Nature Vs Nurture Personality Development

Personality traits come from both nature, as well as nurture, and it is no different with children. With younger children, it is relatively simple to spot key similarities between a child’s behavior and one (or both) of their parents’ personalities. A child’s personality is critically impacted through the way they are raised. Behavior is learned through the environment one experiences, and through consistent conditioning. Nurture is created from “environmental experiences” (Santrock, 18), whereas nature is “an organism’s biological inheritance” (18). While every upbringing of a child is different, every child has emotions (excluding special cases, such as Alexithymia), and every child can learn from their emotions, as well as other peoples’ emotion. John W. Santrock defines emotion as a “feeling, or affect, that occurs when a person is in a state of an interaction that is important to him or her, especially to his or her well-being” (Santrock, 301). While emotions are strengthened through personal experiences, they can also be influenced by “biological foundations” (301). Through social relationships and cultures, a person is shaped to act and behave a certain way, resulting in a “rich variety of emotions” (301). By making these relationships and learning from experience, this is nurture in the making. Nature is

This feeling of accomplishment can not only improve ones’ life, but their mental health as well, resulting in a stronger sense of positive emotion. Santrock quotes a statement from Frydenberg saying “throughout most of the life span, individuals who engage in self-regulation are better achievers and are more satisfied with their lives that their counterparts who let their external factors dominate their lives” (Santrock,