Forming Personality
Personality is an individual’s unique pattern of characteristics. These
characteristics are a blend of physical, mental, and emotional traits. Personality
is influenced by four factors – heredity, environment, culture, and self-concept.
Heredity is the transmission of traits from one generation to the next. What
traits did you inherit? Are you tall, short, brown-eyed, or blue-eyed? You may
have also inherited the potential for the way you think, feel, act, reason, or learn.
Your environment includes everything that is around you and its influence
upon you. It includes your family, your friends, and the people around you,
the air you breathe, and the water you drink. Your physical environment may
include mountains, an ocean, rivers, or desert. Your environment may be one of
poverty, wealth, or urban or country living.
Your culture is a blend of the influence of the people in your home, city,
state, and nation. In many ways, you learn to act like the people with whom you
spend most of your time. You may speak or use sayings unique to your family.
You may have noticed different accents, attitudes, or mannerisms of someone
who has just moved to your school from a different part of the country or from
outside the country.
Your self-concept includes all the beliefs you have about yourself including
a self-evaluation of your strengths and limitations. You may think of yourself as
ambitious, talented, and intelligent or lazy, unskilled, and dull. You may think of
yourself as friendly and kind or as shy and critical of others. Each of these beliefs
helps determine your self-concept. Some people are unduly hard on themselves
while others have a realistic view of themselves.
The opinions that you feel others have about you also help determine your
self-concept. If your parents believe you to be a worthwhile person, most likely you will share their belief that you are worthwhile. The opinions that other
persons significant to you portray, like your coaches, teachers, and friends, also
influence your self-concept. As you become older and more mature, you may
become less dependent on the opinions of others.
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