The Origins of Identity

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Recommended: Explain the effect of nature and nurture on personality development

You got curly hair from your mother and big brown eyes from your father. But where did you get your talents and opinions? Did you learn your interest from environmental factors or was this already embedded within you? We know appearance, for the most part, is something we cannot control, but we can control what we like or dislike. These things we learn from our society shape our identity. For a better perspective, identity is the strongest influence on our personalities. We all have a deep wish to stay true to how we characterize ourselves. Any conversion we make within ourselves will depend upon our surroundings. By building off given characteristics, we can create an everlasting change within our lives. This change can be a good or a bad thing; the identity we develop depends on us. Nurture is the development of certain characteristics that was influenced by the environment. These characteristics include your favorite styles or your talents. No matter who we chose to become, we will always seek for the best. Therefore, by developing characteristics as we continue to live our lives, nurture is the ultimate cause of identity. By developing an opinion towards a certain race, for example, identity develops when the society believes in certain restrictions. In Native Son by Richard Wright, Max, a lawyer, elaborates on hatred within Caucasian’s society. As Max confirms, this hatred developed over time into the only thing Caucasians believe is the ultimate punishment: killing. On page 392, it states, “… And we say kill! Kill! But your honor, I say: Stop! Let us look at what we are doing! For the corpse is not dead! It still lives! It has made itself a home in the wild forest of our great cities… It has forgotten our language! It has d... ... middle of paper ... ...e craft ourselves from what the society can afford to give up. We cannot simply believe that we live the same life as we did when we were younger or that we lived our lives as nature attended it to be. The developments the society influences craft our lives every day. Therefore, our identity is influenced by nurture; nurture is the ultimate cause of identity. Works Cited Wright, Richard. "Book Three: Fate." Native Son,. New York: Harper & Bros., 1940. 3-504. Print. McLeod, Saul. "Skinner - Operant Conditioning." B.F. Skinner. Simply Psychology, 3 June 2011. Web. 16 Dec. 2013< http://www.simplypsychology.org/operantconditioning.html> Classics in the History of Psychology -- Skinner (1948)." Classics in the History of Psychology - - Skinner (1948). Ed. Christopher D. Green. Psych Classics, n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. .

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