Personality

Contrasts between Nature and Nurture

The psychology towards personality “is made up of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that make a person unique. In addition to this, personality arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life.” Research has shown that the personality is processes influenced biologically which brings in the nature nurture debate:
 The reason why this has been debated is because many researchers say personality is driven through nature; this term means that your personality or characteristics are inherited through genes. This is argued by other researchers who claim that personality is made from nurture which means that your personality is made through the environment and life experiences.The terms nomothetic and idiographic can be used to describe nature and nurture. The term “nomothetic” comes from the Greek word “nomos” meaning “law”.  Psychologists who adopt this approach are mainly concerned with studying what we share with others this describes nature. The term “idiographic” comes from the Greek word “idios” meaning “own” or “private”. Psychologists interested in this aspect of experience want to discover what makes each of us unique describing nurture. Both the nomothetic and idiographic have a similarity which is they both try to explain the makeup of one’s personality. The nomothetic approach explains that a person’s personality is inherited and concentrates on genetics where as the idiographic approach states that personality is developed due to the conditions of the environment a person is in and how that develops there personality. The other difference is that nomothetic approach says that the personality is fixed but the idiographic approach suggests that personality is open to changes and that it does not stay fixed due to an experience that might change the person’s personality.




Summary of My Results from the BBC Big Personality Test

After taking the personality test on the BBC website, I have gained the following results:

Openness: 4

Conscientiousness: 6.9

Extroversion: 3.6

Agreeableness: 4.2

After reviewing my results, I agree with my score for openness because it states I am likely to get distracted and be prone to daydreaming, this does usually happen as I get easily distracted by others and tend to day dream. It also mentions that I am imaginative which I also agree with because I always think of new ideas- even if they are not always the right ones! However on the contrary I disagree with my score on conscientiousness, extroversion and neuroticism. Reason being is I feel as though as if iIam not as organised as I would like to be because I leave work to last minute and get distracted by things in my social life too much. . I agree with extroversion and agreeableness because I do generally look at life positively furthermore I enjoy meeting new people and i am considerate to people and prefer to work in a team rather then independently.  (BBC, 2011) 


ConclusionI think that nature is dominant towards the nurture and it would win the debate because majority of offspring have similar traits to their producers for example, a father might be into sport and played when he was young so might his child be doing the same, or another example being the father may had hear on his head when he was young but now he doesn’t and the son’s hair is now falling out as he is reaching his mid thirties. And for experiences shaping someone’s personality, this is possible for example I may see some one die and my personality may change but the same can occur to my family member but it has not been opened to them as they have not been exposed to the similar situation.


References

Simpson, M. (2011) PowerPoint Presentation(Week 9)

Clake, R. (2010) How to: Improve staff communication