Personality Development
Personality Development
Personality Development
Evolutionary perspective
An evolutionary perspective has been proposed to explain why
humans have personality and individuality. This perspective traces
personality and individuality back to when the early humans were learning
how to function in complex social groups. Many specialists from different
fields have a general agreement that early humans saw themselves as a
part of the group to which they belonged, rather than seeing themselves as
individuals with independent personalities. In terms of personality at this
time, the whole group was identical.
A member of the group associated themselves as one with the tribe
and therefore the responsibility rested in the group and not the individual.
Kropotkin explained the importance of this by stating that because the
primitive man identified his existence with the existence of his tribe it has
allowed for mankind to reach the remarkable level present today. A small
step of differentiation that later led to personality and individuality was the
division of labor. This differentiation was necessary in order for the group to
function in a much more efficient way. This differentiation became adaptive
since it increased the groups functionality. These early humans then
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Lifespan perspectives
Classic theories of personality, such as Freuds tripartite theory, and
post-Freudian theory, including developmental stage theories and type
theories, have often held the perspective that most personality
development occurs in childhood, and that personality is stable by the end
of adolescence. As recently as the 1990s, modern personality theorists
concurred with William James 1890 assertion that, by age 30, personality
is set like plaster. Currently, lifespan perspectives that integrate theory
and empirical findings dominate the research literature. The lifespan
perspective of personality is based on the plasticity principle, that
personality traits are open systems that can be influenced by the
environment at any age.
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Influencing factors
Personality traits demonstrate moderate levels of continuity, smaller
but still significant normative or mean-level changes, and individual
differences in change, often late into the life course. This pattern is
influenced by genetic, environmental, transactional, and stochastic factors.
Genetics
Twin and adoption studies have demonstrated that the heritability of
personality traits ranges from .3-.6, with a mean of .5. Heritability of .5
means that 50% of variation in observable personality traits is attributable
to genetic influences. But a given genotype will lead to a certain phenotype
only under the right environmental circumstances. In other words, the
heritability of a trait may change depending on an individuals environment
and/or life events.
An example of the way environment can moderate the expression of
a gene is the finding by Heath, Eaves, and Martin (1998) that marriage was
a protective factor against depression in genetically identical twins, such
that the heritability of depression was as low as 29% in a married twin and
as high as 51% in an unmarried twin. Ultimately, emerging evidence
suggests that genetic and environmental influences on personality differ
depending on other circumstances in a persons life.
Environmental
With the effects of genetic similarity are removed, children from the
same family often appear no more alike than randomly selected strangers;
yet identical twins raised apart are nearly as similar in personality as
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identical twins raised together. What these findings suggest is that shared
family environment has virtually no effect on personality development, and
that similarity between relatives is almost entirely due to shared genetics.
Although the shared environment (including features like the personality,
parenting styles, and beliefs of parents; socioeconomic status;
neighborhood; nutrition; schools attended; number of books in the home;
etc.) may have a lasting impact at the extremes of parenting practice, such
as outright abuse, most personality researchers have concluded that the
majority of average expectable environments do not have an effect on
personality development.
The weakness of shared environmental effects in shaping personality
came as a surprise to many psychologists, and spurred research into nonshared environment, or the environmental influences that make siblings
different from one another instead of similar. Non-shared environmental
effects encompass the variability in behavioral outcomes that is not
explained by genetic and family environmental influences. The non-shared
environment may include differential treatment by parents, individually
distinct reactions to the shared family environment, peer influences, and
experiences that occur outside the family. In adults, non-shared
environment also encompasses the unique roles and environments
experienced after leaving the family of origin.
Further effects of environment in adulthood are demonstrated by
findings that different work, marital, and family experiences are associated
with personality change, and by the impact of major positive and negative
life events on personality.
Gene-environment interactions
Van Gestel and Van Broeckhoven (2003) write, Almost by definition,
complex traits originate from interplay between (multiple) genetic factors
and environment. Interactions between genetic predisposition and the
environment are a major factor in personality development. The
corresponsive principle of personality development states that life
experiences may accentuate and reinforce the personality characteristics
that were partially responsible for the particular environmental elicitations in
the first place.
Theories
Of
Personality
Theories of Personality
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Freud's Theory
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Unconscious processes
Freud (1923) saw the personality structured into three parts (i.e.
tripartite), the id, ego and superego (also known as the psyche), all
developing at different stages in our lives.
These are systems, not parts of the brain, or in any way physical.
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PERSONALIT
Y
TESTS
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