In this blog post, we will examine whether personality is determined by genetic factors or shaped by our environment and relationships.
There has been a long-standing debate about whether nature or nurture is more important in shaping a person’s personality. To answer this question, experiments have been conducted, such as raising identical twins in different environments or raising different children in the same environment. However, due to methodological and ethical limitations, these experiments have not been able to draw clear conclusions about which factor is more important.
In this article, we will show that acquired characteristics have a greater influence on the formation of a person’s personality than innate characteristics through the concepts of reductionism and relationalism. Reductionism and relationalism are fundamental mechanisms for analyzing objects. Historically, reductionism appeared first, followed by relationalism.
First, the reductionist method refers to a method of analyzing an object or relationship by reducing it to its smallest unit. For example, when trying to understand the tendencies of a society, one can derive answers by analyzing the tendencies of each individual member, or when analyzing the characteristics of life, one can derive answers by analyzing smaller and smaller units (organs, tissues, cells, genes).
Reductionism naturally became established in people’s minds with the advancement of science and technology. Around the 17th century, a scientific revolution took place, beginning with the publication of Copernicus’s “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” and followed by Newton’s “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.” This completely changed religious thinking and led to scientific thinking being regarded as the most important element of human reason.
As research progressed in various fields, people developed a tendency to analyze all phenomena reductionistically. In physics, the discovery of molecules, atoms, protons, neutrons, and electrons was made in the pursuit of finding the smallest unit of matter, which led to the development of atomic models and the rapid advancement of quantum mechanics. Furthermore, the discovery of quarks, which are smaller than protons, led scientists to attempt to analyze physical phenomena reductionistically. This was because they believed that the secrets of all physical phenomena could be unlocked by elucidating the properties of quarks and even smaller particles that had not yet been discovered. In biology, research into the microscopic dimension began with the invention of the microscope by Leeuwenhoek and the discovery of microorganisms. Many studies were conducted to explain life phenomena by observing the structure of cells and smaller units. As time passed, historically important theories emerged, such as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which was published in the mid-19th century. Darwin advocated natural selection and argued that genes are important for the evolution and change of living things. Watson and Crick discovered that the essence of genes is DNA and explained how DNA passes traits to subsequent generations, solidifying reductionism as the method of analysis for living things.
The double helix structure, consisting of four units, was fascinating, and people believed that analyzing it would unlock all the secrets of life. The genome project, which aims to identify the role of all units within DNA, also began in this context. The reason reductionism emerged in this way is because scientific research was conducted at a microscopic level. This is because reductionism is an excellent method for explaining natural phenomena. When studying how visible natural phenomena occur, it is convenient to reduce them from higher-level concepts to lower-level concepts, as this facilitates understanding of detailed mechanisms. In fact, many achievements have been made using reductionist methods. Representative examples include improvements in medical technology through understanding of human metabolism and the internal structure of the human body. However, in the 20th century, objections to reductionist analysis methods began to emerge.
World-renowned nuclear physicist Fritjof Capra argued that “classical physics, known as mechanistic physics, was based on causality, which is the foundation of reductionism, but in modern physics, causality, which is the foundation of reductionism, does not hold true according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.” Reductionism is based on causality, which states that phenomena of a higher concept can be explained by phenomena of a lower concept. However, according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it is impossible to accurately observe phenomena in the microscopic world of photons, and therefore it is impossible to identify causes, which means that causality cannot be established.
Furthermore, he emphasized that the mechanistic view of nature based on reductionist causality must be replaced with an organic view of nature without unilateral causality. The limitations of reductionism became even more apparent in the process of analyzing the complexity of living organisms. As the analysis of genes became more in-depth, it was discovered that genes are expressed to induce protein synthesis, and that these proteins in turn regulate gene expression.
This led to the realization that there is no unilateral causality in the system of life. In addition, it was suggested that the uniqueness of living organisms cannot be analyzed by reductionist methods. Discussing what life is in reductionist terms means determining the characteristics of higher-level organisms from the characteristics of lower-level units common to all organisms. Ultimately, the results based on this method become a grand discourse premised on the universality of all organisms, which cannot explain the uniqueness of individual organisms.
Thus, there are clear limitations to explaining life and natural phenomena using reductionist methods. In particular, despite the completion of the Genome Project, which was a representative reductionist method for elucidating the nature of life, it is still not possible to explain the uniqueness of individuals through gene expression. Accordingly, a relational approach was proposed as a new method of analyzing objects or entities. Relational theory is based on the premise that, when analyzing an object, rather than reducing it to its sub-elements to find certain characteristics, it should be viewed as part of a larger whole, and the object itself should be viewed as a whole. The relational method analyzes the characteristics of an object by analyzing the relationships between its internal structures or between the object and its external environment. This method is clearly different from reductionism, which analyzes an object by reducing it to its sub-components and then analyzing the whole based on the premise that “the whole is the sum of its parts.” The relational method is based on the premise that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts through the internal and external relationships of the object.”
The concept underlying the relational approach is that of complex systems. A complex system is a system that cannot be described in a single word and changes randomly due to countless variables. In such complex systems, there are macroscopic phenomena that cannot be understood by looking at individual components. There are three representative characteristics of complex systems: phase transition, scale independence, and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. First, phase transition refers to a major change from one state to another within a complex system. In complex systems, such phase transitions can occur at any time as internal relationships change. Scale independence means that a part of a complex system is another complex system, and the whole is the same as the parts, similar to a fractal. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer refers to the fact that complex systems have uneven relationships reminiscent of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer phenomenon in economics. In relational theory, since groups of living organisms have the characteristics of such complex systems, each living organism is regarded as a component of a complex system, and it is believed that the uniqueness of each individual, which cannot be understood by reductionist methods, can be understood by observing the macro-level picture.
Living organisms have a tendency to differentiate themselves from their surroundings and form relationships with their environment. The uniqueness of each individual is determined by their physical characteristics, which are determined by their immune system, and their mental characteristics, which are determined by their nervous system. When something foreign enters the body, the immune system eliminates the stimulus through an antigen-antibody reaction and records the stimulus in memory cells in preparation for the next invasion. By storing stimuli in memory cells in this way, physical uniqueness that distinguishes the individual from the outside world gradually develops. As the nervous system grows, it accumulates stimuli experienced and forms behavioral patterns for each stimulus, giving rise to mental uniqueness. When living things are first born, they are in a state of almost complete undifferentiation from their surroundings, but as they interact with their environment, they establish their uniqueness. For example, newborn babies have no accumulated experience and are not differentiated from their surroundings, so they cannot distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. However, as time passes, they receive stimuli from others in response to their actions and learn what behaviors are acceptable and what behaviors are unacceptable, thereby forming their own personalities. In other words, they differentiate themselves from their surroundings. The important thing is that most living things do not simply seek to differentiate themselves from their surroundings, but rather change the direction of their differentiation through their relationships with their surroundings. Individuals who seek to differentiate themselves alone are like cancer cells. This is because they act solely to establish their own identity without considering the reactions of those around them. From this perspective, psychopaths, who are unable to feel the emotions of others, can be seen as people who are unable to consider their relationships with others in the process of differentiating themselves from their surroundings.
In this way, a group of individuals that grows by forming relationships with their surroundings has all the important characteristics of a complex system. First, each individual accepts external stimuli and forms relationships, which creates conditions for differentiation from their surroundings and brings about rapid change. This can be seen as a kind of enlightenment that living things gain as they differentiate from their surroundings. In other words, these changes demonstrate the potential for phase transition in complex systems. In addition, the internal components of living organisms constantly reorganize themselves and provide mutual feedback, resulting in the reconstruction of better structures, which is very similar to the way countless people change in society. In other words, living organisms themselves are composed of internal structures and are also part of the whole society composed of living organisms. In this respect, the gathering of living organisms can be seen as having scale independence in complex systems. Finally, the greater the degree of differentiation of a living organism from its surroundings, the more it can differentiate itself based on that differentiation, whereas a living organism that has not yet differentiated much must make a greater effort to differentiate itself. This shows the uneven degree of differentiation of a group of living organisms, which is very similar to the rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer characteristic of complex systems.
In other words, when analyzing living things, it is difficult to grasp their essence by reducing them to lower levels and calculating the sum of each part. Rather, it is necessary to recognize the individual itself as a complex system and then analyze the internal and external relationships of the individual from a macro perspective to properly understand its essence.
Human personalities are extremely complex and difficult to understand intuitively, and each person has their own unique characteristics. In other words, as we have seen above, when it comes to complex qualities such as human personalities, it is more appropriate to apply a relational approach rather than a reductionist approach to examine their essence. The reductionist and relational analysis methods can also be interpreted as analysis methods based on innate characteristics and acquired characteristics. According to reductionism, human personality can be seen as determined by DNA information that is innate at birth. On the other hand, according to relational theory, human personality is formed through internal interactions based on innate DNA information, as well as new internal interactions learned through external stimuli and the differentiation of individual characteristics through constant interactions with other individuals. In other words, human personality is more influenced by nurture than nature.
