UNIT 2 DETERMINANTS OF PERSONALITY: ROLE OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 2.

1 Introduction Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One understands individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other understands how the various parts of a person come together as a whole. Effective personality typologies reveal and increase knowledge and understanding of individuals, as opposed to diminishing knowledge and understanding as occurs in the case of stereotyping. Effective typologies also allow for increased ability to predict clinically relevant information about people and to develop effective treatment strategies. 2.2 Role of Heredity in Personality Development The term "type" has not been used consistently in psychology and has become the source of some confusion. Furthermore, because personality test scores usually fall on a bell curve rather than in distinct categories, personality type theories have received considerable criticism among psychometric researchers. One study that directly compared a "type" instrument (the MBTI) to a "trait" instrument (the NEO PI) found that the trait measure was a better predictor of personality disorders. Because of these problems, personality type theories have fallen out of favor in psychology. Most researchers now believe that it is impossible to explain the diversity of human personality with a small number of discrete types. They recommend trait models instead, such as the five factor model. The Mechanics of Heredity Trait theory in psychology is an approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over time, differ across individuals (e.g. some people are outgoing whereas others are shy), and influence behavior. Heredity is the passing of traits to offspring (from its parent or ancestors). This is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to the characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through heredity, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause some species to evolve. The study of heredity in biology is called genetics, which includes the field of epigenetic.

Role of Heredity Hereditary factors that contribute to personality development do so as a result of interactions with the particular social environment in which people live." There are several personality types as Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers illustrated in several personalities typology tests, which are based on Carl Jung's school of Analytical psychology. However, these tests only provide enlightenment based on the preliminary insight scored according to the answers judged by the parameters of the test. Other theories on personality development include Jean Piaget's stages of development, Erik Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development, and personality development in Sigmund Freud's theory being formed through the interaction of id, ego, and super-ego. There is a nearly unlimited number of potential traits that could be used to describe personality. The statistical technique of factor analysis, however, has demonstrated that particular clusters of traits reliably correlate together. Hans Eysenck has suggested that personality is reducible to three major traits. Other researchers argue that more factors are needed to adequately describe human personality including humor, wealth and beauty. Many psychologists currently believe that five factors are sufficient. 2.3 Role of Environment in Personality Development "Personality" can be defined as a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations. The word "personality" originates from the Latin persona, which means mask. Significantly, in the theatre of the ancient Latin-speaking world, the mask was not used as a plot device to disguise the identity of a character, but rather was a convention employed to represent or typify that character. Personality may also refer to the patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors consistently exhibited by an individual over time that strongly influence our expectations, selfperceptions, values and attitudes, and predicts our reactions to people, problems and stress. In a phrase, personality is not just who we are, Gordon Allport (1937) described two major ways to study personality: the nomothetic and the idiographic. Nomothetic psychology seeks general laws that can be applied to many different people, such as the principle of self-actualization, or the trait of extraversion. Idiographic psychology is an attempt to understand the unique aspects of a particular individual. Physical Environment The sociologists emphasize that the personality of the individual develops in a social environment. It is in the social environment, that he comes to have moral ideas, social attitudes and interests. This enables him to develop a social 'self which is another term for personality. The important aspects of the environment are as follows: Physical Environment: It includes the influence of climatic conditions of a particular area or country on man and his living. Social Environment: The child has his birth in the society. He learns and lives there. Hence, the social environment has an important say in the personality development of the child.

Family Environment: Family is the cradle of all social virtues. The first environment, the child moves in, is his home. Here the child comes in contact with his parents and other family member his likes, dislikes, stereotypes about people, expectancies of security and emotional responses all are shaped in early childhood.

Climate and Terrain Maslow spent much of his time studying what he called "self-actualizing persons", those who are "fulfilling themselves and doing the best they are capable of doing". Maslow believes all who are interested in growth move towards self-actualizing (growth, happiness, satisfaction) views. Many of these people demonstrate a trend in dimensions of their personalities. Scarcity, Disease and Other Unfavorable Conditions
When someone firmly decides to free himself of misdirected attitudes and behaviors a strong motivation is important to succeed. However, people are often less "voluntary" in their willing and doing as we or they themselves would like them to be. In what measure can one be free to decide about a change of behavior? Not before some fundamental conditions for healthy development have been met. This can be an arduous task especially if unfavorable conditions have prevailed in the earliest stages of personality development, such as deprivation of early bonding. A successful attachment between mother and child is necessary for the child to develop its personal identity, intimacy and healthy emotions in a secure environment. Attachment (bonding) is NAD's pre- and post-natal analogue to the LAD's pre- and post-natal immune-dependence. Maternal antibodies, ingested during breast feeding, shield the child from being poisoned or infected. This support, supplied by the maternal LAD, lasts for a period of many months after birth, as long as the child is breast-fed, until its own immune system has matured sufficiently to give protection, independent of the mother's immune-support. In a similar way the emotional bond with the mother makes for a safe environment for the child to develop an identity of its own and to build its private mental immunity.

Socio-cultural Environment The cultural environment refers to certain cultural traditions, ideals, and values etc., which are accepted in a particular society. All these factors leave a permanent impression on the child's personality. The child has to play several roles like son, brother student, officer, husband, father, etc., throughout his life at rent stages of his development. Social roles may be described as process by which the co-operative behavior and communications among the society members are facilitated. Group Membership and Instructions: