A lot of studies have been done on this with some saying three years old and even one report saying at seven years old, but most people that study these things think that the age of five is going to be you for life.
Good, bad, indifferent, angry, sad, happy, cry baby, innocent, violent all of this comes into play by the time you are five years old.
I turned out pretty good and I was a happy five year old … How about you?
I don’t know if that’s true. When I was five I would totally have accepted the phrase “a lot of studies” as an actual source.
I am skeptical of this. I would say that people are still a work in progress at least until their mid-20s (when the frontal lobe of the brain finally matures and young people finally develop the ability to stop themselves from acting like impulsive idiots).
Certainly not true for my son. At 5 he was very shy, reluctant to engage with most new people, far beyond what other kids his age would do. At 18, he’s gregarious, has dozens of friends and is the first to reach out to new people.
When I was 5, I did something to upset my mother so much that she bundled me up*, put some of my clothes in a bag and stuck me on the pouch to see if someone wanted me. No one did.
Eventually** she let me back in the house. I’ve never really been happy.
Do you have a cite for any of this?
A big part of personality is written in the first 5 years of life which will play a huge role in how you relate to the world (at least in negative ways. Attachment style and susceptibility to mental illness has a big component in childhood treatment). However I don’t know if the stats are 90%. Not only that, but it can be changed. People raised with avoidant or anxious attachment style can change them later in life.
I really became the person I am now in my late 20s. The person I was at 5 and I today have fewer similarities than differences, even after accounting for differing maturity levels.
I am not qualified to judge myself. However, after having two sons 14 months apart and watching them grow and develop into adults, I would agree that that basic personality does develop at a very young age, well before 5 years old.
That is not to say that people do not learn, adapt, grow, and change. Just that some of the basic approaches to life do set in very early.
I have even thought at times that personality must be inborn. The empathetic, calm one was a happy, calm baby, the one in need of attention, the apron strings guy, has always needed more to be happy. They have matured into fine adults, but I can still read the basis of their nature.
Perhaps other parents have input. I don’t really think that we can look back at ourselves and answer this question.
My babies were certainly born with individual personalities- even in utero they behaved very differently. However, I’d argue that significant aspects of personality and temperament, while present at birth are hardly written in stone by age 5.
So you should have no trouble citing a few dozen, no?
How did all these studies determine it was 90% rather than (say) 80% or 95%?
By weight, I expect.
Volume, you heretic.
Your genetic personality template sure, the way you actually behave socially not so much. As an example some people are dysfunctionally introverted and let that rule their lives forever, some people are dysfunctionally introverted, but make hard decisions to change their mode of social interaction and can become very different people in the way they live their lives even if their baseline mental wiring is quite introverted.
It’s an orientation, not a life sentence. The “personality” a person develops over time is quite malleable under the right circumstances.
I agree it’s difficult to look back at oneself and make an honest judgement about this sort of thing, but I don’t think I’m the same person I was even ten years ago when I was 47, much less the probable spoiled five year old I was.
Or at least I hope I’m a lot different.
Bullshit, I changed a lot after 5. I’d say I hit my current “wonderful” personality around 14. I was a lot more outgoing as a kid.
What’s this “genetic personality template”?
The best research on heritability of objective personality traits* is based on three different types of studies to carefully tease out heritability from environment, including studying twins reared apart, fraternal twins vs. identical twins, and (IIRC) biological children vs. adopted children. They pretty consistently show that for these traits, at most 50% is due to genetic inheritance, at most 10% is due to family environment, and the rest is unknown (including possibilities like random fetal developments and who knows what else).
My cites are not terribly recent, though; maybe there’s been a breakthrough since:
Human Natures, by Paul Erlich
Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker
Regarding the OP’s conjecture, it accords with my grandfather’s observations as a pediatrician practicing for over 55 years, from 1930 to 1985. He said it was very rare for a zebra to change its stripes. Of course, it was not a scientific study.
But it’s the kind of statement that’s easy to whitewash, to make a variety of realities fit the prediction. For example, my best friend growing up was smart as heck, but pretty reckless and lazy, with no focus, and did poorly in school. Always a nice guy, though. His lack of focus persisted through high school and a feeble attempt at college, after which he worked as a factory rat and hated it. Then he met Jill and practically overnight, realized there is a point to performance. He kept working while taking night classes in engineering. He now runs a company that designs and builds extremely technical medical equipment. If you ever need a kidney flown in an aircraft, it’ll be carried in the igloo-shaped container (a small life-support system) that his company makes.
But yeah, he’s still the same guy.
Seems to be true for me. I was a quiet shy kid at 5, still a very quiet introspective person now. I was a creative kid, liked to draw and make up stories, and that’s still my main hobby, though in different media. And I was a funny kid apparently, my earliest school report singles out my sense of humour (at age 5!) and I like to think I can still be amusing now, though I’m far from a comedian.
Broadly speaking, it seems like my personality hasn’t changed much from then.
Anecdotally, I believe it could be true. I remember what I was like as a child of five and I even like doing the same things half a century later – hanging out with animals and reading and drawing.
I don’t have any cites, but my gut feeling, based on my childhood, that of my own child now an adult, and those of my friends, is that although you are probably born with a whole lot of your personality, how much you manage to like yourself, and to develop healthy coping strategies for adversity has a lot to do with how well and lovingly you were parented.