Disabilities, External Circumstances and Nature vs. Nurture on Personality Types

[TheAdditional1]

This is a forum for personality types, yet as a previous Psych/Sociology minor, I cannot get my mind away from the nature vs. nurture aspects of this. One of the most defining features of personality types is the various ways we perceive the world. I believe that to be distanced enough to be uninfluenced by emotions and social currents (e.g. following the crowd over logic, and the many many similar observed phenomenon), there is likely something that arbitrarily set you apart from others. I said "disabilities" because that's the nature of my own factor, but honestly there is a HUGE array of extenuating circumstances that affect us, and I know that everyone is going through something (disability, trauma, naturally anti-social, type of environment growing up). I think those things are circumstances help uniquely dictate the nurture over the nature of our personalities, and at the end of the day we have distilled them into four-letter categories - INTP for many of us here.

So my question is - what disabilities or extenuating factors do you think have helped shape you to who you are, personality wise, and particularly to such an extent that it created nurturing circumstances that dominated your nature? I'll start with myself.




I'm INTP and I think a hearing impairment has contributed to a large part of it.

I: I think I might be naturally extroverted, but having a hearing impairment has made navigating social situations akin to walking through mud; tiring, slow and increasingly not worth the effort, so I've largely become more introverted than I would be. Nurture over nature.

N: I think my intuition is my most natural characteristic of all. Just always been that way. Fully aware of stats and facts and statistics but there's too little potential in them alone, so I always project beyond them.

T: I may largely be Feeling as well, as I am very well in tune with what I'm feeling, tracking down why I'm feeling it, and doing the same for others - I'm sometimes too in tune with body language and reading others. But at the end of the day when it comes to actions and making decisions, I suppress the Feeling and Think only critically. I think I'm able to do that because emotions are essentially social products (of expression). By being porously quarantined from many social interactions growing up ("Blind people miss out on things; deaf people miss out on people" ~Helen Keller), I've managed to escape the emotional currents that seem to almost dictate many people; if they're in the deepest part of that river's current, then I'd be the one on the shore with every means of pulling myself out of it at will. So in all the polls and questionnaires that determined INTP, I came out as "Thinking" - pragmatically and barely. I tie that once again back to the issue of my hearing impairment, and thus again, nurture wins over nature.

P: Perceiving. Mixed bag here. If I boil it down to crude basic essence, it would be that I've been (and acknowledged, accepted, internalized being) wrong so many times in my life growing up that I find it more pragmatic to sit back and continue to observe factors before I take action. Doing this includes suppressing emotional urges (ties back to T over F), and that builds up on itself. I've been misunderstood plenty of times, and I have enough empathy to imagine - to know - that it happens to other people too. So my "Perceiving" is basically a sustained benefit of doubt to the world, and internalizing the art of covering my ass *ahem* um, bases. To theoretically tie it to my hearing: I grew up coming up with my own conclusions, projections and interpretations on situations based on the minimal amount of information I could hear. When I jumped to conclusions based off of that, they were normally either flat out wrong from lack of information, or mildly-to-severely misaligned with the social direction of the conversation (especially since I over-deliberate every specific nuance). And I grew up in a pretty bullied and inflexible kiddie environment, so I often caught derision for being wrong so often. So I wound up sitting on my haunches more and more because of that, and so my Perceiving is definitely at least more refined on account of that nurture.



What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

 

[Auburn]

I think nurture definitely has a dominant role in how we manifest externally in the world. The external affects external manifestation - they are the same domain so they influence each other most directly. o.o

I'm of the belief that type is internal/innate, but that's a long (long) explanation.

From what I've seen of you on the forum so far, I agree with you - I think your proactive/extroverted energy is very present, but crimped somehow. There's plenty of yang in you, and emotional passion/investment. But that passion seems to be calloused.

When ethics is the primary nature of a person but the person is operating by logic, I've often seen effects just like the ones you express. The 'dispassion' isn't wholly neutral. Instead there's a sort of beef against feeling (re: feeling counteracting feeling -- a hostility toward others or the concept of certain social groups).

In a sterile sense, when typology describes that the rational types don't rely or depend on ethics-judgments for managing life... it's actually referring to an absence of experiencing feeling (in the process) altogether. Ethos isn't factored in because it almost doesn't even register/enter thought. Think of Data from Star Trek, who is actually personally inclined to want to socialize and want to interface with humans, but his fundamental processing algorithm just lacks the social consideration. The difference isn't in attitude but in mental architecture.

Defensiveness against people due to bad experiences with them commonly jades many "F-types" into "T" manifestations. But the resolution isn't to think of oneself as a "T", because that encourages the crippling and the rejection of one's own native ethical dimension. If the person can find a way to tease apart what has been truly innate to them all along, and how nurture has morphed some of it, or distorted it, then they can begin to undo the effects of that nurture by addressing the affliction directly.

...just my $0.02

 

[Yellow]

I think there is a hefty dose of "nurture" involved.

Now, according to an infant psychologist I know, there are three "baby personalities". There are the friendly babies, the feisty babies, and the cautious babies. These temperaments become apparent at about 5 months, though the good doctor says that she can identify them as early as 3 months. These personalities can change, or rather, their affect can become flat, in a very poor environment.

Which brings is to issues of trauma. We're finding that infants are even more affected by witnessing and being exposed to trauma than older children. The infant sitting in the crib while dad beats the shit out of mom has no way to process the event, and no memory to later discuss. Yet that super-absorbent brain picks it up. The older kids are sent to counseling, but 7 years later, you have an inexplicably explosive or suicidal (or both) child on your hands.

Finally, you get to the ripe old age of 1, and now everyone can see your personality shining through. Your greatest year of learning is over, and only Smeg knows what you've picked up. The three baby personalities begin to differentiate slightly, and by the time you're 3 years old, and you're brain has done approximately half of its lifetime learning, one can start to see the I v. E, and the P v. J. The T/F have to wait until you're no longer a big ball of raw emotion -- somewhere around 4-5, I'd assume. The S/N would similarly need to wait (I'm guessing) until your brain has developed the capacity for abstract reasoning, around 11 years old.

There is so, so much time for your environment to mold you, that it would be almost impossible to form a "nature" argument for personality without identifying a tangible indicator that can be tracked at different ages.

YOu could argue with genealogies, but they quickly turn to circular reasoning, when it's your family that provides your early environment.

... now, you have $0.04. You gon' be rollin' in the Lincolns pretty soon.

 

[Tannhauser]

One can probably make a case for each of the possibilities, without even getting close to a conclusion. I was however told that I was the only baby that didn't cry when I was baptised. So apparently my introversion started already at that point. I was also often asked why I was so serious and thoughtful all the time when I was probably around 5. And by the time I started in school at 7.. well.. at that point I was considering the nature of the self and things like that, true INTP-style.

 

[Anktark]

My apologies if I am being redundant, just want to be sure my perspective on this is clear.
There is no standard for being an INTP, because it's just a framework, a concept, a superset; similarly to Homo Sapiens. Belonging to Homo Sapiens means you are likely to walk on two legs (bipedal posture), have a capacity for abstract thought and stereoscopic vision, etc. Further categorized as INTP one reveals even more information about oneself, but it's not the totality of all information about a particular organism. Just like there is a multitude of anatomical differences between two Homo Sapiens subjects, so is there between two actual INTPs.

My perspective on this is: it's not nature vs nurture, it's nature and nurture. Nature provides us with inclinations do go/think about things in a certain way and nurture shapes them.
Carbon can be nurtured into a diamond, but unlikely into an iron rod (apart from involving physicists).

 

[EditorOne]

I'll chip in with those who say "sort of both."

I was a newspaper reporter for much of my working career. It was a real newspaper operating on the elusive but desired principle of objectivity or at least dispassionate reporting. That meant keeping my opinions to myself and my reactions to people muted. My sense is that a job requiring me to deploy INTP tendencies like being quiet and underreacting probably refined and reinforced my existing INTP disposition.