The Origin of Personality and Intelligence

What are the factors responsible for human personality? Many would say a child's personality is a direct reflection of its parent. According to Sigmund Freud and Arnold Gesell, children display individual personality from the moment they are born (Santrock, 2011). On the other hand, today's mental health professionals have shown patterns of leaning toward the environmentalist theory, emphasizing a one-sided approach whereas the origin of personality is contingent upon the environmental influences (Santrock, 2011). Authors of "The Origin of Personality" Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, and Herbert Birch, argue that it isn't either nurture or nature; rather one couldn't be more responsible for the development of personality than the other (Diessner, 2008, p. 92). In fact, they believed that inborn traits and environmental training are intertwined in the development of personality (Diessner, 2008, p. 93).

In order for Thomas, Chess, and Birch to prove their hypothesis, they conducted an investigation measuring behavioral characteristic differences of newborns (Diessner, 2008, p. 92). The project was purposefully long term as they wanted to expand the research into the childhood stage of the 141 participants, furthermore; defining whether the characteristics would remain consistent with any change of the environment or would the behavior be modified in order to adjust to the setting. Skilled facilitators used parental and school teacher interviews, direct observations, and psychological test to assemble prerequisite data for the purpose of categorizing behavior and distinguishing the personality type. The well analyzed data allowed for a nine point behavioral continuum which was further broken down into three classifications (Diessner, 2008, p. 94). Children were clustered accordingly: an easy child, a difficult child, and a slow-to-warm-up child (Santrock, 2011, p. 183). The study revealed 40 percent of the children studied fell into the easy child category, 10 percent were labeled difficult, and 15 percent were considered slow to warm up. The other 35 percent had an assortment of behavioral individualities which did not establish motive for placement in one group or another. Further findings were, in order to inspire personality development one must be aware of the child's temperamental traits, make appropriate influential environment adjustments necessary to cultivate healthy development (Diessner, 2008, p.94).

While several researchers believe environmental adjustments may be necessary for healthy personalities; is the same true for intelligence? According to Jean Piaget, Author of "The Origins of Intelligence in Children," development is an evolutionary process by which each platform of development depends on the one preceding it (Diessner, 2008, p. 98). Piaget calls this process "adaption" which involves making essential adjustments that endorses conformity to the environmental demands. Furthermore, Piaget's theory of cognitive development focused on four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational; Piaget considered the stages to represent "How a child thinks-not how much the child knows." The stages of development were age specific and within each platform there were a unique difference in the way children identify with world (Santrock, 2011, p.25). Piaget

The first stage in Piaget's theory is the sensorimotor stage, which last from birth to age two. During this stage of infancy the child is trying to establish the relationship between the very limited skills and abilities they are born with; sensory perception and physical motor ability. Further, there are six sub-stages within the sensorimotor stage. The first stage is associated with the use of reflexes in which Piaget says is inherited (Santrock, 2011, p.150). The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is in authority of various organs and muscles within the body (Siddle, 2005), including reflex actions. Because the ANS functions are involuntarily, we are unaware and pay no special attention to the mechanisms.

The second sub-stage is known as primary circular reactions, it includes behavior that occurs only by accident and is eventually repeated without motivation (Santrock, 2011, p. 150). In other words, at this sub-stage the infant find their behavior pleasurable and begins forming conditioned reflexes (Diessner, 2008, p. 101).

During the third sub-stage of Piaget's sensorimotor theory, known as secondary circular reactions; infants are between ages 4 and 8 months of age. This sub-stage is associated with the development of coordination. During the course of this stage infants are using vision to create behavior patterns. In addition, Infants begin to imitate actions