are in born. (Goldsmith, Buss & Lemery, 1995) From this information it can be said that historical factors influence your personality, as who you are is also part of your genetic genes.
While there are many different theories of personality, the first step is to understand exactly what is meant by the term personality. A brief definition would be that personality is made up the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make a person unique. In addition to this, personality arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life.
Some of the fundamental characteristics of personality include:
• Consistency - There is generally a recognizable order and regularity to behaviors. Essentially, people act in the same ways or similar...