Several researchers have tried to find out how personality develops. Feist and Rosenburg (2012) describe personality as “the unique and relatively enduring set of behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and motivations that characterize an individual. Personality is the result of many aspects put together. Many researchers have tried to unravel the mystery of how personality develops. It is not possible to narrow it down to a specific cause. Multiple aspects come together to create a personality. “Personality is the unique and relatively enduring set of behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and motivations that characterize an individual (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” Important aspects of personality include behavioral traits and thresholds. Personality is a broader term to describe traits because it includes specific details that are not considered part of a trait. A trait is a typical tendency to behave in a certain way and is directly related to behavior (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012). Examples of personality traits include: optimistic, intelligent, confident, adventurous, etc. A person usually reacts the same way to similar situations. One way to explain these recurring trait trends is the use of behavioral thresholds. Behavioral thresholds are “the point at which a person goes from having no particular response to having one.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay A high threshold means that a person does not have a specific tendency to react in a particular way (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012). Although predictions about traits and behavior are part of personality, several aspects shape personality. Natural selection has played an important role in the development of the personalities present in people today. “Human personality traits evolved as adaptive behavioral responses to fundamental problems of survival and reproduction (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” As Feist and Rosenburg (2012) explain, people are sensitive to threats because the environments in which our ancestors lived were threatening. Survival and reproduction are crucial to the survival of a population. Human traits are the result of “survival of the fittest” because only the strongest personalities were able to move forward. According to Carl Jung, there is a masculine and a feminine part of the personality. He referred to the female part as anima and the male part as animus. Jung also theorized that each person has a masculine and feminine side to their personality, but this may not be evident because opposite sexes tend to repress contradictory personalities (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012). According to the evolution of personality, prenatal environments greatly influence the personality of the fetus. Information about a baby's health and personality traits can be recognized already in the womb. “The prenatal environment may play a role in shaping personality (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” Based on the fetus's movement and heart rate, doctors can predict whether the baby will have higher levels of anxiety and stress. The mother's stress level will also have an effect on how the baby reacts in times of stress. “That is, children born to mothers who experienced an unusual amount of stress during pregnancy tend to have impaired stress functioning; higher baseline levels of stress hormones; and a faster, stronger, and more pronounced psychological response to stress, which persist throughout childhood (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” This means a child is more likely to experience anxiety and high levels of stressbecause that's what she felt in the womb. According to Alfred Adler, the order in which children are born can also play a role in personality development. The firstborn is more likely to have a sense of superiority and power, but the second child may be more cooperative but be overly competitive. Adler describes the youngest as “realistically ambitious but pampered and dependent on others (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” One could use the argument that the child is born into a situation that causes him to react as described in birth order stereotypes. The two fundamental topics used to analyze personality are nature and nurture. “Forces of nature and nurture shape personality (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” While both forces exist, it could be argued that a single force is more relevant than the other when it comes to personality development. Analyzing personality development through natural appearance involves examining and comparing genetics. Comparing genetics and personality within a family may seem like the best study to determine the influence nature has on personality development, but this is not necessarily true. “When considering a family study design, its limitation is that additional genetic and shared environmental influences cannot be separated and it does not provide an estimate of heritability but may show evidence of familial aggregation of personality (Bratko et al., 2014 )." Most researchers prefer a variety of environments and biological composition to compare and contrast to create a more in-depth hypothesis and conclusion. In studies, variety is essential to determine how different systems and structures influence personality development. “Biological theories of personality assume that differences in personality are partly based on differences in central nervous system structure and systems such as genetics, hormones, and neurotransmitters (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” Many other biological theories also agree with the effects that genetics and hormones have on personality. Specifically, the effects that genetics and hormones have on cortical arousal, or how the brain is stimulated, reveal a lot about a person's personality. “Evidence supports the connection between central nervous system arousal and personality traits, particularly extraversion-introversion (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” Numerous methods have been created to discover the ways in which genetics and nature influence personality in humans. Techniques have been developed to create a way to link genetics to personality through a natural perspective. “People differ in their intelligence, personality, and behavior, and a century of behavioral genetics research has left little doubt that some of this variation is caused by differences in their genomes (Chabris, CI et al., 2013).” Genome-wide association studies (GWAS), quantitative trait loci, twin studies, and the five-factor model are all approaches that have been used to research familial aggregation. Typically, GWAS are used to examine and compare genetics to uncover disease, but a different study was able to manipulate its works to discover more about personality. “GWAS have the potential to uncover certain traits of genetic architecture, including the number of genome locations, average effects, and allele frequencies of DNA variants that influence the trait (Chabris, CI et al., 2013).” The study conducted by Chabris et al. (2013) conducted using genome-wide association studies concluded with aresult that supports the idea that many genes make up personality and each of them has a small effect. In addition to GWAS, quantitative trait loci also focus on genetics and gene localization. Quantitative trait loci are considered genetic markers. “The quantitative trait loci (QTL) approach is a behavioral genetics technique that searches for locations on genes that might be associated with particular behaviors (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” Finding the location of genes can be compared to the behavior of genes at the same location as their parents. QTL techniques show a high or low level of traits such as anxiety or impulsivity. Along with quantitative trait loci, genetic similarities are usually easier to find in twin studies. By studying the behavior of twins, both identical and fraternal, the genetic composition is more comparable. “For example, the trait of extraversion, or extraversion, often correlates around 0.50 for identical twins (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” Genetic makeup definitely plays a role in personality and some say it makes up about half of the contributions to personality development. In fact, in Ferguson's (2010) study it states that 56% of the contributions to antisocial behavior are a result of genetics Ferguson were specifically studying antisocial personalities, some would argue that nature more or less constitutes a person's individual identity. According to Bratko et al. (2014) genetic makeup contributes between 30% and 50% of personality Bratko's group of researchers used the five-factor model to discover genetic relationships with personality. In addition to GWAS, QTL, and twin studies, one of the most commonly used methods for testing how nature influences personality is the five-factor model factors It is called a five-factor model because there are five categories that are used to analyze personality through this theory. The categories are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Bratko et al., 2014; Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” Bratko and his fellow researchers conducted a five-factor method study that calculated parent-child similarity. They had confidence in this method, as stated in the abstract of their study, “…from a genetic point of view, conclusions on family resemblance should not differ depending on the Five-Factor Personality Questionnaire (Bratko et al., 2014 )." They compared four different families but with different parts of this technique. Using the categories of the five-factor method, they were able to come to a conclusion. “Three measures of parent-child similarity (father-child correlations, mother-child correlations, and parent-child regression) indicate that there is low to moderate family aggregation across samples and questionnaires and that, although the effects are mostly small, some of this similarity is attributed to genetic effects (Bratko et al., 2014).” This means that parents and children have a tendency to act the same way because of the genetics they share. Along with genetics, education plays a role in determining how a personality develops. The second force is that it shapes the personality and cultivates it . The educational aspect includes external influences such as environment, family life and culture. “Personality traits produce consistent behaviors over time and situations (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” how a person's individual identity develops. Many psychologists and theologians would agree that education does indeed play a role in the progression of personality. Powledge (2014) stated in his article:“Experience and the social environment play a role – probably a key role – in development.” Tabitha Powledge has extensively studied the effects that education has on personality as well as the effects that education has on the force of nature. He believes that how people develop behavior depends on how well they remember and learn from past experiences. “The basis of all behavior is learning and memory (Powledge, 2014).” People gain knowledge and experience through different situations that shape their character. In addition to memory and learning, Powledge also focused on epigenetics in her article. “Epigenetics: How Nurture Shapes Nature (Powledge, 2014).” A person may be born with specific functions and tendencies, but education shapes these tendencies in the personality. He specifically described behavioral epigenetics. “Behavioral epigenetics refers to the study of how signals from the environment trigger molecular biological changes that modify what happens in brain cells (Powledge, 2014).” Basically, it is the study of external factors that alter how people think and react to different situations. In addition to epigenetics, family influences also have a great influence on how a person discovers their unique character. The family unit does not need to be blood related, but these are the people who have the greatest influence on a person's development. A study on rats showed that parents have an effect on their children even before conception. “When male mice and rats are exposed to alcohol before mating, their offspring are less good at discriminating in spatial tasks, and are more aggressive, take more risks, and display more anxious behavior than offspring of exposed animals (Powledge, 2014) ).” Alcohol slightly damages the sperm that will fertilize a female's eggs. Illegal drugs also cause harm to future offspring. "Males exposed to cocaine have children with smaller brains and deficits in attention and working memory (Powledge, 2014) ." The growth environment of the offspring is important already in embryonic development. The mother also has a great impact on the development of the personality of her children. If a mother is more nurturing towards her offspring, she will be less anxious than the offspring who is not raised (Powledge, 2014). If a mother is more apathetic towards her child, the child will have more anxiety. Not only does the parenting and family atmosphere influence a child's personality, but also the culture in which he or she is raised Culture can be described as the location and customs of a particular community or country. For example, when a person grows up in an economically poor culture, he or she is more likely to have a greater sense of survival than someone who lives in a wealthy suburb. . On a larger scale, there are many contrasting factors of Western versus Asian culture. “In particular, people in Asian cultures exhibit qualities that fit a dimension of 'interpersonal relatedness' rarely seen in Western cultures (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” This means that people in Asian culture tend to be more concerned about the people around them. Overall, they are more respectful. “Therefore, an Asian employee who is offered a promotion that would require moving to another city may be primarily concerned about how the move might affect his or her family. On the other hand, the Western employee's primary consideration may be how the move will increase his or her chances of one day becoming an executive at a large company (Feist & Rosenburg, 2012).” As a population,.