How Is Personality Developed? What Roles Do Genetics And Environment Play In Personality Development?

Ah, nature/nurture. Actually, both questions work together. The short answer is it’s both nature (genetics) and nurture (environment).
It’s genetics because a good deal of who you are comes from the DNA of both parents. Say that’s the skeleton. You’re “encoded” to be a certain way. It’s environment because what you live with everyday–family influences as well as friends and even strangers who pass through your life–can influence your thinking. As a child you might pick up on one or both of your parents’ mannerisms, way of thinking, temper, etc. As you get older, you will be influenced by friends, teachers, politicians, tv, etc.
You will always be who you are at the core, but what you take in through the senses and how you process it is the meat on the bones.

Personality is a theory and we are pretty well established in this behavior by the age of 8 years old and no amount of psychotherapy will change its course. Genetics again are theory but we can start somewhere are we will all be lost, genetics are just a prescribed form of potentials we’ve inherited from our relatives and our response to make a change in the behavior as a result. Here is an example; There is a man whom spent eleven years in grade school to graduate from the eight grade. He went to a freshman year for about six weeks and quit. Then about 47 years later he passed the G.E.D. test and began college, he now has a G.P.A. of 2.85 and has a major in psychology and is a volunteer mental health counselor at the school.and the Yahoo Answer Column, yes, I’m 67 yrs old and my great-grandmother was a school teacher. I’m the first in four generations to seek a college education. This is what genetics do without our knowing. A form predisposition.