Personality - a tendency to make certain types of decisions (abusive, people)

[LoveWisdom]

I was thinking: what is personality? What are character traits?

Someone said that the same character traits express themselves as good in a good environment and look beautiful. So you don't even need to change the person, the person is already good.

So what makes the person bad in THIS environment? They said that the traits are expressing themselves in a "bad" way here.

So, when our body/mind system comes across a problem, the body/mind system has to decide what to do. For example, if you see a crying person, what are you going to do?

Your body/mind makes a decision to respond.

What decision is it going to make?

If you decide to ignore this person, you will be seen as inconsiderate.
if you decide to comfort this person, you will be considered as someone who is comforting and has gentle ways.
If you decide to criticize this person for crying, you will be considered harsh, or a jerk.

So based on what decision you made, people then label you with a personality trait. So personality is a tendency to make certain decisions.

If most of the time you decide to comfort someone like that, you will be a nice, comforting, loving, gentle person.


But what if this same person is raised in a family of thieves, in an abusive environment, where comforting is seen as a weakness? This person may then make a decision to NOT be comforting.

So, in one environment he makes a decision to be nice.
In another environment he makes a decision to be... not nice.

But what is it that makes him not be nice? When his body/mind makes a decision, it takes into account the reward/punishment system. What reward will he get or what punishment for his actions? He would be punished if he acted nice (in this environment). So the body/mind system usually wants to avoid pain. So he would try to NOT be nice, just to avoid pain.

Some are not as afraid of pain. So they may be rebellious because they have big empathy skill developed and they could feel the pain of another person, as they are inflicting it (by not being nice). So they would choose not to feel that pain and instead to feel the pain of punishment. So they would choose to be nice.


So this way, a personality changed, based on whether which decision will bring the person more pain.

If being NICE decision would bring less pain, then people would choose them.

Therefore, if you put a person into a good environment, he will keep making a decision to be nice.

And also, I think that more fragile people develop a tougher personality (exterior) to keep themselves from being harmed and maybe these are the ones who are sarcastic, or unfriendly, or tough.

The more flexible ones, the ones that can roll with the punches, would be softer because they do not feel the need to protect themselves too much, they can take the pain.