Invitation to Psychology

Chapter 2 Theories of Personality 63

that success in school is only for sellouts or geeks,

whose view wins? The answer, typically, is peers’

(Arroyo & Zigler, 1995; Harris, 2009). Conversely,

children whose parents gave them no encourage-

ment or motivation to succeed may find them-

selves with peers who are working like mad to get

into college, and start studying hard themselves.

Thus, peers play a tremendous role in shaping

our personality traits and behavior, causing us to

emphasize some attributes or abilities and down-

play others. Of course, as the theory of recipro-

cal determinism would predict, our temperaments

and dispositions also cause us to select particular

peer groups (if they are available) instead of others,

and our temperaments influence how we behave

within the group. But once we are among peers,

most of us go along with them, molding facets of

our personalities to the pressures of the group.

In sum, core personality traits may stem from

genetic dispositions, but they are profoundly

shaped by learning, peers, situations, experience,

and, as we will see next, the largest environment of

all: the culture.

Explore the Concept What Has Shaped Your

Personality? at mypsychlab

adolescence. At home, children learn how their
parents want them to behave and what they can
get away with, but as soon as they go to school they
conform to the dress, habits, language, and rules of
their peers. Most adults can remember how terrible
they felt when their classmates laughed at them
for pronouncing a word “the wrong way” or doing
something “stupid” (that is, not what the rest of the
kids were doing), and many recall the pain of being
excluded. To avoid being laughed at or rejected,
most children will do what they can to conform to
the norms and rules of their immediate peer group
(Harris, 2009). Children who were law-abiding in
the fifth grade may start breaking the law in high
school, if that is what it takes—or what they think it
takes—to win the respect of their peers.
It can be difficult to tease apart the effects of
parents and peers because parents usually try to
arrange things so that their children’s environ-
ments duplicate their own values and customs. To
see which has the stronger influence on personality
and behavior, therefore, we must look at situations
in which the peer group’s values clash with the
parents’ values. For example, when parents value
academic achievement and their child’s peers think

Get Involved! Situation and Self

Are you a different person when you are alone, with your parents, hanging out with friends, in class, or at a

party? If so, in what ways? Do you have a secret self that you do not show to your family? Consider the Big

Five factors, or any other personality traits that are important to you, as you think about these questions.

Recite & Review

Recite: Tell one of your peers (even an imaginary one) as much as you can about the social-

cognitive learning view of personality, reciprocal determinism, the nonshared environment, and the

relative influence of parents and peers.

Review: Even if your peers think you study too much, take the time to reread this section.

Now take this Quick Quiz:

1. What three lines of evidence have challenged the belief that parents are the major influence on
   their children’s personalities?


2. Which contributes most to the variation among siblings in their personality traits? (a) the unique
   experiences they have that are not shared with their families, (b) the family environment that all
   of them share, or (c) the way their parents treat them.


3. Eight-year-old Dwayne is pretty shy at home, where he is the middle of six children, but extro-
   verted at school, where he is the leader of his friends. What might be the reason for his appar-
   ent personality change?
   Answers:

Study and Review at mypsychlab

The shared family environment has relatively little influence on personality; few parents have a consistent child-rearing style; 1.

and even when parents try to be consistent in the way they treat their children, there may be little relation between what they

Peer groups have a powerful influence on which personality traits are encouraged 3. a2. do and how the children turn out.

and expressed and that influence can even override the influence of the child’s family.