Brief learnings of your deposition

“You won’t believe it. I just had a conversation with Amitabh Bachchan and I’m surprised at how easy-going he is”. The word ‘easy-going’ here refers to the alleged personality of Amitabh Bachchan.

If one searches for the word personality, they may find something like ‘what characterizes a person’ in which the keywords are used as a character, identity, or predisposition. But it is a vast subject that has been researched and analyzed in extensive detail and has been studied by scientists peels by the peel. Derived from the Latin word persona, a theatrical mask worn by performers (thus the symbol of the 2 clowns you see everywhere), personality is the unique characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make one individual different from another.

Personality is believed to remain special and exclusive to an individual throughout their life, something that comes from within forming the essence of each one of us and making us different from others in some or the other way. It has been believed that we are born with it and it's something that may be altered but can’t be changed in one’s lifetime. But over the centuries, in various philosophical and scientific studies, the debate has been carried on “nature v/s nurture” or the question of: “Is personality innate or acquired?” or “Are we born with it or do we build it through our experiences?”.

Famous research on twins separated at birth (watch Three Identical Strangers 2018 for more information) has thrown light on this issue, where a triplet among many other twins and triplets are separated at birth into different environments and families but when they grow up, they differ from each other in some way but they do share many notable characteristics nonetheless the different environments and cultures. That must be because they share 100% of their genes, proving that it is both nature and nurture that builds one true personality and that characteristic is partly learned.

This may be surprising but personality is not limited to humans. Personality has been investigated successfully in animals as well. A dog supposedly may be loving and comfortable or shy and unadaptable depending on their genetic code, how has it been treated and trained, and also the environment they have grown up and continue to live in along with their life experiences.

Army dogs are more vigilant, aggressive, responsive, and intelligent because they have been trained to do so. On the contrary, family dogs like Labradors and Retrievers are considered family dogs as they are gentle, even-tempered, trusting, and agile.

So, you are a culmination of your genetics, upbringing, and experiences. As complex as quantum physics but at the same time, simplified in one word ‘human’.

By: Simran Raghav