How Our Past Experiences Affect Our Everyday, Present Life

Why are we products of our environment and experiences?

Life is ever-changing. We go through life making the best decisions we can based on our information. Then later on in life we look back and ask ourselves, “What was I thinking?!” Here are theories that explore why, and how our past experiences affect our everyday, present life.

Social Behaviorism

Sociologist Herbert Mead developed a theory known as social behaviorism. The theory helped explain why our past social experiences help form our personalities. And how those past experiences affect us every day in, our present life.

Mead did not believe that personality was developed by innate drives or biologically, but more in terms of social.

Mead stated that the self only developed when people interact with one another. Without interaction with other people an individual can’t and won’t develop a personality.

An example of this is if a child is left in total isolation for a long time then they don’t mature, both physically or mentally.

Psychologist B.F. Skinner proved this by isolating two babies. One received the typical nurturing, being held and cuddled. The other did not, it received none.

The one that received the nurturing far exceeded the behavioral growth of the one that did not receive the same level of nurturing.

These facts were widely studied during my early psychological training in college. Now the results are all but wiped from the record, being sanitized for mass public consumption.

Social Experience

As a theory, social experience is crucial. Social Experience is the quantitative total of our cognitive and practical experiences. In other words, everything we think about and then experience.

This includes the mental exchange of any symbols. When you see a Stop sign or a sign saying “Christmas Sale” what feelings and thoughts come to mind?

Only people attach emotional meanings to words and symbols, animals do not. If you tell a dog to sit and it obeys, then you may give it a snack. However, this doesn’t mean it knows why to sit down, it simply does so to get food.

You could be telling your dog to sit for numerous reasons such as wanting to impress your friends or to calm it down because it is running all over the place. To the dog, it is only a time for a treat.

Mead noted that understanding our intentions is critical. This helps us to analyze how an individual may respond to certain actions, even before we act.

For example, when we’re driving we all anticipate what others may do because of experience. If an individual behind you is speeding up rather quickly, then you can assume that they are about to switch lanes, or you can assume that they are in a rush and need to get somewhere quickly.

Mead refers to this experiential determination as taking on another individual’s role.

Whatever past experiences you have encountered in such a scenario play a very large part in your current reaction to the same event.

Looking-Glass Self

Another important theory that is related to social behaviorism is the looking-glass self.

This is basically like mirroring what we think others think of us. If you think others view you as being “good-looking,” then you will see yourself as being good-looking. Or if you think people consider you fat, then you will have that image of yourself.

People take on the roles of other people during development. Infants have very little knowledge so they tend to mimic others.

Children often have creative minds and take on roles of other significant others or people such as parents that have special importance in their social development.

For example, children will play house in which someone will take the role of a mother while another takes that of a father. As they age children will learn to take various roles and adjust to their surroundings.

Are We Developing, or Have They Developed Us?

There are a lot of critics of Mead’s theories and some claim that he focuses too much on society in developing an individual’s behavior.

Another sociologist Erik H. Erikson stated that, unlike Freud who believed that personality was pretty much set in stone in the first couple of years of an individual’s life, that personality changes in stages and occurs up to death.

Erikson’s theory, like Mead’s, is not all that accurate as well, because people experience changes in different orders and times.

Through all of the disagreements, sociologists do generally agree on one main idea. That is that the family has the greatest overall impact on an individual’s socialization abilities.

When an individual is an infant they have no control and usually rely on their parents and family members to help nurture them.

Through family, they learn several communication techniques such as trust, culture, and beliefs.

However, not all learning comes solely from family. All aspects of learning can come from the environment as well. In many cultures, they use the environment to help raise a child. This provides credence to the statement “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Society Influences the Family, Which in Turn Influences You

It probably not surprising to you that different social classes tend to raise their children differently.

We see or experience it every day as we travel from neighborhood to neighborhood on our way to work, or other activities.

Both in social class and ethnicity, we are all subject to a broad brush stroke of social values, acceptable behaviors, and adapted customs.

When the values and norms of the family conflict with the values and norms of our local society, who do you follow and adapt to? Either, or both?

Those decisions, either positively or in rebellion, are a result of your past experiences, perceptions, and comfort zones.

Society’s Grand Influences

School has a large effect on an individual’s personality. If you think about it you spend a huge chunk of your life at school. Elementary, secondary, and higher education. As we progress through our careers more schools and more training.

Each class, each course, and every institution has its social norms and perceptions.

In school is where children start to discover peer groups, or individuals that have similar interests as themselves.

As we grow people tend to indemnify more with their peer groups and can have conversations about things they understand like clothes, music, and style.

Peer groups are a way for younger individuals to escape adult supervision, feeling a sense of individual freedom they can be more outspoken with peer groups. They are learning the boundaries of social interaction in society.

During these formidable years, the mass media heavily affects our children and young people. That influence then carries over with each passing year. Our taste changes. We consume different content.

But the mass media is always there, blasting out more and more programming. I use that word on purpose — programming. Is it the station’s programming, or what they are doing to us?

Is It Time to Crack The Mold, to Break Out of The Shell?

As these theories and discussions have helped illustrate how every experience has in some way molded who we are and still affects us every day, we are only left with one question.

Do we remain our programmed self, or do we become, like the butterfly, a new being?

We can never completely erase the hard drive of our minds. We can never erase all memories of experience or stimuli and start from a completely clean slate.

But we do have the ability to choose and to change. It is far better to change on our terms than to change because we are held hostage by time or circumstance.

We were created to evolve.

As both a species and as an individual. That is undeniable.

How we evolve, how we grow, and by what means we grow is largely up to us. If pursued correctly, we possess the luxury of time on our growth path.

But done with a blind eye, our growth can quickly be forced upon us. It can also be severely stunted.

Whatever our path, whatever the speed or intended destination, we have the ability and the responsibility to change.

Look at your past with a loving but critical eye. Learn from what you can. Adapt to the future. And live each present moment to the fullest.

Not only will you be breaking old molds but you will be creating new ones. Molds and shells that you can grow with, break again and grow even more.

You are a product of your environment. You are a product of your past. And you are a product of your here and now.

Enjoy all of it. Every memory, every moment, and every new experience.