Culture and the environment in which a person lives have enormous influence on the character of a person. More specifically, culture influence the personality of an individual by controlling the norms and ethics that a person follows. Some cultural beliefs influence a person’s view and perspectives on many issues in life. Environment of a person has an enormous power on a person’s life just like culture. Humans tend to imitate the surrounding environment especially while growing up. As a result, humans learn and later on, develop traits of the people from the surrounding area. The physical environment together with the social environment both impacts a person’s life immensely.

One way in which culture can influence a person is by emphasis on individualism during growth (Bryan, 2009). Such cultures lay preference on developing oneself with the aim of creating responsible, decisive individuals who do not depend on other people to make critical life decisions. These cultures lay emphasis on personal achievements and unique character of individuals. As a result, people from this type of culture become introverts because of the prominence made on individual self. Such people have no social friends whatsoever and lack strong relationships with the rest of the society.

Bryan (2009) states that cultures which accentuate collectivism can create good social skills within a person. These cultures encourage groups as opposed to self-identity of individuals. Consequently, group values are encouraged and everything is done within these groups. The relationship between individuals is more important and interdependence tends to be high in such cultures. These cultures result to individuals who have good social skills however, these individuals in most cases, lack self –identity and strong individual character. Individuals from such cultures are indecisive due to the overreliance on group think.

The type of culture can also affect the social welfare of an individual (Sigelman & Ridler, 2010). Individuals from cultures with good welfare systems are always optimistic in life. They tend to be confident of themselves and their abilities. Such people have a lot of potential to be successful in life because of their positive attitude. This is a sharp contrast with individuals from cultures with poor welfare conditions. These kind of people are pessimists and less confident of their abilities. With a negative attitude in life, individuals from such cultures, in most occasions, do not become successful in their lives.

An environment of can immensely influence a person’s character traits according to Bryan (2009). The way a person perceives his environment will affect a person’s emotion. An environment with strong and stable relationships can make a person become caring and concerned about others. In this kind of environment, people attend to others and equally care about them. This kind of environment is characterized with harmonious relationships and peaceful co-existence. This environment can influence a person to learn to live peaceful with others and have good inter-personal skills. Furthermore, people from this kind of environment are humane and very caring and humble in nature.

According to Sigelman & Ridler (2010), war –tone environments with disruptive social relations influence individuals to be cruel and even violent. People from this kind of environment are normally poor socially and with very high temper. These individuals do not like to socialize with other people because they are suspicious of anyone around them. They tend to treat everyone with contemp. These people easily become angry and therefore, do not have friends or sometimes very few friends. Individuals from violent areas become violent at the least provocation. They can easily kill, maim or torture a person because they are accustomed to such acts. Generally, individual from war-tone areas are very violent and at times can be very barbaric.

Culture and environment are crucial in influencing one’s life as discussed above. Individualistic cultures produce people with strong characters while collectivists’ cultures influence people to be more social. A stable environment also produces people who are caring while unstable and violent environments have a negative influence on people.

References

Bryan, W (2009) The Professional Helper: The Fundamentals of Being a Helping Professional. Springfield, ILL: Charles C Thomas Publisher

Sigelman, C. & Ridler, E. (2010) Life-Span Human Development. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning