The dance between nurture and nature continues in laboratories around the world. Most recently, a study conducted at the Berkley Campus of the University of California, discovered that researchers could make people more sensitive to inequality among others by altering their brain chemistry. This and similar studies have a lot of implications for psychiatry and other medical sciences. For those of us interested in our personalities, it fortifies some current thinking in the field.
One of the authors of the study, Ming Hsu, was quoted in the UC Berkley publication as saying, “We typically think of fair-mindedness as a stable characteristic, part of one’s personality,” said Hsu. “Our study doesn’t reject this notion, but it does show how that trait can be systematically affected by targeting specific neurochemical pathways in the human brain.”
Many of those who study personality would argue the reason some personality types are more “fair-minded” than others is evolutionary. The genes that promote such neurochemical influences more in a specific part of the population were passed down as an adaptive evolutionary advantage. Each new study suggests the consistent behaviors we call personality are at least partially determined by a roll of the genetic dice.
This study supports some biological basis for the fair-mindedness. Of course, there is so much more to be explored in this area and much of it is still in the realm of theory. But it will be interesting to keep an eye on future developments as they unfold in the science of personality.
What do you think? Were you born with your character traits or did you they appear out of your life experiences? Or did your life experiences gradually refine something that was always a part of you – like a seed that grew into something more complete? Leave a comment and let us know your opinions and thoughts.