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Part One Personal Development
Which has the greater effect on human development: heredity or
environment? Scholars have debated this question for years. Almost all
experts would agree, however, that the effects of your heredity cannot
be easily separated from the impact of your environment. You are a
product of the interaction between the two. Your hereditary traits affect
your functioning within your environment, and your environment
affects the development and expression of your inherited traits.
Evidence of this interaction is all around you. Look, for instance,
at the highlights that enhance the hair of some of your friends. Those
highlights may be achieved by many hours of exposure to the sun’s rays
or simply by a chemical treatment. In either case, the inherited hair color
is changed by environmental factors.
You might also consider your friends’ personal appearance. Each
friend is born with a set of physical traits (heredity). Your friends
modify their appearance to some degree with hairstyles and clothing
(environment). Still, it is difficult for them to change their appearance
very far beyond the limits set by heredity.
Your personality development is also affected by your
surroundings, 2-1. Environmental factors that influence personality
will be studied in this chapter. As shown in 2-2, you can see some of the
environmental factors that affect your life now. You can also see that the
influence of these factors will probably shift within the next fi ve years.
2-1
Your environment—all of the conditions, objects, and circumstances that
surround you—plays a major role in your personality development.