People and Personalities....
 

Well, i was just thinking today about people.... i work at McDonald's, and i usually have at least some time to just stand there thinking, and today i was thinking about people. Something occured to me... people are the sum of their relationships with others. I mean, if you think of someone, you generally think of who they know, or how you know them, or how you want to know them. Also, people's personalities can pretty much be defined as how they react to situations and stimuli. I was just wondering what everyone else thinks (or reacts).

I don't myself. If I think of someone I don't really care or think of who they know or associate with if that's what you're getting at. I might be misinterpreting you though. I do think of ppl as a whole if they remind me of someone else that I myself know though. And hence I use that to understand them more whether or not the characteristics of the two are really alike.

Ppl I don't know I can get a feel of what they are like or should be like by just their gestures, what they do or how they talk. How they react to situations does help you determine what kind of person they are. It doesn't also take long to imagine how a person lives. It's a little bit of stereotyping. That's why first impressions are important but you should also get to know the person. I hope I got the gist of what you were talking about.

This is more true than you know.

When I was in Junior High, I did not have a personality of my own. Seriously.

I was a social chameleon: I would adopt the personality of anyone I was talking to, then drop it once I was talking to someone else and behave much like they did. I even adopted similar speech patterns, and thought processes.

Which is why I didn't get along with most of the Jack Asses.

I still don't know if I am Me. For all I know my personality may be just the conglomeration of little bits of the hundreds of personalities I have mimicked in my earlier days.

SAAM, in high school a friend of mine did that.

Most people like that just need a hug. please?

Well, I see I am not alone. Trust me, people like that are very confused about themselves. Their actions are not meant to be mocking of other people, they just don't know how to respond so they act like a mirror.

I think most people are like that, but mostly to a lesser effect, when they start hanging out with ppl they pick up the slang and actions and stuff like that. I saw that a lot at the college that i go to.

I did that also to an extent for a while. It was more of a unconscience action. I didn't realize i was doing it. I began to behave like whoever I hung out with the most. I wasn't sure for a long time if there was a me or If i was what are ppl thought me to be. So I just had to separate myself from other ppl for a while to see how I would react. I found what I wanted myself to be then just stuck with it regardless of what others think

I've been personalityless for years, and people seem to almost worship me. Trust me, the sooner you get rid of your personality, the better it will be for you. It is at that point that people will begin forming their own opinions of you. And then, you can start doing things that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do with the personality that people assign to you, and you can keep them off-balance.

The effect is hightened if you speak as little as possible.

In minor cases, people might develop certain traits of other people to get along with them better. Exposing part of your personality might cause conflict with someone else, so to be agreeable, you temporarily make do with something else.

With lack of personality, that could be caused when a person is just developing, e.g. a small child who imitates their role models, or are going through a period when they're looking at themselves critically and trying to change or improve themselves.

Also, personality traits as we know it might only be perceived through seeing other people's personalities, and we try to obtain traits that are desirable to us. Traits that are embedded in us stem from our experiences or (I'm guessing, I know next to nothing about biology) the way our brain functions.

I think there are three basic things that make us who we are.

Memories - What we remember. If we had a bad experience with something, we're likely not to do it again(E.G. putting the hand on the hot stove hurt, and thus you are prone not to do it again, because you remember the pain; or when parents used to discipline their children). And if we have a good experience, we want to feel it again(E.G. we remember a certain food tasted good, so we tend to eat that food again, like cookies). We also have a lot of miscellaneous memories, like mechanics know how to fix things, cooks know how to cook things, and each to their own trade.

Genes - The DNA carried inside us. While people usually associate these to things like appearance and percentage of being predisposed to something, a lot of personality also comes from genes. The way the body's chemestry works. Some people are actually predisposed to depression, and a depressed person usually responds differently to a situation than a happy person does. Likewise, sickly people respond differently based on their capabilities than healthy people do. Someone like Raistlin is not going to be as active as someone like Caramon.

Scene - The environment around you. If you get bullied at school a lot, you tend to become depressed, and see the above paragraph. And at the home, kids are raised by their legal guardians. If the legal guardians teach the kid wrong, then the kid thinks that what overs belive to be "wrong" is actually "right." It won't be until s/he becomes arrested and the memory of what he did wrong is imprinted on his/her mind that s/he realizes otherwise. Soldiers are known to suffer mental conditions due to the battlefield. People who lived in an era and location of fear become paranoid. And in our current generation of America, where everyone wants to be popular, it won't be too long until the phrase "everyone's doing it" become a reality, I feel.