Question

Do you believe that your social background has an impact on your personality and who you are as a person? Why or why not? At a minimum, please respond in a paragraph of at least 5-7 sentences to fully address this question. Then, be sure to respond to at least one of your classmate's posts with a substantial response. Also, be sure to respond in your own words!

Answer 1

The social background of a person affects significantly on the personality and who he is as a person. Humans are social beings and their life get affected due to the social background that they are in. People do a lot of things to maintain their societal background. And the standard of living a person maintains hugely impacts his/her social background. Thus to maintain such background this person, in turn, tries to maintain his/her standard of living to a certain level to get social outcomes such as recognition, esteem needs, etc. The consumption of a person also gets affected by the social background due to the imitation effect which leads him to buy goods and services that others in his society do. Thus social background is also a reason why people hold goods that they are holding or seeking services that they do.

The personality of a person depends largely on the standard of living of that person and on the consumption of products and services of that person. For example, a businessman always tries to show-off his golf ball to dignify his status in society. This example depicts how a person from a higher standard of living, falling in the higher income group tries to depict his social status and how it affects his expenditure and pattern of consumption. Now this relation of a person's income, consumption, the standard of living and social status affects the overall personality of that person. And from the example, we can clearly see that the costly golf ball implies a higher social status that is fulfilling the esteem need of that person and how this item is not a necessity of life and instead of a luxury item with snob effect (purchase of luxury goods to show-off to others in the society).

The personality of a person means the characteristics of that person which include confidence, agreeableness, openness, courage and a lot of other traits. So when a person is being brought up in a higher social class, with a high standard of living and lavish consumption pattern, that person will certainly try to maintain that class and to respond to his social needs he will shape his personality in such a way to meet the criteria to belong to that particular social class, for example that businessman in our example is showing-off his golf ball and satisfying his ego needs within his social group. Which proves that the social background greatly affects the personality of that person.

Similarly, people who belong in a different social background suppose the low-income group of the society will certainly face problems belonging to that society and how to cope with that and how to shape himself to cope with such social needs. It has been seen that people belonging from the lower-income group of society tend to feel more unsecured and sometimes suffer from a lack of confidence. Now this happens due to the fact that the person is afraid that his low income is affecting his social image and standard of living and the consumption that he can afford. So sometimes even when the income changes, let's assume that the income of such person falls, but in order to maintain his social class, he might go overboard and consume stuff that he himself cannot afford which increases his debts and lowers his savings. Thus to satisfy the social need, this person is showing-off stuff in his group just to maintain his image even when he cannot afford it.

So the social background of a person or the kind of society he lives in greatly affects the personality of that person and who he is. Suppose, for example, a person born in a criminal society is taught to maintain a criminal background since childhood and that is due to the social background and nothing else as a person in most cases is not a born criminal. And this person even before his knowledge of the outside world develops criminal ideologies to cope with his social needs and shape his personality accordingly to respond to such social needs of the society he belongs to. Therefore, the social background and upbringing affect the personality of a person to a great extent and it also affects the economic activities he indulges into. As for the example for the criminal, this person will indulge in criminal activities which will include illegal consumption and investment patterns that are quite certain for this person to undertake and such criminal activities he does reflect who this person really is. So we can conclude that most of the time we shape our personalities according to our social background and standard of living.

Note: As no posts relating to classmates are available response could not be provided.