birthtypes?

[mustachio]

people often say that a child's personality can be shaped. that they are easily influenced. that the first years of a human being are crucial. that we learn faster as children.

so i was thinking: would you say children are born with a specific type? is it possible that your environment has an influence on what type you end up as an adult? could children be born with a limited set of possible ego functions which would grow and form a individual's personality depending on their immediate environment shortly after birth?

what do you think?

[implied]

that's interesting. i sort of do think people are born with certain tendencies and types. my mom tells me that my brother took karate and martial arts classes and came back with these reports like, the child just "wouldn't fight." very non-hostile person. he still is. i was an avid reader as a child and i still am. another brother of mine would put himself to bed at the same time every night. he'd get his pyjamas on and sit on the side of the bed and tell my mom exactly when he was sleepy. he is still just as disciplined and organized as he was as a child, apparently.

i'm inclined to think that even though everyone, say, within my family, has grown and changed somewhat, their general patterns are about the same. (sorry for using my own family as a reference here, they are some of the few people outside of some friends i have known since kindergarten who i know inside and out for very long periods. god, isn't this why social sciences and psychology are such a pain?)

i find that within my family the types have been relatively stable and fixed, if you look at the big picture. there can be some (relatively) small deviations from that, like in crises, major health problems, mental health problems, financial crises, etc. but generally, everyone stays the same at the core.

[Expat]

I think types are already defined at a very early age, maybe by the time you're 2 or 3. From what I have observed in a couple of children, I'd guess that the temperament is clear first, then the functions.

But whether they are defined already at birth, or during the first 1 or 2 years, I wouldn't know.

[flower]

I think they are defined at birth, and the environment shapes you from there to make two people born the same type become different individuals.

Its a fact that children are different at birth in some ways, eg in the amount they cry generally and how they respond to/what their threshold is to high or low temperatures.
I think its probably true that the things in socionics are defined at birth aswell, given how consistent peoples personality generally is all through life, even though the environment people live in changes quiet a lot. In the earlier years of ones life the environment certainly does have a greater effect on someone, but the personality is usually consistent tracing back to the very beginning.

Given the family and home environnment is probably the most influential to very young children, it should follow that a couple of introverts should shape a new born almost always to become an introvert, but in real life this dosent appear to happen, probably because a person becomes an extrovert because they are genetically predispossed to become an extrovert because thats the way their brain was born to work. They can be environmentally influence to become less extroverted but the base line is set at birth.

[Rocky]

If you look at different children at birth, children growing up in the households by the same parents, and identical twins reared apart at birth growing up in completely different places, then it's only common sense that the larger part of the way a person acts is inborn.

[Creepy-Diana]

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[BLauritson]

I agree that type is decided at birth. If it was purely environment that determined personality, then all children would be born psychologically blank. Environment can force you to adapt to survive, but it can't force you to prefer your naturally weaker areas.

[Not A Communist Shill]

This must be the third time I've cited this now , but Steven Pinker in a book quoted some research where genetic factors cause 50% of the variation between personalities, and environmental factors only 5%. The remaining 45% is unknown, but is reckoned to be linked to the development of each embryo in the womb (e.g. chance variation in blood supply, spurts in growth etc.) this seems like a environmental factor if true, but it is independent of the 5% attributed to environmental factors because external factors have no direct control (e.g. things which can be readily observed and manipulated in order to experiment and record data).

So most of your personality is determined upon conception, a large portion during embryonic development, and a small amount on environment. (This makes sense, because humans alive today have survived past natural selection, so the variance in personality before birth has humans (largely) ready for their environment).

[CuriousSoul]

This must be the third time I've cited this now , but Steven Pinker in a book quoted some research where genetic factors cause 50% of the variation between personalities, and environmental factors only 5%. The remaining 45% is unknown, but is reckoned to be linked to the development of each embryo in the womb (e.g. chance variation in blood supply, spurts in growth etc.) this seems like a environmental factor if true, but it is independent of the 5% attributed to environmental factors because external factors have no direct control (e.g. things which can be readily observed and manipulated in order to experiment and record data).

Usually in these studies the part of the enviroment that can be controlled is the shared enviroment. I.e. The extent to which the siblings resemble their parents because they were raised by them rather than adopted by strangers at birth, for example a bit of googling brought this comment:


interested to know what you are reading about parental influence; most of the empirical research shows that unless your parents are actively awful they have very little influence on the kind of person you turn into, well they do, but only through their genes, which are the main determinant of character followed by peer group/school envrioment/heighbourhood. Shared/parental enviroment seems to have little influence, indeed in split twin studies, where identical twins are raised in different parental enviroments, there appears to be no influence of shared enviroment on personality at all.

This is interesting because it is quite counterintuitive, usually people tend to think that class, income, education level of the parents should have a major influence on the children, but generally this appears not to be the case. Genes on the other hand do have a huge influence...

On the other hand these studies are complicated by many confounding factors, couples who adopt children tend to be mainly of solid middle class background so you usually do not get the full range of variation one would ideally like to have for research purposes. It is also worth keeping in mind that the shared enviroment, i.e. the same parents etc, is often very different enviroment for each child. Maybe to lend an example from socionics, for example, the parents are from the same quadra for one of the siblings but the opposite quadra for the others.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Yes, they do their research on twins measuring environmental variables - this is how they attributed the 45% unknown variance in personality to internal factors such as embryonic development - the genes were a constant, and the environmental factors were measurable. (I think there's different kinds of twins etc. too - e.g. whether they created from the same egg but different sperm, same egg, same sperm, or different eggs at the same time (in which case they technically aren't twins, if I remember).

[CuriousSoul]

Then there is, of course, the intriguing issue of free will. Basically the 45% simply means the part of the variation that cannot be currently explained. It would also include all the seemingly random - encouraging or depressing - experiences every one of us gathers in the course of our lives - as well as the decisions we choose to make based on them.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Free will doesn't come into it - when comparing (a sample of) identical twins, you'd expect free will choices to average out (i.e. it's treated as a constant for every individual) The 45% can't be 'obvious' environmental factors, like peers, parents, bullying, society etc. - it must occur somehwhere between the fertilising of the egg and birth. This area is very difficult to observe, as you can imagine - the 'enviornmental factors' occur on a microscopic level.

[Republicus]

There is another option, choice. We may choose our type, although we would be unaware of it.

Of the choices between it being environmental or birth, it could be both. For instance, if function are indeed related to brain hemisphere we could be born with a more limited set to chose/develop from than the full 16 type.

[kopyk]

I say its inborn. I have no clear rationale in my head for it right now but it makes sense to me, intuitively. What do you think, @silke @Kenneth Chesney?