Personality Type - Heredity or Environment?

[Mal12345]

Basically - it's half and half, on average, as with anything else human.

 

[yeghor]

I think our core temperament (like NF or NT) is predetermined at birth due to our physiology (i.e. hereditary) but our I\E and J\P preferences settle thru our interaction with environment...

 

[highlander]

I think our core temperament (like NF or NT) is predetermined at birth due to our physiology (i.e. hereditary) but our I\E and J\P preferences settle thru our interaction with environment...

I think it is pretty much inborn from an MBTI perspective. On Enneagram, I'm not sure. This thread talks about some perspectives but the post I made about my type wasn't accurate (i.e., I'm not an 8).

 

[Alea_iacta_est]

Apparently, E/I and T/F are correlated more toward heredity rather than environmental factors by the figure .6, and S/N and J/P are correlated more toward environmental factors than heredity by the figure .4 in this study with a sample size of 202 individuals (110 of which were twins). I'm assuming that the figures provided are on the scale from heredity to environmental, could easily be wrong.

Unfortunately, there are no studies for Jung's actual psychological types, just the MBTI dichotomy assessment types, due to its obscurity.

 

[Chad of the OttomanEmpire]

I've been Ne-dom as long as I can remember (which is about the age of 3). Can't say something didn't happen before then to make me be this way, but I think it's inborn.

 

[yeghor]

I think it is pretty much inborn from an MBTI perspective. On Enneagram, I'm not sure. This thread talks about some perspectives but the post I made about my type wasn't accurate (i.e., I'm not an 8).

Thanks...

Active: demanding, assertive, bossy, outspoken, intimidating, egocentric, expressive, willful. Perhaps this is ST temperament...

Responsive: supportive, responsive, engaging, affectionate, friendly, sympathetic, cooperative. This is NF or SF...

Neutral: avoidant, withdrawn, indifferent, apathetic, absent, reserved, ignoring, neglectful. And this NT?

So in My Case...

Responsive child vs. Active parent

This scenario is thought to produce Enneagram type 1

This interaction is generally centered around the parent's agenda, to which the child will subscribe in order to receive the desired approval. The Active parent will be demanding, dominating and will criticize any perceived "bad" behavior. The Responsive child, on the other hand, is unusually sensitive to criticism so he will try to adjust and adhere to the parent's values and perspectives, by being obedient, well-behaved and an altogether "good kid". This attitude will help him build the desired rapport with the fastidious main caretaker.

With time, the child will learn to put aside his real needs and wishes in order to do the right thing, to be correct and morally ethical. These types will prefer to have a clear set of standards and rules to adhere to and will only feel worthy and lovable when they live a righteous life, in accordance with their upstanding principles. Their parents taught them that acceptance comes only through obedience and discipline.

^This may be due to my interaction with my ISTJ father... ST (active) father versus NF (responsive) me...

Responsive child vs. Responsive parent

This scenario is thought to produce Enneagram type 6

This child will usually establish a very close relationship with his caretaker and will tend to become dependent on the nurturing, affectionate figure that offers him support and understanding. A strong desire for harmonious relationships is created and the Responsive child will reject and feel threatened by conflicts and lack of stability. Such types will seek playmates and groups that share their values and interests and will take an 'us against the world' stance, typically towards unfamiliar people and circumstances.

These Responsive children will prefer to play by the rules in order to keep themselves safe from any disharmony that will endanger their comforting, supportive relationships. They will be playful, endearing and loyal to their chosen groups and intimates, while at the same time remaining alert and vigilant to avoid any conflicts and hidden threats. Suspicion of other people's motives can arise as a protection from abandonment and rejection - they are in fact very afraid of losing their safe, nurturing grounds.

^This may be due to my interaction with my ISFJ mother... SF (responsive) mother versus NF (responsive) me...

Hence my 162 enneagram tritype?

 

[Mal12345]

I think our core temperament (like NF or NT) is predetermined at birth due to our physiology (i.e. hereditary) but our I\E and J\P preferences settle thru our interaction with environment...

I've been working on a theory that environment influences us through the personality predispositions and temperaments of others. In this it's necessary to take the term "meme" away from its internet usage and back to its original source meaning: "an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation."

The meme is passed subconsciously from one person to another through cultural or social "osmosis." These influences can be father, mother, siblings, spouses, or even cultural icons such as pop stars and other "heroes" raised to the status of a mythical icon (authors such as Ayn Rand and/or her characters, Timothy Leary, etc., etc.)

Most people never become aware of these subconscious mechanisms that control them and make them who they are. The ego clings ferociously to these traits selfishly as if they were creations of one's own willpower and important to life itself. However, I see no utilitarian purpose for it at all, just a mere pre-determination via cultural influences with neither rhyme nor reason.

 

[Mal12345]

I think it is pretty much inborn from an MBTI perspective. On Enneagram, I'm not sure. This thread talks about some perspectives but the post I made about my type wasn't accurate (i.e., I'm not an 8).

The article cited
http://pstypes.blogspot.com/search?...d-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=2
reduces the activating, responding, and neutralizing forces to static Hornevian psychological categories. But these categories are not forces, they do not interact dynamically, or to use a more accurate term, dialectically.

I use the term "dialectically" to give the process a metaphysical spin, since that's what it is anyway, where the idea is to explain (and even promote) the concepts of "change," "growth," and "creation." Furthermore, it is to explain all things in these terms. By making the process conscious, we create a more efficient possibility of growth. The Enneagram itself was intended to serve as a neutralizing force, it is not the end-product (which we cannot know anyway), but the force that is brought to bear on our internal conflicts in order to resolve them into something higher than the other two forces combined. The notion of something higher serves as a postulate, an empty ideal (because at the present moment it has no content, only the mere possibility of content), while the neutralizing force (in this case, the Enneagram) makes us more conscious of the conflict between the activating and responding forces.

 

[Evo]

Enneagram

I personally remember reading a paragraph from the book: The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul And I it hit me like a ton of bricks.

...One parent may have been a stern authority figure, demanding absolute obedience and permanently intimidating the young Six. Regardless of the actual parents' reality, these were the factors focused upon and left as imprints because of the Six' sensitivity to Holy Faith and Holy Strength. The "interpretation" made by the child developing consciousness was that one or both parents or the environment as a whole, couldn't be consistently depended upon to fill his/her needs. Which feels life-threatening to at totally dependent infant and young child. The soul then becomes and remains fixed around survival anxiety and the fear of physical death. The inability and helplessness to meet his/her own needs, coupled with a seemingly undependable other, become the imprint, and form the core of the sense of self of this ennea-type.

The impression that I got was that we develop our outlook towards the world as babies. And it's based on the relationship with our mothers.

For example if a child is a 2, they react to their mother "leaving them" -which can be defined as not being next to them, not feeding them right away, not caring for them right away when they cry, etc - by thinking that their mothers needs are above their own.....

For me as a 6, I know that the reason I'm a 6 is cause I would be cared for, but when the nurturing stopped...like I said even to do something small, like my mom could have just been taking care of her own needs...something in me perceived that her "leaving me" was a sign that I could not trust anyone. And I would not want to be cared for, because if I was cared for, there is always that threat of it going away. So I tried to protect myself from abandonment or rejection, by refusing any nurturing.

I still don't like getting help from anyone to this day.

IMO we don't control that at all. That is nature. So are wings.

Tritype is nurture. And of course we can develop after a certain amount of consciousness naturally occurs. But I still think we are born the way we are and grow over time.

Instincts are also nature. Developed later in time, maybe. But I believe they're called instincts for a reason.

MBTI

I think MBTI has much more variables. Therefore, there could be more room in that area. From what I've gathered from Dario Nardi, is that yes, there are some recognizable patterns, but nurture can play a big role between the differences of any two ESTP's for example.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

If we look at in terms of behavioral traits, career choices, interests, etc, then I think it's slightly more environment related. (more the realm of ennagram)

If we look at in terms of how we perceive and judge the world (which is really what MBTI is concerned with), then I think it's more hereditary, more wired into our brains at birth.

 

[Tellenbach]

Does this mean that most identical twins share the same MBTI type? Someone look this up please.

 

[reckful]

Does this mean that most identical twins share the same MBTI type? Someone look this up please.

Decades of twin studies strongly suggest that genes account for around half (or more) of the kinds of relatively stable temperament dimensions measured by the MBTI and Big Five. Note, however, that the genetic side of things is complicated: an introvert's identical twin brother would probably be an introvert, but they might have two extraverted parents. There's more Big Five data than MBTI data, but here's a recent study by Bouchard that found significant twin/MBTI correlations on all four dimensions.

The most counterintuitive conclusion that's been drawn from the cumulative data is that how your parents raise you has almost no influence on your basic temperament — e.g., whether you'll end up an INTJ. Identical twins raised in the same household are not significantly more alike (in terms of temperament) than identical twins raised in separate households.

Now, at this point you may well be thinking to yourself that, if non-genetic factors account for a third to a half of temperament, it seems awfully strange that how your parents raise you — not to mention all the other "environmental" influences that will be more or less similar for two twins growing up together — has virtually no effect on your temperament. How could that be?

If you want my personal view, I'm inclined to think that the lion's share of the explanation is probably that the data substantially understates the genetic component of temperament, and here's why:

Anytime you're doing studies where the results take the form of correlations, most sources of error are going to introduce noise into the data that has the effect of reducing the magnitude of the reported correlations. And personality typing involves multiple sources of significant error, starting with the fact that they haven't even figured out exactly what the nature of the temperament dimensions they should be measuring are, and also including multiple forms of human error in any self-assessment test that can cause the taker to answer a question "incorrectly." What's more, the more you assume (as Jung did, and as various studies suggest) that a relatively large percentage of the population is in or near the middle on one or more of the dimensions, the more mistyped people you should expect as a result of relatively small testing errors.

Assuming that the four MBTI dimensions — or, if you prefer, the eight cognitive functions — aren't just arbitrary theoretical constructs and really do correspond to something real that could theoretically be accurately measured (by, say, directly measuring biological markers of some kind), I strongly suspect that, if every subject was accurately typed, the data would show that a substantially greater proportion of temperament is genetic. And the fact that twins raised in the same household aren't any more alike than twins raised separately would obviously seem a lot less strange if the proportion of temperament that results from "environmental" factors turned out to be very small.

 

[Tellenbach]

[MENTION=18736]reckful[/MENTION] Thanks for the link to that twins article. I would agree that using personality tests to assess cognitive functions will introduce some error to the typing process. Another possibility would be the role of epigenetic factors: methylation of DNA and acetylation of histone proteins.

According to Kayt Sukel (Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships), "your experience in utero and early life can result in an enzyme called DNA methyltransferase adding new molecules to the cytosine nucleotides in your DNA chain. The methylation process adds a checkmark of sorts next to the genes it affects, typically resulting in the suppression or all-out removal of gene expression for the associated protein."

 

[reckful]

[MENTION=18736]reckful[/MENTION] Thanks for the link to that twins article. I would agree that using personality tests to assess cognitive functions will introduce some error to the typing process. Another possibility would be the role of epigenetic factors: methylation of DNA and acetylation of histone proteins.

According to Kayt Sukel (Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships), "your experience in utero and early life can result in an enzyme called DNA methyltransferase adding new molecules to the cytosine nucleotides in your DNA chain. The methylation process adds a checkmark of sorts next to the genes it affects, typically resulting in the suppression or all-out removal of gene expression for the associated protein."

Well, I don't know how you feel, but I think that when most people (certainly including me) wonder to what extent our MBTI preferences are "genetic," what we're really wondering is the extent to which they're basically hardwired at birth. And, from that standpoint, whether the hardwiring is the result of a gene sequence or "epigenetic" factors or the womb environment (or whatever) is maybe interesting for some purposes, but I'd say it doesn't make sense to exclude any of those supplemental pre-birth influences if the goal is to come up with a percentage that reflects the extent to which we're "born that way."

It's also worth noting that, to the extent that some of those complicating factors can influence MBTI preferences and can be different for two identical twins, that's more noise in the data that will tend to cause the reported twin/MBTI correlations to understate the extent to which your type is hardwired at birth.

 

[INTP]

I was going to reply to this thread but this pretty much summed most that i had to say:

Decades of twin studies strongly suggest that genes account for around half (or more) of the kinds of relatively stable temperament dimensions measured by the MBTI and Big Five. Note, however, that the genetic side of things is complicated: an introvert's identical twin brother would probably be an introvert, but they might have two extraverted parents. There's more Big Five data than MBTI data, but here's a recent study by Bouchard that found significant twin/MBTI correlations on all four dimensions.

The most counterintuitive conclusion that's been drawn from the cumulative data is that how your parents raise you has almost no influence on your basic temperament — e.g., whether you'll end up an INTJ. Identical twins raised in the same household are not significantly more alike (in terms of temperament) than identical twins raised in separate households.

Now, at this point you may well be thinking to yourself that, if non-genetic factors account for a third to a half of temperament, it seems awfully strange that how your parents raise you — not to mention all the other "environmental" influences that will be more or less similar for two twins growing up together — has virtually no effect on your temperament. How could that be?

If you want my personal view, I'm inclined to think that the lion's share of the explanation is probably that the data substantially understates the genetic component of temperament, and here's why:

Anytime you're doing studies where the results take the form of correlations, most sources of error are going to introduce noise into the data that has the effect of reducing the magnitude of the reported correlations. And personality typing involves multiple sources of significant error, starting with the fact that they haven't even figured out exactly what the nature of the temperament dimensions they should be measuring are, and also including multiple forms of human error in any self-assessment test that can cause the taker to answer a question "incorrectly." What's more, the more you assume (as Jung did, and as various studies suggest) that a relatively large percentage of the population is in or near the middle on one or more of the dimensions, the more mistyped people you should expect as a result of relatively small testing errors.

Assuming that the four MBTI dimensions — or, if you prefer, the eight cognitive functions — aren't just arbitrary theoretical constructs and really do correspond to something real that could theoretically be accurately measured (by, say, directly measuring biological markers of some kind), I strongly suspect that, if every subject was accurately typed, the data would show that a substantially greater proportion of temperament is genetic. And the fact that twins raised in the same household aren't any more alike than twins raised separately would obviously seem a lot less strange if the proportion of temperament that results from "environmental" factors turned out to be very small.

But there is one more thing that contributes to this and that is the fact that environment can change how you behave, even tho it might not change your true type. I wrote this essay(that was intended to lead to some critical question) about nature vs nurture of extraversion in personality psychology test few years ago(but wrote it from big 5 perspective as it was discussed more on the course than MBTI). The main question of it was whether I/E is inborn or effected by nurture and wrote 2.5 pages of text to back up this question. The last question was that(first of all i explained how environment can make an extravert to shut down and act like an introvert, which if someone tries to deny, ill just laugh at his face) if an extravert is put down enough by his environment to make him not express his extraversion freely and acts like introvert, is the person really an introvert or extravert? I think that this also illustrates the weakness of big 5's definition of I/E, as it looks more at behavioristic stuff(which is altered by environment more) than the actual cognition of the person(which MBTI looks at). And that was one of the main reasons why i chose this question(i didnt mention MBTI on the essay tho), but apparently the teacher liked my perspective since i got a pretty good number from the exam

This what i wrote about I/E also applies to other MBTI letters, but maybe not as high degree. But the point is that environment changes behavior and people often type themselves according to behavior(and most MBTI tests try to type based on behavior, even tho behavior is not what type is about, which is one of the major weaknesses of MBTI tests and major source of mistyping aswell).

 

[Cellmold]

I think our core temperament (like NF or NT) is predetermined at birth due to our physiology (i.e. hereditary) but our I\E and J\P preferences settle thru our interaction with environment...

Oh that's all OK then.

So far I'm an ESFTJP.

 

[yeghor]

Oh that's all OK then.

So far I'm an ESFTJP.

How did that happen?

 

[Cellmold]

How did that happen?

It's my hereditary background.

 

[yeghor]

It's my hereditary background.

Like you have Irish-Scottish-German, Hollander and Cherokee lineage in your blood or something?

 

[Cellmold]

Like you have Irish-Scottish-German, Hollander and Cherokee lineage in your blood or something?

More like ESF of some kind.