Personality Development - Essay Example

? Personality Development Personality traits are present in all of us, but each theorist that we have studied has a different explanation as to how we acquire them. Some believe they are hardwired into us from birth, while others believe that we simply model behaviors from others, and still others will argue that we’re conditioned to act the way we do. For each theory, then, there is a reasonable explanation for our personality, and with it, a unique way to treat it, should we wish to do so. If you take a maladaptive personality trait like aggression, the Cognitive approach would say that the aggression is acquired knowledge, somewhere along the way, the person encountered a stimulus of some sort that shaped the behavior. Operant Conditioning theorists would say that the client modified her own behavior. Her aggression was reinforced, or not punished, and so is now a mainstay in the personality. Observational Learning followers would argue that the aggression stemmed from watching, learning and modeling the behavior from others. As these three theories differ in why the client shows aggression, the treatment from each is likewise unique. Cognitive therapy may include challenging the negative thoughts so that the client realizes that action must be taken. They would work to change the dysfunctional thinking so that the negative thoughts associated with the aggression would be transformed into positive thoughts and maybe be eradicated entirely, given ample time. Operant Conditioning therapy would most likely use a reward and punishment system to thwart the aggression. They may even set up a behavioral contract, where the client must live up to their end of the bargain in order to achieve the reward offered. To live up to your end of the bargain, you have to lessen the aggression and learn new ways to focus your anger. In Observational Learning the therapy would likely be modeling, that is, the client would watch others with a similar affliction go through the stages to try to eradicate it; this would make the client more likely to want to do likewise. This therapy may also use environmental planning, in which the client would lessen the stressors to the aggression in their own environment, thus lessening the aggression. Factors that Influence Personality Development While some psychologists believe that cognition is the only way to explain or predict personality differences within people, others believe that our personalities develop in differing ways. Whichever theorist you side with, however, it remains that cognition does play a part in the development of the personality, how big a part depends on your views. Cognition, being the mental process of knowing, and dealing with such things as awareness, perception, and reasoning, among others, is an important part of who we are and how we develop. Our personalities come from this perception of our world, what we think, what we feel, how we cope; it all stems from our awareness and how we put this awareness to use. Environmental factors, such as where you live, what you eat, the quality of the air that you breathe, etc, and biological factors, such as your genetic makeup and your pre-natal development play a part in how you process your environment and therefore play a part in the makeup of your personality development. If you happen to have been born prematurely, for example, and your parents both carried a lot of recessive genes and they were passed on to you, and you lived in an area of town close to smokestacks or a lot of overhead wires, your development, and that of your personality would differ from someone born at full term, with no genetic problems, living out in the fresh country air. How you are raised and where you are raised, and your genetic blueprint all have a bearing on how you perceive your world, and hence, how your personality has formed. Evolutionary, biological and environmental factors can result in the development of an aggressive personality. In the study of evolutionary psychology, we learn that it is a combination of a lot of different schools of thought, and has a basis in the work of Charles Darwin. The survival of the fittest characters, personality traits, biological and physiological changes within a species, through time. Biological theorists believe that we have our personality with us when we are born, it’s hardwired and we are who we are, our ‘nature’, regardless of outside factors, and environmental theorists would argue that it is all outside, environmental changes, ‘nurture’ that makes our personality development complete. With something like aggression, an undesirable trait to have, each of the above mentioned theories would argue that different things caused it. Evolutionary factors may include generations of your ancestors who were living in war torn or third world countries, you evolve the aggression, it gets worse with each passing generation, since it’s inborn, and perpetuated. Biological factors could be aggressive parents, you get the aggression genetically, and it’s in you at the start and possibly, it is heightened by unfavorable conditions during your prenatal period and your early childhood. Environmentally speaking, the aggression could have come from people that you learn from, who you model your behavior after, your parents, friends, etc. Do you live in a depressed area? Are all of your neighbors aggressive, do you see that every day and accept it as part of life? What you live and how you live would explain why you developed an aggressive trait in your personality. Parenting and influencing a child’s personality development is another way in which different theories offer differing opinions. In the evolutionary and biological theories, we see that it is inborn characteristics, genetics, or evolutionary affects that shape the personality of our children. We all evolve from generation to generation and over time, we are simply ever changing in order to survive, and we give our children pieces of ourselves at their beginnings to keep this survival attainable. Behavioral theory would tell us that as parents, we help our children learn their personality traits and maintain them. They may be like us, or not, but we as parents are their first teachers and are the ones who model behaviors the most to our children. The evolutionist may say that parents have handed down the dominant parts of their personality, the ‘agreeable’ traits to their children, in order for them to continue to grow and succeed in the world. They also believe that we can weed out undesirable traits, for example, aggression, over time so that we no longer have to deal with them. Biological theorists agree that parents hand down personality traits like our ability to trust, to love, to despair through our genes. Our children are more likely to be like us and have attributes similar to ours, since it’s all in the genetic code. The behaviorist on the other hand would say that we as parents model behaviors for our children to follow and learn; we lead them into opportunities to pick up on traits that we ourselves have, and follow through with them through continually modeling our behaviors to our children. Self efficacy is a person’s belief in their own competence, that is, we believe we can perform in a certain way in order to attain a specific goal. It is closely related to the social learning theory in as much as we can learn through others and our social experiences, and therefore reinforce our belief in ourselves. It is an important part of personality because it is an inner belief in our own ability, no one can persuade us we can not do a task if we believe that we can, in fact, sometimes, someone telling us we can not succeed makes us try all the more to succeed, if only to prove them wrong. Self efficacy can be a ‘nature’ factor, that is, can be inborn, perhaps our parents score very high on the self efficacy scale and we inherited that from them, but it can also be a ‘nurture’ factor as well, we can learn self efficacy and if we are lacking in it, we can change our environment and put ourselves around people that we can learn from in order to increase it in ourselves. The ability to believe in your own potential is an amazing thing, though people with lower self efficacy scores aren’t necessarily lacking, it may be that not accomplishing something that you thought you could do will cause you to slow down and learn more about the situation so that you are better prepared for the next challenge, and that bodes well for your growth as a person, and for what you can later give to your offspring. Read More