Personality changes

I don't believe that people are born with personalities, per se, but acquire them through a combination of nature and nurture.

I remember coming across some research several years ago showing that people who had suffered damage to a particular part of their brain could lose their sense of "self" and become like someone else while still retaining all of their own memories, etc.

I'll post a link if I can find it.

Here you go: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-05/AAoN-Rdmk-0705101.php

Well by born I didn't actually mean born with a sense of self... More like: Are people predisposed from birth towards being a certain way?

The reason I'm asking that question is because often, people seem to turn out similar to one of their parents whether that parent is there to actively raise them or not.

That is a very interesting question. I hope someone can enlighten us both!

I do think people tend to attribute traits to kids that may or not be a result of some kind of genetic link.

For example...

I am the guardian for a little boy. He is four years old and has lived with me for two and a half years. In that two and a half years he has spent less than 100 hours (a little more than two weekends worth of time) with his father. His paternal grandparents recently resurfaced after being absent totally for a year and a half and being irregular visitors for the six months preceeding that.

Nevertheless, they attribute much of his behavior to being "just like his father".

Most of the time, I think they simply like to convince themselves that there is a greater connection between the boy and his father is this is how they assuage their souls.

Other times I think they're frikken crazy.

And other times I wonder if they might just know something that I don't know.

I read someplace, it wasn't the internet so I don't have a link, that there are both somewhat true.

The way you are is your personality and that's what you are born with. You can't change it by will, maybe by damage to the brain as boomerang says. These are generally likes and dislikes.

The way you choose to be is your character. Those are things you can change. These are how you react to certain situations.

The effects of nature vs nuture is a very interesting question. Nature, or personality or temperament, is the inate set of individual characterists determined be one's unique gene pool. Nuture, or environment or circumstances, is the set of outside forces that influence the natural being from birth.

One way to determine the effects of nature vs nuture is to study identical twins who were separated at birth. The number of cases is obviously limited but some very interesting findings have come out of those few cases. For instances, likes and dislikes of certain foods, music, activities seems to be related to nature as is someone's personality. Nuture can and does influence how the individual adjusts to their environment and to some extent to their inate reactions to 'life'.

Here's a link that discusses findings from studying identical twins at birth:

http://web.isp.cz/jcrane/IB/Twins.html

and here's one that says that's all a bunch of crap:

http://drbeetle.homestead.com/twins.html

The later article states that nurture begins in the womb and separating a set of twins at birth is too late to truely study the effect.

Manticore,

I don't know how technical you want to get, but there is excellent up-to-date information on nurture & nature of the brain in THE BIRTH OF THE MIND by Gary Marcus and WIDER THAN THE SKY by Gerald Edelman (a Nobel prizewinner and the leading U.S. expert on the broader genetics and possible specific mechanisms of consciousness). Both books are available in paperback. The Marcus is fairly easy reading; the Edelman, though only 140 pages, requires a lot of concentration (but gives high reward!).

The current agreement seems to be that one's personality at, or just before, birth is a rough draft. Thereafter, it is changed in largely unpredictable ways by one's environment. As J_B, I am fascinated by the identical-twin studies, but there need to be more for predictable patterns to begin to emerge.

About your personality change question. If an adult makes as complete a change in behavior as you specify, he would need to be engineering it himself, consciously--or is suffering from a psychiatric problem or organic syndrome, which are both far beyond my knowledge. As the changes you describe seem more negative than the starting attributes, one must consider the possibility that these newly exhibited behaviors have been the genuine "personality" all along, covered up with more positive behaviors. Dunno. This kind of thing is very hard to figure out, even for some professionals.

Suppose you have two babies, born into two separate families.

One little boy is high-strung and timid. When he cries he's treated roughly--or ignored.

The other little boy is also high-strung and timid, but both parents cuddle him and talk to him and encourage him to overcome his fears.

Different babies, different outcomes.