Role of Heredity in Personality Development

The personality pattern is founded on the individual’s

hereditary endowment, but it is not inherited. It is

the product of learning during the course of prolonged

social relationships with people both within and outside

the home. As Anderson has pointed out, personality

is organized around nodal points or experiences which

have received specific emphasis.

At the moment of conception each new human being

receives a genetic inheritance which provides all the

potentialities for his behaviour and development

throughout his life time. This endowment includes

potentialities for an individual’s bodily equipment, for

the development of specific skills, abilities and kinds

of behaviour and for patterns of growth and change

throughout a predictable life cycle.

The Mechanics of Heredity

At Fertilization, the male and Female germ cells unite

to form a fertilized ovum containing about 46

chromosomes, half from each parent. The chromosomes

are minute, threadlike structures containing many

hundreds of ultramicroscopic particles called ‘genes’,

which are the real carriers of a person’s heredity.

Together, the chromosomes probably contain from 10

to 15 thousand genes, of them a complex molecule

consisting of thousands of atoms in special

arrangements. The genes carry the blueprint for an

individual’s development and direct his growth from a

one-celled unit to an adult. Within this inherited

structure, lie the potentialities for behaviour.

Role of Heredity

The personality pattern is inwardly determined by

and closely associated with the maturation of physical

and mental characteristics which constitute the

individual’s hereditary endowment. Although social

and other environmental factors affect the form a

personality pattern takes, it is not instilled or controlled

from without but evolves from the potentials within

the individual. The principal raw materials of

personality-physique, intelligence and temperament

are the results of heredity. How a person will develop

depends on the environmental influences within which

a person grows.

The significance of hereditary foundations in

determining the personality pattern has been stressed

by many researchers. It is generally held that

personality is formed from the interaction of significant

figures (first the mother, later the father and siblings,

later extra familial figures) with the child. The child

brings to this interaction biological constitution, a set

of needs and intellectual capacities which determine

the way in which a person is acted upon by the

significant figures in her environment.

In the course of interaction of hereditary and

environmental factors, the individual selects from his

environment what fits his needs and rejects what

does not. Thus personality pattern develops through

interactions with the environment which an individual

himself has initiated.

One reason for stressing the role of heredity in the

development of personality is to recognize the fact

that personality pattern is subject to limitations. A

person who inherits a low level of intelligence, for

example, cannot, even under the most favourable

environmental conditions, develop a personality pattern

that will lead to adequate personal and social

adjustment, than a person with high level of

adjustment. Thus heredity sets limits to a person’s

development.

Furthermore, recognition of the limitations imposed

by heredity underlines the fact that people are not

totally free to choose and develop the kind of personality

pattern they want. Using intelligence again as an

illustration it may be said that a person with a lowgrade

intelligence cannot develop the personality

pattern of a leader even though he wants to do so and

even though he has a strong motivation to try to

develop the personality traits essential for leadership.