Part II of Personality: Social

[tracy_d74]

Last time I looked at personality through a psychoanalytic lens. This week, Social theory is the focus. Albert Bandura, the originator, proposed that a person’s personality is the result of reciprocal determinism. WHAT? Oh, it sounds fancy, but in laymen’s terms it means that your personality is the result of the interaction between behaviors,

Comments

[bogwitch64]

Joffrey Baratheon (Song of Ice and Fire series) grows up having all his needs met, all his desires catered to. In the end, his delusions get shattered in the worst, most final way.

[tracy_d74]

Hmmm...sounds like a book I need to read.

[bogwitch64]

You REALLY need to read the series. I can't believe you haven't! You'll blow through all four of what's already there in a week.

[tracy_d74]

Well, I will put it on my June reading list. Next month's books are already picked out. (I know. I know.)

interesting....

[lloveland]

I instantly thought of Anne of Greene Gables, how she invented imaginary situations to escape reality, specifically early on in her what would be called abusive/attachment deficient childhood. I loved this quality in her

Re: interesting....

[tracy_d74]

Yes, we ALL experience cognitive dissonance. Each day we face situations that don't line up with what we claim to believe. So we either change our behaviors to fit belief or we change our belief. The approach we take has more to do with the factors underlying the situation and the environment around us than anything else. That is a lecture...at least an hour long lecture. So I won't even go into that here

out of the box

[paulwoodlin]

I had a regular string of arguments with the same neo-cons at a website, and one of them got tired of calling me un-patriotic (without result, of course) and just plain accused me of totally lacking group loyalties (he'd read enough of my posts to make such a general claim).

I said he was probably right, since I was too liberal for the church I grew up in, too conservative for my college, too intellectual for high school, too emotional for grad school; no group had ever wanted my loyalty without my making too significant personality changes.

[misha_mcg]

I'm going to ignore your question (sorry) because what you wrote kind of relates to a lecture series I've been watching about behaviorial biology. This looks at the same things - cognition, environment and behavior - and looks for the causes of these things. So, in your example, Sarah's environment has an actual effect on her very biology - on the level of DNA. That she gets everything kind of "sets" her genes and DNA and stuff in that direction and when she's past the point of change, suddenly she's the adult who grew up never experiencing want and therefore unable to deal with want.

[tracy_d74]

Ignore away. Where is this show you speak of

[misha_mcg]

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA

[tracy_d74]

Merci! I watched part of it. Very interesting!

[paulwoodlin]

Sarah is a great argument for rich people to never let their kids know they have money.

[tracy_d74]

Yep! But she would probably figure it out at some point. :o)