“No, we’re pretty much done. This is who we are.”

A few weeks back in a Grade 12 Health class, we were discussing how personality and character evolve over time, and how the role one plays in relationships likewise changes as you learn more about yourself and how the world around you reacts to your decisions. We were met with a group of students who staunchly defended:

“No, who we are is who we are. It doesn’t change.”

Through the gift of hindsight glasses, I could only smile, remembering the lad I once was upon high school graduation and comparing him to the lad I’ve become. It then also got me thinking to how much others feel their personalities are set, unable to be molded or influenced by others they encounter and experiences they survive.

The question of what factors influence our personalities is one of the great debates psychologists, archaeologists, biologists and other -ogists continue to wrestle over today. How much of who you are, who your children are, can be attributed to nurture, nature or free will?

In teaching 8th grade social studies once upon a time, I taught a trimester on identity. We first went through 17 factors of nurture (your environment) that could influence who you are. Some of these factors included birth order, gender, Third Culture Kid-dom, geography, peer pressure, parenting styles, wealth, class, media. For each we read multiple articles, we did self-studies and analysis and we looked at how much of ourselves we could attribute to our nurture (my son was one of my students at that time…he was thrilled at these exercises).

But I saved the best topic for last.

Nature. Your genes. The sum total of all the physical, emotional and personality traits accumulated by your ancestors that have been passed down to you. Most of the research we looked at pointed to nature being the most important factor, if not the only factor, that impacts who you are. Basically, your future has been preordained at birth. Sure, if you were raised in a closet and starved of basic necessities, it might impact the final version of you, but aside from being raised in utter depravity, who you were born is who you will become. Born a Balkan princess or a Danish duke or a Thai genius or a Lithuanian angel or a Darwinian devil – how you started determined how you’d finish.

My 8th grade students felt betrayed. One said, “So wait…if you knew nature played the only role, why did you start with all the others.”

Why? Because I don’t believe it. I can’t. I’ve seen too many examples of people who have fundamentally changed themselves over time.

Yes, nature might set your predisposition. Nurture might give you some leanings in certain directions. But ultimately, you have free will, the choice to determine how you react to stimuli and events as they arise. You still get to play a role in your personality.

Not all agree with me. Such is life. Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky believes that free will is an illusion and that neurobiology and evolutionary factors determine who you are, that it’s amusing if you feel you control your fate.

From a parenting standpoint, this theory scares me. If this is true, then parenting choices are irrelevant. Nothing I did/do/will do matters. The only factor that mattered was the genetic soup I passed down to my kids. Imagine if this was true how different parent teacher conferences would be…instead of conversations around student choices, we would instead just have conversations about ancestors, hereditary and the history of mankind. And probably just shrug our shoulders a lot.

Currently on No Stupid Questions, psychologist Angela Duckworth and tech/sports executive Mike Maughan are discussing The Big Five Personality Inventory. For the Big Five Personality traits – extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism – they’re looking at each trait, one at a time, and looking at why and how we all fall across the continuum on these traits. Some friends and I took their 5-minute inventory for each of the traits and then had some spirited chats about how we’d changed over time, and how much these traits have been immutable. I recommend you and your family take some time to play with this conversation – might lead to more questions than answers, but lessthenone, still a fun conversation.

On the free will debate, Maughan shared an axiom from his sister – I act as though I do have free will and that others don’t. It gives me full responsibility for my decisions and gives other people a break. They’re always doing the best they can. An Option B is out of their control.

Not a bad way to go through life. At least, a more empathetic one.

So, weeks after that initial Grade 12 Health conversation, my initial reaction to the cohort’s conviction of impertinence has weakened a bit. They do have a point (at least a point that Sapolsky would sanction). But it’s a point I choose to not believe.

And where do you stand? For yourself? For your children?

Are you pretty much done?

Eric Burnett
MS/HS Principal