Finding the real you

Personality and what’s the Real You?

Personality like many things in life is sort of concrete and can be difficult to define at times. The basic definition is the relatively stable characteristics that are enduring and distinctive which means it separates people from the crowd.  Psychologists that study personalities try to analyze why people act differently to different situations such as why one person acts shy when they first meet a stranger or while some people are just natural and funny and be themselves.  Some scientists believe that this is genetically engraved and that people don’t have much control over this. Other psychologists believe that it’s the environment has a significant say in the way people act.  The truth is that personality is a multi dimensional topic and requires pieces from various theories because everyone is unique. One theory is the psychodynamic perspective which was discovered by Sigmund Freud. This theory basically states that personality merely exists on the surface and to find someone true personality you have to dig deep in mind. Psychologists who favor this approach believe that personality is an unconscious process, or that the individuals are not aware that they conceited or confident. He was known for his controversial theory that young boys have a sexual attraction to their mother, maybe he was referring to himself with his romantic relationship with his mother who was 20 years younger than his father. A theory about the unconscious mind that makes somewhat sense is when people are having a conversation and calls someone they know a different name. For example, if a woman broke up with her boyfriend and got a new boyfriend and calls her current boyfriend her ex boy friend name it could mean that he is still in her thoughts. Freud also believes that dreams hold important motifs in behavior.  He also believed that personality can be constructed into layers like an ice berg. The part that is buried far below the water is the id or the unconscious aspect. A good example will be children because a lot of time they will act on pleasure without thinking about the end result much. If people would have a strong id personality than this would be a very scary place to live.  People would act on natural impulses rather than conforming to society norms.  The ego is nice to have because it helps people realize reality and help conform to society norms. For example, a lot of people realize that they can’t have their sex and aggression levels high and unmanaged and when they let it go than it usually lead to crimes like rape for one.  Last, the superego also referred as the conscious aspect is the moral decider.  It decided what is right and what is wrong.  A lot of psychologist didn’t follow Freud’s unconscious theory and a psychologist that was heavily against it was Alfred Adler.  He believed that people were motivated by purposes and goals to achieve something in life.  He also believes that people had the ability to be aware of what’s going on in their life and to consciously monitor their day to day events.  He also believed that people try to compensate for things they don’t have. For example, a person that tries to be superior may being doing it for their own insecurities because they will feel better about themselves by bringing other people down. This theory was known as individual psychology, in which states that people are motivated by purposes and to attain goals.  When people attempt to overcome their insecurities this is known as compensation.  When psychologists ignore the unconscious mind they tend to look at the environment more when determining personality, and this is known as the behavior approach. They believe that you can only determine personality by what you see on the outside surface.  For an example, if someone is shy, work hard, and are motivated to achieve something, this is  apart of their personality. This theory was founded by an early psychologist named BF Skinner. He also believed that a person personality can change due to the stress in the environment, so he believed that personality was never consistent.  So a person that is shy can be shifted to someone that is aggressive and out going, and a person that is out going can be shifted into a shy personality all due to their environment. If a person is giving a positive reinforcement for a particular behavior, than it is more likely that it will come up again in the future. A different approach from Freud and Skinner’s theory is the humanist approach discovered by Carl Roger. This approach is a less pessimistic view, and finds the good in humans and believes that humans have the freedom to choose their own destiny.  The central theme in Roger’s approach is self concept which is an individual’s view of their own abilities, behavior, traits, and personality. If a person has a distorted self concept than most likely they will be awkward to hang around and associate with.  When analyzing self concept Rogers talked about distinguishing yourself between the real self and the ideal self. The ideal self is the type of person that we would like to be. If a person has a large conflict between their real self and the type of person that they would like to be than the more awkward or maladjusted they will act. To correct this we should try to focus more on our real self and develop a positive view on it and stop caring about what other people want or expect of us and try to have more positive experiences in our everyday lives.  Another way we can help develop a more positive view of our real self is by a concept known as unconditional positive regard.  This term can be defined by being accepting of different individuals regardless of their behavior which is kind of hard to do.  When a person is being rude, aggressive, or disrespectful, as weird as this sounds they still need support and to be loved.  This doesn’t mean to hug someone after hey punch you, but more like “I don’t like the way you are acting but I still care about you and respect you as a person.”

That´s not cool .com

Socialisation - Is it all that important?

            Socialization and is it all that important?

Socialization is extremely critical for human beings, without it life would be dull. In 1938 it was an unfortunate but true case study of this.  A girl named Anna was born to a mentally impaired woman that lived with her father. She was sent countless of places but was then returned home due to financial restraints. She was then forced into the attic and was given only enough milk to live on and lived there until she was five. She wasn’t given no affection, no smiles, no hugs, or anything else, just coldness. Luckily, social workers saved the girl and sociologist Kingsley Davis went to see the girl immediately once he heard of the tragedy.  The girl was completely unresponsive, he reported and she did not laugh nor speak. However, with some help and guidance the girl did learn how to walk, speak a little, and even care for herself.  However, she died at the young age of 10.  This is an example of how lack of socialization can harm someone both physically and mentally. The term socialization refers to the way humans adapt to their surroundings and learn their culture. Unlike animals that behavior is biologically programmed, humans learn and adopt over time. Social experience and interacting with people is what helps forms an individual’s personality or an individual’s consistent pattern such as emotions, thoughts, and behavior. Animals generally tend to act similar such as a cat. A cat in America will usually act the same as a cat in Egypt, but the same can’t be applied to humans. We build a personality it just doesn’t come automatically to us, and we build it by our surroundings but as the case I mentioned earlier, without socialization a personality doesn’t form. In Anna case it is defiantly clear that humans depend on other people to not only mature physically, but mentally. About a century ago it was believed that people was born with certain instincts that would form personality and behavior.  An example is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution that led people to think this. The US economic system led some people to believe that some behaviors just occurred “naturally,” such as some people are born criminals, or women tend to think more emotionally while men think more rationally. People also used this thinking for centuries to justify their “ethnocentric” view on society. They claimed that members of a technologically inadequate society were not as biologically evolved as they were so they were viewed as being less human. Why not exploit others if they seem to be less evolved and not as human as us? You can obviously see the flaw in this. In the twentieth century a psychologist who helped explained behavior clearer is known as John B Watson, and developed the theory of behaviorism. This refuted the theory mentioned above and stated that behavior was not something that people are born with, but more learned by their surroundings. He also stated that people around the globe are equally human beings, just they share different cultures and that behavior can be correlated to not nature, but more with nurture.  However, that does not mean that biology does not play any part of behavior.  Most people usually share biological traits with their parents such as height and hair color, and their parents genetic makeup could influence their intelligence and artistic talents such as art or music. But, as again it deals with socialization, and individual can’t develop a personality without interacting so children tend to pick up habits from their parents through years of socialization. Also, it’s interesting to note that people brains can’t fully develop if they didn’t utilize it when they were a child. So yes, it’s quite important to get mysterious games and puzzles for your children so you can help them develop a more elastic brain.  So avoiding people is not good for numerous of reasons. An interesting and classic study was conducted by psychologist Harry and Margaret Harlow using monkeys.  It would be illegal to use human beings for a study like this. Since monkeys show the closest correlation to human beings than they were used for this experiment. The experiments included testing monkeys in various environments and comparing the results to one another.  When a baby monkey was placed in complete isolation (except for food and nutrients) for six months they reported some deformities in their development. They found that when they returned to their group that they were extremely fearful and subservient. They then placed a baby monkey in cage with an “artificial mother,” and this mother was made of wire and had a wooden head, and a feeding tube for a nipple. These monkeys also showed some deformities because when they were placed back in their group they were unable to interact properly.  However, for the last experiment a baby monkey was placed in a cage with an artificial mother made of “soft cloth,” than the monkey held on to the artificial mother very closely and show very little sociological deformities. So what was the difference between the artificial mothers? Well, with the hard wired one the monkey was unable to hold on to the mother because it was rough and didn’t give back. However, with the soft artificial mother the baby monkey held on to it very deeply because it was soft more like the way a mother is and  it developed a bond with it. So, this experiment confirms how important it is for infants to receive love and hugs so that they can develop properly. It’s also interested to note that the psychologists studied that the infants can recover from as much as three months of isolation, but around six months the behavior was noted to be “irreversible.” Like the story I mentioned earlier with Anna, after ten days the sociologist visited her she showed immediate improvement and even smiled. A year later she show some slow but steady progress showing some interest in objects and people and even teaching herself how to walk. About six months later she could take care of herself such as feeding and even played with toys. Even though she showed drastic improvement by the age eight she showed the mental development of that of a two year old, and at the age ten she died of a blood deformity. This is evidence that some things are irreversible but this statement can easily be argued.  As noted earlier she was born to a mentally disabled mother so that could have stunted her developing process even greater and the mystery remains unsolved even to this day.  A more up to date case of child isolation took placed when a California girl was tied up in a dark garage in a basement. The girl name was Genie and when she was saved at the age of thirteen she weighed only about sixty pounds. She had the mental capacity to that of a one year old, and her language remains that of a young child. Today she lives in a home of mental disabled adults. This is evidence that socialization is crucial for the development of humans and animals for that matter. Human beings can sometimes recover from damage but to what extent is the answer, and I will assume it will remain the same because every individual is different.