i have this group debate next week and my topic is "Our environment shapes our Personality", and im suppose to give a positive answer (means yes), reason and explanation, and i have to go against this good debater, and 2 smart geniuses (but of course ure the best debater Cinders!), and i bet i cant stand a chance!. Anyone have any suggestions? Please =O?

I have some personal examples:
- If I weren't bullied through every year of school I would be more confident.
- If I hadn't watched my cousin play gory games at a young age I might not be able to cope as well with blood.

well so you mean out enviroment as in what knifey was talking about situations around us or is it the enviroment such as our direct home e.g. whether you live in a working class or middle class family
either way i think this has been pretty much proven pycologically although there always exeptions i'm sure a bit of research on google like typing in "home enviroment effects" or "home eniroment pycology" or something along those lines would bring up studies

but like i said i'm little uncertain on what exactly the topic means maybe if you give me a few points i can embelish on them or debate back against you e.g. on knifey's points

bullying doesn't always make someone less confident, some people simply ignore it, become violent against it or say it makes them a stronger person because they won't take it later on in life, so if everyone has difference effects to it does it directly affect your long time personality really? won't it just affect your feelings and view to that person or that type of person not change your core personality

i would also say your gut reaction to well... guts is not really a personality trait it is well a reflex. There are also certain things that people will have a bad reaction no matter how much they are exposed to them for example my dad's girflfriend is in the emergency services, she goes out on amubulence calls, her speciality is reaction to chemical spills and so she has seen a lot of nasty things but she still gips at the thought or sight of flem

I agree, for pretty much everyone it does. Like debs said, our homelife has some effect on our personalities.

of course it does coz u could be nervous what ever and when u are british it does lol coz when there is something or someone to moan about we do:)

Yup what knifey said. pretty much the people and activities going on around you. I know for one, that judging may affect your personality, but that's all i can think of :S

There is also research being done about how different cultures have different personality traits that are dominant.
These are really academic and hard to read but here's a couple studies on the subject.. maybe you could sift through and find something useful.

link

link

Here's an article about the big five personality traits they are talking about in those studies-
link

It doesn't matter if you lived in a poor area it doesn't mean you will automatically poor.

Hmmm... I have a new theory: a traumatic event (e.g. bullying) can push someone either way (negative or positive outcome) depending on their original personality traits.

So in other words, the bullying put my low self-asteem into hyperdrive.

how is being poor a personality traist dsdsdrsf?

and it depends what poor area you mean, if you were born in to a poverty family in a third world country then yes it does mean you will be poor
if you mean growing up in a "poor" or working class area in somewhere like america then no it doesn't mean you will be poor but chances are you probably will still be working class when your older

interesting theory knifey

I'm on a yes/no here. Affects our personality in which way? The same as the people we are around?

Knifewrench noted in his first comment about being bullied and not having much confidence, i was bullied a lot for a very long time, almost every school day for maybe a year was the most severest (both words and physical) but it pulled an opposite effect on me where i can easily leave the house in purple stockings or whatever and be the most confident happy person out there. It let me not let peoples opinions bother me.

And i'm a fan of stupid violence, violent sports but i'm not a violent person.

On the flipside, i have been around a lot of creative people, seen a lot of creative stuff which has made me be an open minded person.

Thx Guys^_^ (And Gals o_O)

How did your debate go?

Unfortunately it does but I admire people who have the courage to stand up and say they're different

Can i be the exception?

I grew up pretty roughly, around rough, angry people who hated work and didn't have any ambition, most of which didn't go on to college. Now, i'm pretty optimistic about the future- i've worked hard at school, have lots of friends, a good family, a awesome boyfriend, call it corny- but i reckon my life is going pretty well so far. But most people would of expected me to be amy whinehouse or something, sipping beer from a old second hand sofa and watching crappy reality tv.
-pandawinx. :)

I do believe that society can have an effect on who an individual becomes. However, it is very possible for someone to truly be himself despite surroundings.

While this is an interesting debate, the question was asked to assist with an in-person debate that hellgirl223 was having two years ago. We still haven't heard how that went. We may never hear how it went; it was two years ago, and who remembers details of debates one had years in the past?

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Environment refers to everything outside of oneself; everything that surrounds us is our environment. Environment shapes personality. The only alternative to the environment shaping our personality is that our personalities are somehow innate, either determined by fate, astrology, or our genetic makeup. While those may have some effect on our personality, it is definite that our environment has at least as much effect.

As we experience things, those experiences are stored as memories. Those memories are then called upon to help us make decisions, yes, but also determine how we react to stimuli.

A simple example:

You are going out on a date, to see a movie and have a nice dinner. On your way to meet your date, your car's tire blows out, and you have to change your tire in the rain. The spare tire is also flat. You try to call your date, but there's no cell phone reception there. You have to wait an hour for the tow truck to arrive, and then you have to pay $100 to get the car towed to a service station because the check you wrote to AAA bounced and they didn't notify you. From the service station, you are able to call your date, and your date has to come pick you up there. While you wait, several sleazy greasy men make lewd suggestions to you until you decide to wait out in the rain. Your date arrives, and the two of you decide to skip the movie before dinner so that you can make your reservation. You arrive three minutes late, and the restaurant has given your table to someone else, so you have to wait another twenty minutes. The food is only decent, they get your order wrong, and the wait staff keeps flirting with your date. When you go to pay for the meal, you realize that you left your wallet at the service station. You call there, but they report that no one turned it in. You spend all of dessert and the drive to the movie theater canceling all your credit cards and bank cards. Your date has to pay for both of you AGAIN, so you can see a mediocre movie that just started. You are able to find a seat way to the right in the second row, and you spend the film with your head craned up and to the left with a terrible headache, and the kids seated behind you keep kicking your seat while they're texting (complete with the message sent and message received bleeps). On your way out of the theater, you run into your date's ex, and they spend five minutes talking and smiling. Your date drives you home, shakes your hand with a wry smile, and leaves. You go up to your apartment and your roommate comes out and complains that you're dripping water on the carpet. How do you respond?

It's a trick question. No matter how you react, that reaction is determined in large part by your environment.

Either you're reacting out of how you feel from recent events (frustrated, tired, sick, angry), or you're responding because you've learned that reacting emotionally is not good for you and your relationships from past experience (observing others, or reflecting on how it went for you in the past). Either way, it's based on your experiences of your environment. One might say that a reaction does not equal a personality, and one would be correct. But a personality is reflected by the pattern of one's reactions over time. How likely are you to respond well or poorly in such situations? Do you react automatically, or respond in a measured way? Unless your response is identical no matter the circumstance, then environment (and how you've processed that environment) has determined it in large part. Even if your response to such stimuli were always identical, that could also have been affected by your environment ("my experience has shown me that my roommate is a jerk, so I will always respond to anything my roommate says with 'yeah, yeah, I know.'").

That's not even getting into the fact that we can't isolate personality from environment, because personality is only expressed through interaction with our environment. Even without taking that into consideration, environment definitely has a significant effect on personality.