>> Let's talk a little bit about personality.
So when we look at personality, we define that really as the way
that a person consistently responds, right, how they feel,
how they think, how they behave, and it needs to be
that pattern of those things.
And it's a result of a continuous interplay
between biological disposition,
so kind of what you're genetically predisposed
to being, and the experience and the environment that you're in.
So if you think about a newborn,
most of their personality is going to be based
on their temperament, which is inborn, right?
It is from your genes.
It is from your biology.
It's something that you don't get a lot of choice over.
But as you grow older, as a human grows older,
their personality expands, right?
It's more elaborate, it's extended, it's refined, right?
So we go from that baby who kind of just responds
from temperament to that adult
that really has a more nuanced personality.
There are a couple of important things to think
about when we think about personality.
One of those is culture, because with culture, which is defined
as the beliefs, customs, ideas, behaviors, and traditions
of a particular society there are passed
through the generations, and that is transmitted to people
through language as well
as through the modeling of behavior.
And it defines traits and behaviors
that are considered important, desirable, or undesirable.
So that creates a set of norms and expectations.
These are the things that we want children to do
and these are what we expect from them.
And those are the things that are going to be recognized,
valued, and reinforced.
And the opposite are going to be things that may be punished
or extinguished because they're not valued.
And so that affects how your personality is expressed
across cultures.
So one of the examples that the book talked
about was the difference between individualist cultures
and collectivist cultures.
So individualist cultures really believe that things
like independence, competition,
and personal achievement are important, right?
It's kind of about the individual
and about proving yourself,
about making choices and achieving things.
And so if you see the little girl with the trophy,
that was kind of the epitome of individualism to me, like right?
Like look what I did -- I did this.
And then a collectivist culture, the values in that type
of culture is more social harmony, respectfulness,
and the group needs over individual needs.
And so I found this picture, and I'm not sure
if this was before the soccer match or after,
but this is a team that's really, you know,
a cohesive group and really functioning as a whole
versus as an individual.
And so I thought that that was kind
of representative of collectivism.
And most families are going
to have probably a mix of both of these.
Our Western society, especially here in the US,
tends to be really highly individualistic,
but families may bring some collectivism
from kind of their roots.
And especially if they are more recently immigrated
to the country, that may be even more apparent.
So families are going to have a different mixture of how much
of one they are than the other, but that's going
to really shift how personality is expressed.
And the other thing to talk
about real quickly is gender and personality.
So we have a lot of gender norms in our society.
And really we expect largely, and not even thinking about it,
very unconsciously, we expect girls and women to act one way
and boys and men to act another way.
And you know, if you look at clothing, toys,
the way we interact with children,
those all really show how integral gender norms are
in the way we behave without even realizing it.
And so if you think about masculine and feminine,
aggression, caring, all of those things tend to be associated
with one gender or the others, and so it's important to think
about how gender might also be influencing personality.
And that's it for personality.