Our minds are not rigid like stone, but are defined by constantly evolving. But this process does not simply depend on our age (the fact of accumulating years of life) but on the experiences we go through, what we experience firsthand. In psychology, the separation between the person and the environment in which they live, in psychology, is something artificial, a differentiation that exists in theory because it helps to understand things, but that is not there in reality.
This is especially noticeable in the influence that our childhoods have on personality that defines us when we reach adulthood. As much as we tend to believe that what we do, we do it because “we are like that” and that’s it, the truth is that both the habits and the ways of interpreting reality that we adopt in our childhood will have an important effect on our way of thinking and feel once past adolescence.
This is how our childhood influences personality development
The personality of a human being is what summarizes their behavior patterns when it comes to interpreting reality, analyzing their feelings and making some habits their own and not others. That is, what makes us behave in a certain way, easy to distinguish from that of others.
But personality does not emerge from our mind without further ado, as if its existence had nothing to do with what surrounds us. On the contrary, the personality of each of us is a combination of genes and learned experiences (most of them not in a school or university classroom, of course). And childhood is, precisely, the life stage in which we learn the most and in which each of these learnings has the most importance.
Thus, what we experience during our first years leaves a mark on us, a mark that will not necessarily always remain in the same form, but that will have a determining importance in the development of our way of being and relating. How does this happen? Fundamentally, through the processes that you can see below.
1. The importance of attachment
From the first months of life, the way in which we experience or do not experience attachment with a mother or father It is something that marks us.
In fact, one of the most important discoveries in the area of Evolutionary Psychology is that without moments of caresses, direct physical contact and eye contact, boys and girls grow up with serious cognitive, affective and behavioral problems. We not only need food, safety and shelter; We also need love at all costs. And that’s why what we might call “toxic families” are such harmful environments in which to grow up.
Of course, the degree to which we do or do not receive attachment-related experiences is a matter of degree. Between the total absence of physical contact and pampering and the optimal amount of these elements there is a wide gray scale, which makes the possible psychological problems that may appear milder or more severe, depending on each case.
Thus, the most serious cases can cause serious mental retardation or even death (if sensory and cognitive deprivation occurs constantly), while milder problems in the relationship with parents or caregivers can cause, in childhood, and in adulthood, we become surly, afraid to relate
The way in which others teach us to judge ourselves during childhood also greatly influences the self-esteem and self-concept that we internalize in adulthood. For example, parents with tendency to judge ourselves cruelly They will make us believe that everything good that happens to us is due to luck or the behavior of others, while the bad happens due to our insufficient abilities.
3. The theory of the just world
From a young age we are taught to believe in the idea that good is rewarded and evil is punished. This principle is useful in guiding us in our development of morality and teaching us some basic patterns of behavior, but it is dangerous if we come to literally believe in this, that is, if we assume that this is some kind of real karma, a logical that governs the cosmos itself regardless of what we believe or what we do.
If we fervently believe in this earthly karma, this can lead us to think that unfortunate people are unfortunate because they did something to deserve it, or that the luckiest people are also unfortunate because they have earned merit for it. This is a bias that predisposes us towards individualism and lack of solidarity as well as denying the collective causes of phenomena such as poverty and believing in “mentalities that make us rich.”
Thus, the theory of the just world, paradoxical as it may seem, predisposes us towards a personality based on cognitive rigidity the tendency to reject what goes beyond the standards that must be applied individually.
In childhood, everything is very delicate: in a second, everything can go wrong, due to our lack of knowledge about the world, and our public image can suffer from all kinds of mistakes. Taking into account that in a school class the difference in months of age between students means that some have much more experience than others, this can create clear inequalities and asymmetries.
As a consequence, if for some reason we become accustomed to fearing interactions with others, our lack of social skills can cause us to begin to fear relationships with strangers, leading us towards a personality type based on avoidance and the preference for experiences linked to what is already known, which is not new.
