Your Baby’s Personality is Decided at Birth
The minute your baby is born, you begin to wonder what they will be like when they grow up? What kind of personality will they have? Will you be able to influence how they turn out?
Psychiatrists have defined 4 main categories of personality types using a clinically recognized system of character evaluation.
These 4 types are:
- A novelty seeking personality is characterized by impulsive actions.
- A harm avoidance personality is characterized by pessimism and shyness.
- A reward dependence personality is prone to addiction.
- A persistence type personality tends to be hard-working and a perfectionist.
There’s a question on personality that’s been keeping scientists busy for years now. Is personality due to nature or nurture? Well, these researchers from the US, UK and Italy seem to think they have found proof that it’s the former rather than the latter. They report that different personality types have different brain structures. For example, novelty-seeking types had a structurally bigger area of the brain known as the inferior part of the frontal lobe, whereas harm-avoidance types had significantly smaller volumes of tissue in the orbitofrontal area and the posterior occipital region.
It seems that personality depends on the anatomical structure of the brain, structure that you were born with. In other words, your personality was already determined at birth. This report can either give us comfort or despair about our own personality.
- Comfort – because it’s not something that we do but something that we are.
- Despair – because it’s something that we are and therefore cannot be changed.
But what about the personality of our children? Can we still do something about it? What about our baby having a brain scan to determine his or her future personality? The researchers think this isn’t actually such a bad idea because once you know what to expect, you can alter the environment to minimize the risk.
I personally find it a bit scary. What if I find out that my baby is predisposed to become a pessimistic introvert, a compulsive workaholic or worse a drug addict? How would affect the mother-child relationship?
On the other hand, I still believe strongly in the power of nurture, e.g. the family environment. I also believe that these so-called personality types are rather artificial categorizations. Most people I know, including myself, exhibit some characteristics from each of the 4 types. No, I’d rather see my children’s personalities unfold as they grow. I’d rather that they grow without expectations, preconceptions and predispositions. Surprise me, my darlings.
So what do you think? Want to look into your baby’s brain?
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isis says...
while there may be some minor link to personality traits and brain formation, I doubt that its more important that the nurturing aspect of a baby’s first five to eight years of development. The reason being is the “neural net” is not completely formed then and its this network of neurons that form learning, habits, and patterns that go towards the development of a child’s personality traits. The baby’s first few years of development is dependent on how those neurons make connections. Perhaps a child with more left inferior frontal lobe matter may make more neural connections that reaffirm its propensity to seek novel experiences, but just as likely – if that person exists in a negative environment that fears novelty or change, may learn to associate fear with such pursuits. I think we cannot rule one out without assessing the implications of the other.
.-= isis´s last blog ..holly coming to wa =-.
Lucy says...
Something that most people forget is that there is a difference between temperament and personality. It sounds like what they are describing in the study sited is actually the “temperament” (aspects which are hardwired and cannot be changed), rather than what is typically referred in the American medical community to as “personality” (those things about yourself which are more variable, and therefore can be worked on and improved, etc.).
The other thing we must keep in mind is that most people’s temperament and personality are made up of a combination of these variables. No one is ONLY a novelty-seeking or ONLY a harm-avoidance type. Typically, we have a dominant temperament (or a mix of two), with some less dominant aspects of the others as well. Thus, we end up with a world where everybody is different. If you are interested in reading more about temperament, you might look up the book Baby Hearts by Goodwyn & Acredolo. They do a wonderful job (based on years of research) of covering both the nature AND nurture aspects of our children’s temperaments, they explain it really well, and they give you examples of how to nurture your child’s individual temperament.