NATURE VS. NURTURE
This report will discuss the six main tenets of personality. Each one will be defined and scholarly research will be used to back up and prove what is being asserted in this report. The six tenets that will be discussed are going to be nature vs. nurture, the unconscious, the view of self, development, motivation and maturation. Each of those six has a different part to play in how people develop and change from a personality standpoint. There is a lot of debate as to whether someone's personality and "lot in life" is tied to supposedly "winning the genetic lottery" or if there is much more to it. There are others that say that while some genetic precursors exist, the environment and people that do (or do not) surround a person has a larger effect. This report shall explore that topic using scholarly sources that are from different authors and from all points-of-view.
The Theory of Personality
The field of personality theory is quite complex and ever-evolving. There are six primary components that make up the personality theory debate. These pillars are nature vs. nurture, the unconscious, the view of self, development, motivation and maturation. The first three of those six are the basic components that all people have with their personality and the latter three describe how personality evolves and changes over the year. Nature vs. nurture in particular is quite controversial because even psychologists differ greatly on whether genetics (nature) or environment (nurture) play the bigger or sole role in one or more of the main outcomes of people's lives. While genetics surely plays a large part in many respects, environment and conditioning surely mean a great deal as well.
Building Blocks of Personality
Nature vs. Nurture
When it comes to the basic parts of personality and how they form, one has to speak of nature vs. nurture. The basic idea behind nature is that many traits and/or personality quirks or a person are determined by genetic sequences and heredity. The idea of nurture is that people are basically a "blank slate" when they are born and that how they develop through life is determined by who and what they are exposed to and when. The research regarding this dichotomy has been wide-ranging and far-reaching. One major study on the subject assessed the role of shared environments when it came to academic achievement and verbal intelligence (Daw, Guo & Harris, 2015). Other research has been much more basic and has focused on more baseline concepts like intelligence and general cognitive abilities. The general finding of the latter research states that the "the counter-intuitive finding that most heritable abilities are the most culture-dependent abilities sheds a new light on the long standing nature-nurture debate of intelligence" (Kan, Wicherts, Dolan & Van Der Maas, 2013).
The Unconscious
The basic definition of the unconscious when it comes to psychology are the processes that sort of operate and exist underneath the proverbial surface. The unconscious is the home for memories and thoughts like prior-learned tasks, dreaming (both day-dreaming and while one sleeps) and intuition. Recent research has made the study of the unconscious quite useful. For example, some research has used the activity and presence of the unconscious to aid in the detection of lies (Reinhard, Greifeneder & Scharmach, 2013). Other research reveals that the unconscious can guide and shape our decisions in ways that a person may not be aware of. For example, it is asserted by some that the appearance of an angry face can modulate our decisions (Almeida, Pajtas, Mahon, Nakayama & Caramazza, 2013). The point is that while our immediate level of consciousness obviously affects our lives in demonstrable ways but the same can be said of the unconscious.
View of Self
Regardless of whether one calls it self-esteem, self-image or other terms that exist, one's view of self is a very important and integral part of what makes up a person's personality. Obviously, someone who has a poor self-image is going to behave and act in a way that reflects that and a person who has a very strong and positive self-image will do the same. There is little debate that environment plays a huge part in how view of self does or does not develop. For example, an adolescent who has just immigrated to a new country and is going to a new school is potentially going to have a very fragile view of self. Of course, the events and happenings that shaped the child's life prior to the move will make a difference. However, being...
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