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Personality Analysis
Life History
Like most people, I have experienced ups and downs, highs and lows. The major upheavals in my life have revealed some of the core personality traits that have been with me since childhood. I believe that crisis and stress challenge us, and also bring to light our true selves. However, I also believe strongly in the power of each person to change. I used to have anger management problems and other emotional issues, just like most people. Mainly these problems were related to my not having in place a set of established coping mechanisms in my life. Part of this is related to the culture and upbringing, and part also to personality traits. Yet after I was divorced from a husband of 22 years, it was a shock. I did not feel like myself because my emotions were getting the best of me. Knowing this, I joined support groups and saw a therapist. These tools helped, but only temporarily. I failed to see long-term change until I made a conscientious decision to walk away from negative emotion entirely. This was accomplished in conjunction with spiritual growth and development. I had asked a friend for help, and she suggested I see her pastor. By working with this pastor and praying regularly, I felt empowered to change my cognitions and belief systems. I realized that I could walk away from negative feelings like anger, sadness, and fear. My children also inspired me to be stronger and transform negative emotions into positive actions.
Working on my spiritual growth and development has brought out the true and good nature inside me. I no longer pass by homeless people or ignore people in need. I share the power I have with others, which has strengthened me further. Also, I am taking better care of myself by exercising regularly.
Nature and Nurture
When analyzing my personality retrospectively, I can see that part of who I am is related to my upbringing and other environmental or nurture variables. It is impossible to say that nature...
Research substantiates this. Recent research shows that parental influences are not deterministic, but they are important. The prevailing research shows a "more sophisticated and less deterministic explanations than did earlier theory and research," (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg & Hetherington, 2000, p. 218). For example, my parents did not teach me exactly how to deal with a divorce. I had to learn that on my own. I have been socialized to enable negative emotions and feelings, because such things have become normalized. I was never taught the types of spiritual lessons I learned, such as surrendering to Christ, and deriving strength from Him instead of mistaking my negative emotions for being real. However, there are also innate patterns of thought and characteristics that show that nature also has a bearing on my personality. Looking back, I was always a deeply caring and sensitive person but I needed the right triggers to bring out those characteristics.
It is important to move beyond the need to even ask whether nature or nurture provide the most important features of a personality, because doing so reduces the human being unnecessarily. "Development is an immensely complex, dynamic, embedded, interdependent, and probabilistic process and, therefore, renders simplistic questions such as whether a particular behavioral capacity is innate or acquired scientifically uninteresting," (Lewkowitz, 2011, p. 331). I agree with Sameroff (2010), who advocates, "a dialectical perspective emphasizing the interconnectedness of individual and context," (p. 6). This unified theory is helpful in situations like a retrospective analysis because it can "integrate personal change, context, regulation, and representational models of development," (Sameroff, 2010, p. 6).
The Biases of Memory
Memory is not fully reliable. Research shows that people are more likely to…
References
Collins, W.A., Maccoby, E.E., Steinberg, L. & Hetherington, E. (2000). Contemporary research on parenting. American Psychologist 55(2): 218-232.
Jussim, L. (2012). Social Perception and Social Reality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lalande, Kathleen M.; Bonanno, George A. (2011). Retrospective memory bias for the frequency of potentially traumatic events: A prospective study. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, Vol 3(2), Jun 2011, 165-170.
Lewkowitz, D.J. (2011). The biological implausibility of the nature-nurture dichotomy and what it means for the study of infancy. Infancy 16(4): 331-367.
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