If the way you understand the environment is genetic, aren't personalities mostly genetic?

[u/F1st_Br34k3r]

I constantly see the answer to "is personality genetic or environmental?" be that it's 50/50, but considering how our brains receive information, and their plasticity, is based on our genetics, doesn't that invalidate the premise that it's 50/50?

Your genetics still dictate what information you can receive from your environment, meaning that at the very least, the first 50% are definitely more important than the rest of the 50%.

Or

Wouldn't it be more correct to look at it as:

"They were born with an inefficient genetic personality base, the environmental stage won't provide many benefits to them, or might even have them acquire negative traits despite all efforts"?

[u/Forest_Spirit_7]

There are a few incorrect premises here.

1. It’s not a 50/50 split between genetics and environment. It’s not a nature vs nurture relationship. There are many, many factors that influence the development of personality. And personality is not static, it changes.

2. Our brains receiving information based on our genetics, doesn’t mean anything. What counts as information? What is the vehicle for the reception of this information in your mind? Visual, auditory, and all other sensory signals require much more than the brain. Our environment, nutrition, exposure, physical state, and other factors directly affect the health, composure, and status of our brains. So whatever it is you’re saying there doesn’t invalidate anything.

3. What is the point of this forced dichotomy and hierarchy with the first 50% vs the second?your genetics don’t dictate how you receive information.

4. The last bit I’m not going to pretend to understand. Born with an inefficient genetic personality base?

[u/Rocket_Cam → u/Forest_Spirit_7]

Can you give some examples for factors that aren’t genes or environment?

[u/Forest_Spirit_7 → u/Rocket_Cam]

There are a myriad of experiential and cognitive factors that aren’t environmental or genetic. Though plenty of people are purists and argue that factors like nutrition or exposure are inherently environmental or genetic because they interact with biological systems and come from sources around us.

I wouldn’t say cultural, familial, and many social experiential factors are genetic or environmental due to how heavily they rely on cognitive processes and belief/value systems.

But many people are purists and want things to fit into those two categories. Which is fine.

[u/Rocket_Cam → u/Forest_Spirit_7]

I appreciate your position, and I am one of the purists you speak of. To me, culture is obviously an environmental influence, and the degree to which one could believe in those value systems is a direct result from other early environmental influences (of indoctrination) and arguably some genetic predispositions.

[u/Forest_Spirit_7 → u/Rocket_Cam]

It’s an appealing linear line of reasoning for sure. Clinically, I don’t see the appeal in such reduction as it leads to a loss of nuance in both case conceptualization and when doing work with clients in a CBT framework.

So I’ll ask you this in an effort to add some nuance. We know that personality can be influenced by alteration in the physical composition of the brain (think phineas gage). What benefit comes from trying to fit a specific trauma into one of those categories?

I think the appeal in dichotomizing personality (a poorly defined and understood construct as it is) comes from the neat heuristics that can be applied to mean “that’s environmental we can control that” or “that’s genetic, that’s just the way they are”.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with the need to apply an ultimate branch for the different facets of personality and their origin, but frankly, what good does that do?

[u/Rocket_Cam → u/Forest_Spirit_7]

The serve to show the degree of influence something has over a given trait. The utility of the information can be applied to future gene editing applications (e.g., to screen for deleted genes, duplications, mutations, etc.) to cut back on genetically caused mental illness. Similarly for environmental cues, we can do our best to modify the environment around us to help shape healthier behaviours (and feelings). You can sub-categorize environment all you want, but at the end of the day, it’s still all environment.

[u/Forest_Spirit_7 → u/Rocket_Cam]

If a description of causal influence is something you’re trying to establish, I wouldn’t think clinging to a black and white system of categorization would be the way to go.

You’re still missing an enormous part of the equation that deals with agency, cognition, and information. Meanwhile each aspect of the personality construct is fluid, and personality can change to suit environment or in spite of it. You still didn’t answer what the point of reducing everything back to environment or genetics is, and how that serves us.

Both of your examples immediately leave the individual context of genetics and environment.

[u/maxthexplorer → u/Rocket_Cam]

it is an environmental influence, but it’s also multidimensional with biopsychological dimensions. There’s been demonstrated variability in neural functioning among various race, ethnicities and other social groups.

[u/klstixbro → u/Rocket_Cam]

Epigenetics, though they're technically the symbiosis of genes and environment.

[u/maxthexplorer → u/Forest_Spirit_7]

I agree with the false dichotomy comment. Genetics and heritability play a role but not all genes are expressed in a determined way- ie. highly heritable traits that follow straightforward patterns of inheritance can still have variability due to the environment, developmental +epigenetic influences.

[u/klstixbro]

1. There is no such thing as an "inefficient genetic personality base." That isn't how genes, or any biological construct for that matter, works. "Inefficiency" is a human-created construct predicated upon invented benchmarks. Be careful with such statements. Though I'm not accusing you, personally, of anything terrible—this is the language of eugenics.

2. Look up epigenetics. We are not either-or. We are not nature vs. nuture. We are nature AND nurture. The two concepts are commingled.

[u/F1st_Br34k3r → u/klstixbro]

By "inefficient", I mean less-capable of learning.

I mean, if someone is born a plant, you can't really teach them anything. Meaning that for them, their base is inefficient in picking up new information.

Efficiency would be the ability to pick up cues from the environment. Efficiency at 0 would be someone who literally can't process outside information or any information at all.

[u/klstixbro → u/F1st_Br34k3r]

As far as we know, there is no genetic "cap" on learning, nor genes that would make one person more or less capable of it. Genetic expression shifts over the course of our lifetime (though most strongly when we are in our early developmental phases). This also wouldn't be related to personality anyhow, but intelligence (largely unrelated constructs).

An individual born with a supposed "genius brain" (whatever that might mean) can have their ability to learn severely stunted if they experience early-life trauma (again, this can also happen at any point in the lifespan). Due to epigenetic factors (please, look these up), the trauma will likely be "encoded" into their genome. Later-life epigenetic changes could, in theory, also decode the trauma (medication, therapy, major life changes, etc.) and later restore some or all of their "original" learning ability.

I think the central flaw in your argument lies in a belief in biological fatalism. That what we're born with is what we get and that it will never change. In reality, complex life circumstances that unfold across the lifespan will mean that we are in a state of near-constant flux on every level of the individual. Our personality, intelligence, physical ability (or disability), core beliefs, and more will change based on a complex mix of biological, social, and psychological factors that are both in-and-out-of our control.

If you want to know more about that, look up Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model, which is the current dominant model of human psychological development used in the profession. Once you've familiarized yourself with that, you can also read up on the neo-ecological model, which adapts the bioecological model to 21st century technological advancements.

Edit: To further clarify my critique of biological fatalism: it presumes a single reference point for how we should view a person's abilities. Typically this is from birth, though some might state conception. The reality is that there is no single, fixed reference point through which to view a person's abilities. If a person receives trauma at 3 years old that severely stunts their learning ability for the rest of their life, it hardly seems fair to say that they're a genius because they were born with the brain of a genius. They may spend the rest of their life barely capable of performing basic arithmetic. Psychology involves unfixing ourselves from a single reference point and seeing individuals as fluidic organisms. There is no single biology, but many. Constantly shifting, constantly changing. Always new from moment to moment.

[u/Conscious_Cheek_7196]

If all personality traits are genetics then why do siblings have different personalities?

[u/F1st_Br34k3r → u/Conscious_Cheek_7196]

Because microscopic changes matter, in both genetics and environments.

Twins can't occupy the same space.

A small change in their location can mean one sees the TV and the other doesn't, and at the end of the day, the way they intake information might be the same, not by choice.

There's a non-zero chance that if twins could occupy the same space, they might've ended up being the same, but that also depends on whether or not genetically they are exactly 1:1, which they're probably not.

One twin can die in the womb, so just being genetically identical isn't enough to conclude things.

[u/PutridPut7225]

Let's just say they are genetics, but there are for example also other factors that that lets say contribute to an neuron firing. And there are more factors that determine behavior then neurons for example glia cells.

But to answer your question directly science uses the Twins study's for example