Question

Discuss the determinants of personality.

Answer 1

The determinants of personality can best be grouped in four broad categories: biological, cultural, family, and social.

1. Biological factors

The study of the biological contributions to personality may be studied under two heads:

A) Heredity:- It refers to those factors that were determined at conception. Physical stature, facial attractiveness, sex, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are characteristics that are considered to be inherent from one’s parents.

B) Brain:- The second biological approach is to concentrate on the role that the brain plays in personality. The brain is one of the most important personality determinants. It is generally believed the father and the child adopt almost the same type of brain stimulation. Later differences are the result of the environment in which the child has grown.

2) Cultural Factors

Among the factors that influence personality formation is the culture in which we are raised, early conditioning, norms prevailing within the family, friends and social groups and other miscellaneous experiences that impact us.

3) Family Factors

Whereas the culture generally prescribes and limits what a person can be taught, it is the family, and later the social group, which selects, interprets and dispenses the culture. Thus, the family probably has the most significant impact on early personality development.

The parents play an especially important part in the person’s early development. The home environment also influences the personality of an individual. Siblings (brothers and sisters) also contribute to personality.

4) Social Factors

There is increasing recognition given to the role of other relevant persons, groups and especially organisations, which greatly influence an individual’s personality. This is commonly called the socialization process.

Socialization involves the process by which a person acquires, from the enormously wide range of behavioural potentialities that are open to him or her, those that are ultimately synthesized and absorbed.