What defines who we are? How do people develop their individual characteristics and what influences their behavior?
Psychology and theatre has always been an interesting topic to me. I have always been intrigued in what influenced people's actions and attitudes, and I always found it fascinating how actors can transform into different characters from role to role - sometimes transforming from being the protagonist in one production to being the antagonist in another production. Although I enjoy the whole psychology field, I tend to focus on personality psychology. Thus, I enjoyed Chapter 13: Social Psychology and Chapter 14: Personality the most, along with the corresponding lectures.
One of the topics that I enjoyed reading was the twin studies as well as the adoption studies. After research about twin studies, I found the finding that the environment played a very small influence in adult personalities. There were many examples presented of twins who were raised in different environments, but shared the some of the same personality traits.
Another topic that I enjoyed was the discussion about the Big Five Model of Personality and the personality quizzes/tests that we took for lecture and for our discussion sections. This model is an easy way to characterize people and even fictitious characters.
Psychology is a great field. It tells you a lot about other people. I love analyzing and watching people and this course has helped me to decode some of people's behaviors and attitudes. I will definitely remember what I have learned from this course!
I really think that both our genetics and our environment play a large role in the person we turn out to be. I think genetics obviously play a role with the genes and traits we receive, but if someone who might not have been a certain way, was raised in a different environment, I believe that will play a role in the person they are.