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Chapter 4 Notes
Chapter 4: Socializing The Individual
Section 1-Personality Development:
Nature Vs. Nurture; Inherited genetic traits vs. environment & social learning
Personality: is the sum total of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values that are characteristics of an individual. It determines how we react in specific situations. What determines personality and social behavior? -Heredity: the transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to children.
-Social environment (contact with other people)

In the 1800s beliefs of the nature point was that human behavior is instinctual. An instinct is an unchanging, biologically inherited behavior pattern. Instinctual drives were responsible for everything, such as laughing, motherhood, warfare, and even the creation of society.
John B. Watson claimed that he could take healthy infants and train them to be anything.
Sociobiology reemphasized the nature viewpoint. Sociobiology: is the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior. Religion, cooperation, competition, and envy are rooted in humans’ genetic code. Biological factors determine most of human social life.

Factors in Personality Development
Environmental factors have the greatest influence. Heredity, birth order, parents. and the cultural environment influence personality and behavior.

Heredity: characteristics that are present at birth; body build, hair type, eye color, and skin pigmentation. Include certain aptitudes. An aptitude: is a capacity to learn a particular skill or acquire a specific body of knowledge. Aptitudes are learned and inherited. Parental reinforcement may affect personality traits such as shyness, sociability, and aggression develop. Heredity provides you with biological needs, but culture determines how you meet them. Inherited characteristics limit what is possible, not determine what a person will do.

Birth Order: Personalities are also influenced by whether we have brothers, sisters, both, or neither.

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