Personality development concepts and influences

Personality Development -- Social and Cultural Factors

Personality development in the individual is a function of numerous different variables, including genetic influences, family-of-origin dynamics, social circumstances, and the role of various elements of the external environment. Among the many aspects of the external environment that contribute to personality development in the individual are the influences of social and cultural norms, values, beliefs, and expectations. They can dictate substantial themes that determine the ways that individuals feel about themselves, the way they regard others, and the ways that they perceive their rights and roles in relation to other individuals and to society as a whole.

Discussion

In principle, human beings are, for all intents and purposes, "blank slates" when they are born. They have natural biological needs and tendencies, but the manner in which they come to view themselves, others, and the rest of society are determined for them by others. The importance of social learning can be demonstrated by the way that differential socialization of the genders (for just one nearly universal examples) radically affects the way that males and females come to develop different personalities with respect to aspects of personality such as confidence and the relative balance between aggressiveness and passivity. In many human cultures, this differential gender-based socialization also dictates the manner in which the individual comes to regard his or her own sexuality. While all human beings share similar sexual urges and inclinations, males are typically encouraged to explore their sexual urges freely and even to derive a measure of confidence and pride with respect to their sexual conquests. By contrast, females in those same societies are discouraged from that behavior and to the extent they choose to act on their sexual urges before marriage, they may typically experience shame and remorse, almost exclusively by virtue of the fact that society dictates different mores in that regard based purely on gender.

Society and culture can also influence the development of the personality of the individual in even more fundamental ways than self-esteem issues linked to sexual expression. For example, in some societies, (most notably, in India), the prevailing social system is based on "castes" that are associated with and directly dependent on the family and social class of one's birth. Typically, individuals fortunate enough to be born into privileged classes can be expected to have relatively high self-esteem and high opinions of themselves in general. Meanwhile, those unfortunate enough to be born into the peasant classes can be expected to internalize the beliefs of their relative worthlessness, strictly as a function of the messages they receive within the predominant framework of societal beliefs in their environment.