Essay on the Cause of differences in Human Personality – It is generally believed that the following factors contribute enormously to the formation and development of human personality.
They are: biological inheritance, physical environment, culture, group experience and unique experience of the individual. These have often been reduced into only two factors namely; (i) heredity, and (ii) environment.
Can the differences in human personalities be explained by differences in heredity alone? Or, should they be explained in terms of environment? Or, in terms of both? Some have argued that heredity is more significant, while others have asserted that environment plays a dominant role in shaping different human personalities.
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This “nature-nurture” or heredity versus environment controversy is one of the most fascinating topics of inquiry in sociology. In fact, “this is one of the great problems of sociology, one of the unfinished sections on the sociological map”. There has been a great deal of work done on it.
However, sociologists, psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, statisticians and others have evinced much interest in this topic and have made considerable studies in this regard. Let us have a glimpse of some of these studies so as to find a relatively convincing answer for the perplexing issue of ‘nature-nurture’ controversy.