EFFECT OF HOME ENVIRONMENT ON PERSONALITY

EFFECT OF HOME ENVIRONMENT ON
PERSONALITY
By Audrey Scherf
Faculty Arts & Social Sciences
Abstract
During the past few decades home environment had been identified as being a
contributing factor in a child’s educational, cognitive and affective
development. Researchers typically separate elements of the home environment
into two major categories; social and physical (Casey, Bradley, Nelson &
Whaley, 1988; Wachs, 1989). So you will find complete information on how
the environment of the home effects on our personality.
1.0 Introduction
What makes individuals unique. Most would say a persons personality
makes them who they are. Lets take a look at how personalities are
affected by ones environment. In doing so we are going to see how
personality is defined. Then we will examine the different types of
personalities and how they can be determined. Next, we will see how
genetics and heredity can play a role in shaping personalities along with
environment. Lastly, the factors in our environment that shape our
personalities.
Over the years, many different definitions have been proposed for
personality. An individual's personality is the mental characteristics that
makes them unique from other people. It includes all of the patterns of
thought and emotions that cause us to do and say things in particular

ways. Personality concerns the most important, most noticeable parts of
an individual's psychological life. Personality can be defined as a
dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that
uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in
various situations. There are some fundamental characteristics of
personality.
Figure 1
There is generally a recognizable order and regularity to behaviors.
People act in the same ways or similar ways in a variety of situations.
Personality is psychological, but research suggests that it is also
influenced by biological processes and needs. Personality does not just
influence how we move and respond in our environment, it also causes us
to act in certain ways. Personality is displayed in more than just behavior.
It can also be seen in our thoughts, feelings, close relationships and other
social interactions.
Most people would agree that personality is unique to an individual
person. With so many people in the world, it would not be far fetched to
believe that there are different types of personalities. Putting these
personalities into specific category types would help people determine
what personality type they are.

This was done in the early 1950's, by David Riesman. He proposed that
there are three common types of modal personality that occur around the
world. He called them tradition oriented, inner-directed, and other
directed personalities. The tradition-oriented personality is one that places
a strong emphasis on doing things the same way that they have always
been done. Individuals with this sort of personality are less likely to try
new things and to seek new experiences. Those who have inner-directed
personalities are guilt oriented. Their behavior is strongly controlled by
their conscience. As a result, there is little need for police to make sure
that they obey the law. These individuals monitor themselves. If they
break the law, they are likely to turn themselves in for punishment. In
contrast, people with other-directed personalities have ambiguous
feelings about right and wrong. When they deviate from a societal norm,
they usually don't feel guilty. However, if they are caught in the act or
exposed publicly, they are likely to feel shame.
Figure 2
Those that follow Riesman's concept of three modal personalities suggest
that the tradition-oriented personality is most common in small-scale
societies and in some sub-cultures of large-scale ones. Inner-directed
personalities are said to be more common in some large-scale societies,
especially ones that are culturally homogenous. In contrast, the otherdirected
personality is likely to be found in culturally diverse large-scale

societies. in which there is not a uniformity. Some believe that one person
can have traits of more than one of the personality types.
Today there are a few different test that can be done to determine what
type of personality an individual may have. This may be done through the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Rorschach Inkblot test, or
the Thematic Apseries of answers to a questionnaire that asks people to
indicate the extent to which sets of statements or adjectives accurately
describe their own behavior.
There is an argument of what shapes the personality of a person. Is it the
genes that shapes a persons personality? Are personalities formed by
hereditary traits? Is the environment we live in the primary factor that
gives us are personality? Ruth Benedict beginning in the 1920's believed
that personality was almost entirely learned by our environment. Benedict
said that our cultural personality patterns are assumed to be "natural" by
us and other personality patterns are viewed as being "unnatural" and
deviant. She said that such feelings are characteristic of all people in all
cultures because we are ethnocentric.
Figure 3
Benedict compared the typical personalities of the 19th century North
American Plains Indians with those of the farming Pueblo Indians of the
Southwest. She said that the bison hunting Plains Indians had
personalities that could be typified as being aggressive, prone to violence,

and seeking extreme emotional states. In contrast, she said that the typical
Pueblo Indian was just the opposite, peaceful, non-aggressive, and sober
in personality.
Some say that hereditary factors passed by our parents and ancestors to us
are the main factor to ones personality. The individual’s talent and
some other traits are just few examples of these traits. Some hereditary
factors that contribute to personality development do so as a result of
interactions with the particular social environment in which people live.
For instance, your genetically inherited physical and mental capabilities
have an impact on how others see you, and how you see yourself. If you
have poor motor skills that prevent you from throwing a ball straight and
if you regularly get bad grades in school, you will very likely be labeled
by your teachers, friends, and relatives as someone who is inadequate or a
failure to some degree. This can become a self-fulfilling prophesy as you
increasingly perceive yourself in this way and become more pessimistic
about your capabilities and your future. Likewise, your health and
physical appearance are likely to be very important in your personality
development. You may be frail or robust. You may have a learning
disability. You may be slender in a culture that considers obesity
attractive or vice versa. These largely hereditary factors are likely to
cause you to feel that you are nice-looking, ugly, or just adequate.
Likewise, skin color, gender, and sexual orientation are likely to have a
major impact on how you perceive yourself. Whether you are accepted by
others as being normal or abnormal can lead you to think and act in a
socially acceptable or even deviant way.(EssaysUk, 2013)
2.0 Literature Review
2.1 What Impact Does the Environment Have on Us?
Since the earliest times, humans have needed to be sensitive to
their surroundings to survive, which means that we have an innate
awareness of our environment and seek out environments with
certain qualities.
First of all, humans have a strong need for safety and security and
look for those attributes in their environment. We also look
for physical comfort, such as an environment with the right
temperature. In addition, we seek an environment that

is psychologically comfortable: for example, environments that are
familiar, but offer the right amount of stimulus.
Figure 4
Retailers and the hospitality industry know this very well and try to
provide an atmosphere that creates a positive customer experience
and offers three important attributes: comfort, safety, and
entertainment. These attributes are equally important in healthcare
as well. Below are just a few examples of how the environment can
impact you:
1. The environment can facilitate or discourage interactions
among people (and the subsequent benefits of social
support). For example, an inviting space with comfortable
chairs and privacy can encourage a family to stay and visit
with a patient.
2. The environment can influence peoples' behavior and
motivation to act. For example, a dingy corridor filled with
extra hospital equipment will invite staff to leave another
item in the hall, whereas a clean corridor and adequate
storage will encourage staff to take the time to put the item
away.
3. The environment can influence mood. For example, the
results of several research studies reveal that rooms with
bright light, both natural and artificial, can improve health

outcomes such as depression, agitation, and sleep.(Mary Jo
Kreitzer, RN, 2014)
2.2 What about stress at home?
It’s no secret that our environments influence the way we think,
feel and act. Most people desire good health and for most people,
their home is the environment they are most often surrounded by.
Everyone deserves to a live happy, healthy life and can start by
creating a home environment optimal for health.
Would you like to attain happiness, contentedness or joy in your
daily life? Are you trying to eat healthier or exercise more? Both
mental and physical health are important to your overall well-being
and both are easier to achieve when you reduce stress and
encourage better eating habits at home. Taking these steps to make
changes in your home will create an optimal environment for
making healthy choices that you can carry into the other areas of
your life.
2.3 Reduce Stress and Fatigue
Stress reduction is the first step toward living a
healthy life, because stress is a large determinant of good health.
Continuous or chronic stress can cause muscle tension, headaches
and migraines, heart problems, adrenal fatigue, nausea, overeating
and is overall draining for your energy levels.
Once all of the controllable stressors are removed from your life,
you can more easily take positive proactive steps toward health.
The first step to reducing stress in your life is to reduce the clutter
in your home! Scientists at Princetonfound that clutter reduces your
ability to focus as well as your ability to process information.
Although deep-cleaning your possessions is a time-consuming first
step toward health, it will pay off in the long run. Take anywhere
between half of a day and a day, depending on how much clutter
you have, to go through your belongings. Sort the items you do not
use into a donate or discard pile. Create a ―home‖ for everything
you are keeping so that future cleaning will be easier and less
stressful.

Figure 5
Another method to relieve stress is bringing some of Mother
Nature’s magic into your home. Several studieshave shown that
exposure to nature improves mood and reduces stress. Although
looking at a painting or photograph of plant life isn’t as beneficial
as a walk through the woods, art that imitates nature still has
positive effects on the brain. If you would rather have actual plant
life in your home instead of art, there are plenty of plants that do
not need sunlight or a lot of water. There are quite a few plants that
purify the air and require almost zero maintenance, such as spider
plants and garden mums.(Redfin Guest Blogger, 2016)
3.0 Different Approaches to Personality
3.1 The psychoanalytic approach
Ruch(1984) explains that the psychoanalytic theory of
Freud is simultaneously a theory of personality, motivation,
development and mental illness (1933,1935,1938). Main idea
behind the psychoanalytic scheme is the concept that only a small
part of human mental activity is illustrated by conscious thought. A
relatively large part of mental activity occurs at the preconscious
and unconscious levels. Processes that are not in consciousness at a
given time are preconscious activities, but that can become
conscious as needed. However, unconscious activities are more

important; these are largely, storage of instinctive urges.
Unconscious activities can influence behavior, but these activities
cannot directly enter consciousness. Freud’s perception of how
these three levels interact in an individual’s personality is based on
three inferred personality structures: id, ego and super ego.
Unconscious forces, which are accumulation of the sex and
aggression instincts are represented by id. Although id’s mental
workings are not available for conscious inspection but its impulses
can be sensed. Conscious representative of rational thought is ego.
Newly born baby reflects only id forces; and the ego develops
gradually through the child’s interaction with the external world.
Along with ego, superego is also developed by the child’s
experience. Superego represents the internalization of the society’s
and parent’s prohibitions. According to Freud, behavior is
determined by the interaction of these three elements of the adult
personality.
3.2 The Behavioural Approach
Before Skinner’s behaviorism and Bandura’s social learning theory
a brief description of Dollard and Miller’s behavioral approach is
being described. Ruch (1984) explains that John Dollard and Neal
Miller developed their theory of personality in the late 1940s.The
theory they developed was based on four concepts: drive, cue,
response, and reinforcement. Freud’s instincts, as represented in
the id, became for Dollard and Miller primary drives. These, in
turn, were the basis for other learned drives (Miller, 1951). The
combination of primary and learned drives provided the energy or
motivation for behavior, and cues determined when, where, and
which behavior would ensue. Any distinctive stimulus, in any
sensory mode, could become a cue for some response, based on the
learning history of the organism. Once the response had occurred,
it could be followed by a reinforcement. If so, the response became
more probable in the presence of the cues.
Although not the only version of behaviorism, Skinner’s approach
is one of the best known and most controversial (Rachlin, 1976).
All behaviorists emphasize overt, measurable behavior, but Skinner
has insisted on limiting analysis to it. Internal activity, whether

phrased in nervous-system terms or mental terms, is not an
appropriate level of analysis, he feels. In this, Skinner is more
extreme than many behaviorists, who are more willing to consider,
for example, the possibility of thoughts as covert behavior
(Meichenbaum,1977). Skinner’s view is often termed radical
behaviorism because of his insistence on referring to
environmental events in considering any behavior. His is virtually
the only approach to personality to forgo all inferred constructs and
to rely only on observed behavior and contingencies of
reinforcement. Skinner refuses to consider internal activities partly
because they are so difficult to measure. But he also believes that
internal events such as thoughts or emotions are results of external
events, not causes of them.
3.3 The Humanistic Approach
The humanistic approach is usually attributed to the independent
approaches of two theorists, Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.
Both emphasize concepts of the self and selfdevelopment, but they
differ somewhat in how these concepts are defined and used. Ruch
(1984) explains that Maslow’s views, like Freud’s were strongly
influenced by his beliefs about human motivation, but his view of
motivation differed radically from Freud’s.
Instead of powerful,,innate, negative forces that must be kept in
check, Maslow saw weak, innate, positive tendencies that must be
nurtured (Maslow, 1968, 1970, 1971). Survival motives are the
most powerful and most immediate motives. Maslow proposed his
well-known hierarchy of needs to suggest how more exclusively
human needs might appear after more basic needs were satisfied.
According to Maslow, all of the needs in the hierarchy are innate to
humans, but those higher in the hierarchy are weaker; they only
direct action when all earlier needs have been satisfied. Roggers’s
view is concerned with the development of self, but he approaches
the concept of self differently than Maslow did (Suls, 1982).
Roger’s personality theory is a person-centered theory in several
ways (Holdstock & Rogers, 1977). First, it emphasizes a
phenomenological approach, noting that each person’s experienced
world is unique, built up in part from that person’s experiences.

Roger’s view is also person-centered in emphasizing selfactualization,
though he defines it somewhat differently than
Maslow did.(Parveen, 2007)
4.0 The Trait Approach to Personality study
If someone asked you to describe a close friend's personality, what kind
of things would you say? A few things that might come to mind are
descriptive terms, such as "outgoing," "kind" and "even-tempered." All of
these represent traits. What exactly does this the word "trait" mean?
Figure 6
A trait can be thought of as a relatively stable characteristic that causes
individuals to behave in certain ways.
The trait approach to personality is one of the major theoretical areas in
the study of personality. The trait theory suggests that individual
personalities are composed of these broad dispositions.
Unlike many other theories of personality, such
as psychoanalytic or humanistic theories, the trait approach to personality
is focused on differences between individuals. The combination and
interaction of various traits form a personality that is unique to each
individual. Trait theory is focused on identifying and measuring these
individual personality characteristics.

4.1 Gordon Allport’s Trait Theory
In 1936, psychologist Gordon Allport found that one Englishlanguage
dictionary alone contained more than 4,000 words
describing different personality traits. He categorized these traits
into three levels:
Cardinal Traits: These are traits that dominate an
individual’s whole life, often to the point that the person
becomes known specifically for these traits.
People with such personalities can become so well-known
for these traits that their names are often synonymous with
these qualities. Consider the origin and meaning of the
following descriptive terms: Machiavellian, narcissistic, Don
Juan, Christ-like, etc.
Allport suggested that cardinal traits are rare and tend to
develop later in life.
Central Traits: These are the general characteristics that
form the basic foundations of personality. These central
traits, while not as dominating as cardinal traits are the major
characteristics you might use to describe another person.
Terms such as "intelligent," "honest," "shy," and "anxious"
are considered central traits.
Secondary Traits: These are the traits that are sometimes
related to attitudes or preferences. They often appear only in
certain situations or under specific circumstances. Some
examples would be getting anxious when speaking to a
group or impatient while waiting in line.(Kendra Cherry,
2018)

5.0 5 big Personality Traits
Scientists say that our personality can be deconstructed into 5 basic traits
and here’s what the test measures, and a bit about what your score on
each trait might say about you:
5.1 Openness to experience
Figure 7
A high score means you’re:
Original
Imaginative
Daring
You have broad interests
You generally prefer variety over fixed routines
One review of studies found that, in business settings, openness is a
strong predictor of who will become and succeed as a leader.

Another study found that you can tell how open someone is based
on their selfie — specifically based on whether they display
positive emotion.
5.2 Conscientiousness
A high score means you’re:
Hardworking
Ambitious
Energetic
Persevering
You like planning things in advance
Psychologists say conscientiousness is the best predictor of both
personal and professional success. It’s also the strongest predictor
of leadership in different contexts, including business, government,
and school.
5.3 Extroversion
This trait is sometimes called ―surgency.‖ A high score means
you’re:
sociable
fun-loving
affectionate
friendly
talkative
you derive energy from social activity
Extroversion is another strong predictor of who will become a
leader — though psychologists are increasingly discovering
that introverts can do just as well in leadership roles.
5.4 Agreeableness
A high score means you’re:
Sympathetic
Kind
Affectionate

You’re likely to engage in pro-social behaviour and
volunteerism
Research suggests that agreeable people tend to be happier, possibly
because they try to avoid negative experiences. On the other
hand, disagreeable people may be more likely to succeed at
work because they’re better at getting their ideas heard.
Interestingly, one study found that people who have a looser gait tend
to be more agreeable (and less conscientious).
5.5 Neuroticism
A high score means:
you worry a lot
you’re insecure
self-conscious
temperamental
That same selfie study mentioned above found that neurotic people
are more likely to make a duck face. Go figure.
As a reminder, you can take either version of the personality test
here.(SHANA LEBOWITZ, 2016)
6.0 A Psychology behind Cleanliness
There’s a recent trend sweeping (pun intended) the internet: organization
porn.
Organization porn, like food porn, has nothing to do with pornography and
everything to do with appealing, well-curetted photographs of everyday
items. Whereas food porn might involve a picture of, say, a saltedcaramel
cupcake with a perfectly swirled dollop of chocolate frosting on
top, organization porn might involve a picture of pens arranged by colour
and size, or a gorgeously minimalistic living room.
(BondCleaninginPerth, 2015)

6.1 The positive psychology behind organization
Keeping things clean and organized is good for you, and science
can prove it.
A study(link is external) led by associate professor NiCole R. Keith, Ph.D.,
research scientist and professor at Indiana University, found that people
with clean houses are healthier than people with messy houses. Keith and
her colleagues tracked the physical health of 998 African Americans
between the ages of 49 and 65, a demographic known to be at an
increased risk for heart disease. Participants who kept their homes clean
were healthier and more active than those who didn’t. In fact, house
cleanliness was even more of a predictor for physical health than
neighborhood walkability.
Figure 8
A 2010 study published in the scientific journal Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin (link is external)used linguistic analysis software to
measure the way 60 individuals discussed their homes. Women who
described their living spaces as ―cluttered‖ or full of ―unfinished projects‖
were more likely to be depressed and fatigued than women who described
their homes as ―restful‖ and ―restorative.‖ The researchers also found that
women with cluttered homes expressed higher levels of
the stress hormone cortisol.

In 2011, researchers at Princeton University(link is external) found that
clutter can actually make it more difficult to focus on a particular task.
Specifically, they found that the visual cortex can be overwhelmed by
task-irrelevant objects, making it harder to allocate attention and
complete tasks efficiently.
A survey(link is external) conducted by the National Sleep Foundation
found that people who make their beds every morning are 19 percent
more likely to report regularly getting a good night’s sleep. People who
were surveyed also reported benefits from having clean sheets —
specifically, 75 percent of people said they get a better night’s rest when
their sheets are freshly cleaned because they feel more comfortable.
Maintaining an organized schedule and a list of short-term goals can help
you stay in shape. A study in the Journal of Obesity (link is
external)found that people who carefully plan their exercise regimen, set
goals and regularly record their progress are more likely to keep up an
exercise program than people who show up at the gym without a clear
plan in mind.(Vohs, Redden, & Rahinel, 2013)
7.0 Conclusion
Improving the physical environment can make healthcare settings less
stressful, safer, and better places to work.
Experts in the new area of evidence-based design have identified five
environmental factors that can have a large impact on health outcomes.
Changes in these areas help create a healing environment that is
psychologically supportive for patients, families, and staff. And many
hospitals and healthcare settings are applying these findings.

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