Personality Development With Environmental and Biological Changes, Research Paper Example

It is common to find that teenagers in today’s society behave differently from young adults or middle adults in the same society. A person grows up and realizes that life has a lot of responsibilities when one has reached the age of twenty to thirty. If a person lived carelessly or partying every time, the person takes a look at the environment where work, marriage or relationship and childrearing takes center stage.

According to the developmental perspective on personality, it has been noted that as a child, a person depends on the parents to provide everything so the child lives a life that is care-free. As the person extends to being a teenager, the person has a lot of activities going on in the person’s life that the person will develop personality traits that will show the person wants to fit in with the society. Teenagers are more neuroticistic as compared to adults and young children. Teenagers also tend to depend so much on their parents for almost everything to ensure their upkeep. These high school students do not see the logic of thinking first before acting; they explore while meeting new people and they are rebellious to almost all the decisions made either by their parents or their teachers regarding life. When this teenager has reached the age of 21-24, the person starts to visualize the future. The person realizes that years are passing by and the person is not getting younger but older. This simple fact makes a person get a job that can sustain the person throughout college. The person also realizes that the parents are getting older and that they can not work as much as they did when the person was young so the person takes the responsibility to take good care of the parents by working twice as hard as the parents did. At the age of thirty to forty, a person now thinks about settling down with a wife and kids. The personality of such a person will have changed drastically for the better to accommodate the change in environment and also the age factor where one has to behave like an adult and not a kid.

The purpose of this paper is to make the argument that personality changes with the environmental and biological changes. This means that whatever one went through when one was young; when the person gets older, the person has to take control of his or her life. This means that if a child was molested by his/her parents during childhood, the person does not need to be neuroticistic or be an introvert because of the past mistakes of the parents. The person needs to take responsibility of his or her life because the environment is changing at a very fast rate and the person is also growing up to be a person who many young people will depend on for sound advice and guidance. It has been reported that men and women vary in personality traits as they are growing up or getting older and also as they are taking up responsibilities in life. Women in today’s changing society have developed personality traits of ambition and also openness. These traits have lead to women getting involved in gender equality unions where women want the same rights as men in the society. Women are also leaders in some institutions where they give their views on different matters and people respect their intelligence.

It has been discovered that the difference of personality traits among individuals with the constant change in the environment leads to every one having his or her own purpose in the work place, in the whole society, and in the family and also in life. The norms that guide people are the ones that make every one different in terms of personalities and lifestyles. However, there are three most important domains in the society that often undergo a lot of changes when a person is a young adult or has reached middle adulthood. These social role domains are; work, partnership or marriage and parenting. As Erik Erikson reported in the theory of personality development; an adult gets a job so as to consolidate an identity, people get married for intimacy purposes and child rearing is for the purpose of generativity. It is uncommon for every one to get work, get married or start nurturing children at the same age. This is because people have different norms, cultures and principles but at one point in life, all these people settle for the three social domains that change their personalities. According to “Set like Plaster or Persistent Change?” (Srivastava et al, 2003), it is reported that there are five personality traits that change with age and also the environment of a person. These traits are; conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion.

Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness has been associated with working, work commitments and also work’s performance. This is where a person puts all the focus in achieving one’s financial goals and a person has to think and act responsibly in order to save for the future. Conscientiousness also applies to when one is developing a stable romantic relationship that can lead to marriage (Neyer, 2002). A person acts in a manner that shows that the person is committed to making the relationship work for a long period of time. This means that a person will only commit to one partner and find ways to solve problems that arise in relationship or marriage. A man or a woman is supposed to give valid and reliable solution when financial or relationship problems arise and for people to be able to do this, they need to be conscientious and not take things for granted because there is no one who can help them solve these kind of problems in their lives. It has also been reported that conscientiousness increase more at younger ages as compared to the older ages. This however does not change between men and women. This means that both men and women have a stable rate of change of conscientiousness as the age progresses.

Agreeableness

Agreeableness has been associated with parenting for many people. It has been reported that parents or people who are giving birth between the ages of 20-30 has high rates in agreeableness. This is because, the age of giving birth and also nurturing dependent kids tend to make the parents more agreeable to a lot of things. This meant that the kids had the freedom to act or say what they wanted just as long as the parents guided them. It has been reported that women have higher rates in the trait of agreeableness as compared to men because the women connect at a certain higher level with their kids as compared to the men. The rate of agreeableness for parents reduces slowly at the age of forty when their kids have grown up and are less independent (Lang, Luedtke & Asendorpf, 2003).

Neuroticism

It has been reported that neuroticism declines greatly when people became older and the gender also matters. The women decline in neuroticism very slowly throughout adulthood while the men decline modestly and eventually it disappears. As teenagers, both male and female have high levels of neuroticism due to the constant change in the environment and the need to fit in with the young society.

Openness

When teenagers are going to school or to social functions, they are often secretive in their endeavor and it is difficult to know what one is going through because teenagers like to keep their problems for themselves (John & Paulhus, 2003). This is the reason why most teenagers commit suicide because they do not trust any one with their problems and the same reason makes grown men and women in the society attend therapy sessions because they feel like they can tell professional psychiatrists (who are strangers) their problems and also achievements. It has been reported that men have a higher rate of openness as they approach early adulthood while women have a low rate of openness throughout their adulthood. However, the men decline sharply in openness when they reach the ages of 50-80 while the women maintain the rate of openness.

Extraversion

Extraversion in men increase slightly through early and middle adulthood while that of women decreased in throughout adulthood (Twenge, 2002). This is the sole reason why many women than the men stay at home looking after the kids and taking good care of their husbands while most of the men have more than one mistress even after marriage. The women focus on nurturing their children and they have outgrown all the activities they did when they were teenagers. Their social lives have moved closer to their families than wanting to meet new people and forming lasting relationships with them.

In general, it has been discovered that young adults of 20-23 years of age move out of their parents’ house and find their own places. This means that a person has to be responsible and take care of the things that are going to make one’s life better without necessarily depending on the parents or any one. This also means that a person has to develop a relationship which is long lasting and one that can lead to marriage. With freedom comes responsibilities, this means that when a person moves out of the parents’ house, the person has the freedom to do whatever the person wants. The person can leave and come home whenever the person wants, the person can bring any one home without any one questioning the person. However, the disclaimer in being free do whatever one feels like is that when the person has kids, the issue of living life on a fast lane has to stop because the kids and also the wife will need a father figure in the house and also a man that comes home early to spend some quality time with the wife and kids. A person has to be the one giving advice to the kids and also guiding them on the values and principles of co-existing peacefully with each other.

References

John, O. P. & Paulhus, D. L. (2003). Self-enhancement has more than one dimension: Evidence for distinct agentic and communal biases in self evaluation. 285(5), 648-650.

Lang, F. R., Luedtke, O. & Asendorpf, J. B. (2003). Validity and psychometric equivalence of the German version of the Big Five Inventory in young, middle-aged and old adults. Diagnostica, 47, 111–121.

Srivastava S., Oliver P., Potter J. J. Et al (2003). Personality and Social Psychology. University of Berkeley, California: American Psychological Association, Inc.

Twenge, J. M. (2002). Birth cohort changes in extraversion: A cross-temporal Meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 735–748.