Parent's personality effecting the personality their child

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Were you saying that to me? (It's helpful to say who you are talking to/about.) If so, no, I'm not mixed up. I know what personality is, and I know plenty about autism and Asperger's. And I know it's not a personality disorder or a personality condition. It's how the brain works. But how one's brain works affects one's personality.

An example. As a preteen, I made the choice to be myself rather than to try to be what others say I should be. That's part of my personality.

And why did I make that choice? I made it because I just didn't have the ability to be what others say I should be. I choose not to do what seemed impossible, and instead do what I could. My spirituality -- my belief that God loves me as I am -- affected that choice. But it was not at all the main reason from it. The main influence was an inability, and the particular inability is definitely in the realm of autistic/aspie traits.

No, my autisticness (or aspieness if you prefer) didn't cause that trait. But it was a major influence. Autisticness doesn't cause me to have the personality I do. But it has influenced my personality.

Absolutely not. The notion that AS is a type of personality is obviously very wrong, I just happened to think it was too obviously so to require any particular argument.

If it were true that AS were a personality type, then people with AS would demonstrate similar personalities as a group. We do not.

Do you think that being blind from birth is a definite influence on personality development? I do, but I certainly do not think being blind from birth is a personality type.
What next? Will people suggest being non-autistic is a personality type?

By personality a group of things including how a person presents in interactions with others are being referred to simultaneously. People who are consistently quiet and people who are consistently excessively chatty would not be considered to have the same personality type at all. And yet these are both common presentations in persons with AS. This is just one area of what is understood by the word personality, where people with AS can vary to the point of being diametric opposites on a continuum. AS is not a personality type.

If AS were a personality type people with AS would have the similar personalities group-wide, but we do not have, ergo AS is not a personality type.


No kidding. The point of a hyperbolic analogy is to be hyperbolic. As you can see, my reasoning for considering that AS is not a personality type in no way relies on the hyperbole or the analogy itself.

This is for pandd:

Here are two of Webster's definitions of personality:

2 a: the condition or fact of relating to a particular person ; specifically : the condition of referring directly to or being aimed disparagingly or hostilely at an individual b: an offensively personal remark <angrily resorted to personalities>
3 a: the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual or a nation or group ; especially : the totality of an individual's behavioral and emotional characteristics b: a set of distinctive traits and characteristics <the energetic personality of the city>

People with AS obvsiously share a lot of characteristics:

Reserved, cerebral, anxiety, unfriendly.

By definition, AS can be a type of personality.

I think maybe AS is more of a modifier than a base personality--like having a lot of different sorts of cars and painting them all the same color. We're all different personalities; only they're all Autism-colored personalities.

Not everybody on the spectrum shares the same personality. Some autistics are extroverted, confident, and more interested in shiny things than scholarly pursuits, for example. Maybe autism tends to be associated more often with one personality trait than the other, but we are so very different that there is no way to tell what somebody's personality will be just from the information that they are autistic.

One of the most important things in a diagnosis is to separate learned personality traits from other outward traits. That's why they pros get the big bucks.
This is an apples to oranges comparison trying to be made.

Of course we are all not exactly the same. But we share ALOT of the same characteristics.

Those same characteristics are our base personality.

(delete)

Last edited by KevinLA on 05 Jan 2009, 9:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

KevinLA, many words have multiple meanings. The pragmatics of communicating in language include a set of receptive skills that facilitate distinction between distinct possible meanings. Context is the most usual means of determining which of a set of distinct meanings is the one being communicated.

Obviously when the context is how individuals acquire personality, the particular meaning of personality is the one that refers to a set of stable attributes and traits characterizing an individual (that set including things described in my earlier post such as how socially chatty/extroverted or quiet/introverted one presents as). By conflating two distinct meanings you simply are needlessly making communicating more difficult than it should be. It is quite clear from the context of the discussion that people are talking about personal personality, not 'any old loose set of traits that might characterize some group or other'.

To say AS is a loose set of traits that characterize those with AS is redundant, yet if we take the only definition of personality consistent with calling AS a personality type, that is all you are saying. Not really interesting conversation, and a needlessly ambiguous and confusing way of describing AS.

AS was thought to be a type of personality originally, right? AS is something you are born with, personality is something, in theory, you develop over time.

Pandd, I think you would do well to be less black and white in your thinking when trying to understand what others are saying and having a discussion with them. Note I'm not saying anything about your personal thinking, but how you understand and interact with others. If we are too black and white in our thinking when listening, we misunderstand what others are trying to convey.

Yeah, they do—partially. Of course, environment plays a large role too. If I remember correctly, openness to new experiences is the most heritable of the Big Five personality dimensions (extraversion/introversion, emotional stability/neuroticism, conscientiousness/carelessness, agreeableness/disagreeableness, and openness to new experiences/traditionalism).

Yes! But I don't see it as genetics, I see it as the child learns from the parent as they grow in their first couple years of life. For example, one very non-AS trait I have is that I'm exceedingly optimistic, a "die-hard optimist" as a friend of mine put it. But the question is-does it negate my possibilities of having AS or is it something that I learned when I was young to cope before I even knew I had to cope?

As it turns out, it appears to be the second possibility. My mother is very much the optimist, and my dad is optimistic about at least one thing (though he shows pessimism and other aspie traits in other areas) and so I learned when I was young that optimism in its many forms is the way to go, that there's no point in being down about most or every little thing.

Maybe it could be genetic, but I don't believe so. I honestly have no proof to say it's not, though, so that's your choice what you want to think in terms of that.

As for sense of humor, definitely as well. I am unusual among aspies because I get most sarcasm rather easily. But I was bombarded with it from a young age, from my dad (and probably my mom) as well as from most of my extended family. As such, I tend to be a very sarcastic person now.

MR I think your comments do not correlate well to the course of the discussion. If you think that it is a matter of being black and white and thus missing some finer point, then you have failed to understand what I am saying.

In asking if parents contribute to personality development, it is reasonable to expect that a particular thing is meant by personality (in the context of the question) and that particular meaning is not consistent with describing blindness as a personality type, yet every reason by which Kelvin and yourself claim AS could be called a personality type applies to being blind from birth.

By Kelvin's own definitions AS is a personality type when personality is defined such that nationhood also is. Do one's parent's effect one's nationhood is not what I understood the question to be (if that is the question, the answer seems to me to be that one's parents do indeed often effect one's own nationhood...).

I have AS and belong to a nation, does that mean I have multiple personality disorder?

In the sense you try describe AS as being personality MR, all you've done is demonstrate that it is a potential influence on the development of personality, and frankly I do not disagree with that. You claim AS forced a choice on you, but it did not make the particular choice, you did. Others keep the attempt up for better or worse. AS did not choose, it influenced the choice only in making a choice necessary, but your personality is what actually chose the particular choice. An additional complexity is that your particular environment also played a causal role in the choice being necessary.

In terms of what is understood by personal individual personality, AS is not a personality type; it's simply one of many attributes that can influence personality development when it is present. If someone wants to argue it is a personality type, in the instance that you apply the same definition of personality that also allows nationhood to be a personality type, I actually do not really understand what deeper point that entails in order to discuss that. By that criteria being female is a personality type, as are being a butcher and being a baker and being a candle-stick maker.

See, thus my telling you that you need to listen better. Because, what I said was just what you said you don't disagree with. I never said AS is personality. I did say it influences personality. It's possible I'm guilty of not hearing what you were really saying, but don't think you aren't guiltly of that as well. What I quote above clearly shows me you've misunderstood me.

Two additional notes. First, there's a difference between "it could be said AS is a type of personality" and "AS is a type of personality". One said X is true. The other says there's a truth that could be described by saying X, but isn't necessarily X. Also, I never said AS is a type of personality, nor that it could be described as a type of personality. That was KevinLA. I did say "AS is integral to our personalities. A definite influence.". You now have agreed with at least the 2nd half of that.

Seems to me if you'd've taken a less black and white view of KevinLA's statement that AS can be described as a type of personality, then you'd've better been able to see that we actually agree, at least partially.

I wondered about that; how else would it be possible if genetics did not dictate basic personality that a child that has not been living with a parent has personality traits of that parent?

That's my situation exactly and I thought it was pretty fascinating to have traits I can have never learnt.

It's just that how they play out that's not determined and influenced by environment and chance, as I know.

I'm not like that.

No I do not see. You see what happened is;
someone (Kelvin) said AS could be called a personality type'
I responded by conceding someone could say as much but that saying it is so does not make it true and iterated my opinion that it is not a personalty type.
You called the contents of my post (not sure which contents) an argument that I knew to be BS .
Unsure what you were referring to as a BS argument I both elaborated my reason for believing AS is not a personality type and explained the hyperbolic absurdity employed in the gas station analogy (the point of which was to concede that while someone could say AS is a personality type it does not mean AS is a personality type because that X can be said does not necessitate that X is true).
KevinLA then posted definitions intended to demonstrate that there was some definition of personality that if applied would make the statement 'AS is a personality type' true.
I responded by pointing out that definition was contextually irrelevant and applying it made the statement equivalent to stating that AS is a cluster of conditions that characterize those with AS.

You responded to this by claiming that I was being too black and white and thus missing the point.
I disagree with this view. Note that at no time up to this point had I stated that I disagreed with you, that you were wrong or claimed that even you knew your argument was BS. Nor had I stated that you consider AS to be a personality type.

So if I was the one not 'hearing' you, what exactly was I not 'hearing'?


The problem is that I did not disagree with you, you disagreed with me. I simply defended by earlier comments, elaborated on my earlier comments, and ensured that my comments addressed any potential counter-points entailed in your comments.


It was only after you referred to my thinking as black and white that I presumed from your continued arguing that you continued to disagree with my view, and my view was never that AS does not influence personality and only that it is not a personality type. If someone persists in arguing against your view when your view consists of X then surely it's reasonable to infer that person is arguing not-X? It's not a matter of not hearing or black and white thinking (ironically black and white thinking would preclude the inference I drew from your behavior because TOM is a grey area), it's a matter of the most sensible inference to make when someone persists in arguing with you when you state Y is true, is that the arguer believes Y is not true.

If you do not disagree with me and my comments, then what exactly were you arguing about?

Misunderstanding someone is not always caused by 'not hearing'. What you say indicates to me that you mistook my views as contrary to your own, argued against them and now you've discovered they are not contrary seem to want to believe that I took up arguing against your views (because I mistook them) when actually all I did was defend my own view against your challenge to them. I did not challenge your views, you challenged mine, even though you now claim what you were stating all along is not something contrary to anything I said. I have not argued anywhere in this thread that AS cannot influence personality, but you have objected to comments arguing that it is not a personality type.

Further proof of the extent to which you are just not listening/heeding the point of others. The analogy about the gas station addresses this point (that in fact is the point of the gas station analogy). I specifically stated it could be said for a reason. I honestly do not need that reason described back to me.
I never stated AS was not integral to personalities. You argued with my comments and I simply defended them. If what I said was not contrary to your views then what exactly were you arguing about?


It seems to me that you have no realistic notion of the course of events. I disagreed with KevinLA's comments, then you argued the point so I elaborated my views and you continued to object to them (stating they were the result of black and white thinking) the latter seeming to indicate to me that you still did not accept the only thing that I had argued at that time (that AS is not a personality type). Might I ask other than deciding you just like to argue with views you agree with, what one is supposed to conclude when you keep arguing with them, other than that you disagree? So again, please explain quite what aspect of my comments/argument you were disagreeing with at that point.