Introduction
The analysis of human behavior attributes most behavior change, in positive or negative directions, to internal, dispositional features of individuals. The reasons that are usually believed to guide behavior are initiated in the operation of genes, temperament, personality traits, personal pathologies, and virtues. These characters are referred to as intrinsic factors or natural factors. These factors are hereditary and inborn. A situation-centered approach, in contrast, focuses on factors external to the person to the behavioral context in which individuals are functioning. These factors are known as nature. Impacts on the behavior of individuals are dependent on the natural environment. (Blass1999).
These behaviors are not hereditary, but the environment to which humans are exposed shapes them. These can be the family in which these individuals are raised, or one can acquire these traits from the society one lives in. Although human behavior is almost always a function of the interaction of person and situation, social psychologists have called attention to the attribution biases in much of psychology and among the general public that overestimates the importance of dispositional factors while underestimating situational factors. This “fundamental attribution error,” they argue, leads to a caricature of both causal determinants and means for modifying undesirable behavior patterns. (Blass1999).
The extent of individual control on behaviors
The extent to which an individual can control their behavior is determined by both internal and external factors, as discussed above. These factors lead to individuals that are either resilient or vulnerable. Resiliency is the human capacity to face, overcome, and be strengthened and sometimes be transformed by life’s adversities. In contrast, vulnerability is the inability of people, especially children and young people, to cope with their challenges in life. (Zimbardo & Haney1999). The external factors that help people to become resilient are:
Trusted people
People who have friends they trust tend to develop more confidence in life than those who have friends they cannot count on. Similarly, children who come from stable homes with good parental care and love tend to become resilient adults when they grow up. On the other hand, children brought up in unstable families such as divorced families or homes where the parents are alcoholic and brutal are likely to develop vulnerability.
When they grow up to adulthood, these children are mostly not able to control their emotions accordingly. Most of these people are quick-tempered and violent. This is due to the type of life they were exposed to when they were growing up. On the other hand, children brought up in good families grow up, as adults who love, are responsible and able to control their tempers accordingly. (Zimbardo1974)
Good role model
Role models are those people that one admires to be like in their life. These people are mostly the hero that we have in our society. Good role models influence children and young people positively. This, in turn, helps these young people to grow up to adults that are responsible and able to control their emotions well. On the other hand, children whose role models are violent and irresponsible influence these children negatively. When these children become adults, they are mostly rough, arrogant, quick-tempered, and violent people. Therefore they do not have the capacity to control their emotions and behaviors as expected.
To build a good society, parents and teachers should guide the children and young people in getting the right people to be their role models. They should discourage through negative reinforcement role models that would negatively influence these young people and embrace the positive reinforcement of children who can choose the right role models that will positively influence them. (Zimbardo1971)
Access to health and education
Education helps people to engrave in their life good values. This is because education teaches people the importance of being obedient, honest, trustworthy, kind, and hardworking. In doing so, people try to embrace these good values in their day-to-day lives. This helps to produce a society that has people with good characters. The actions of such people are not driven by their emotions but by their sound decisions. Therefore education helps to help people control their emotions and behaviors.
This is possible because education helps people to learn how other people feel when they are offended by our bad behaviors. Also, education helps young people to build good trusting relationships with people that will have a positive impact on their lives. Therefore children that go through the school setting can manage their feelings and impulses accordingly, from what they have learned from their peers in school. The children that go to school are also taught how to communicate. Therefore they do not act with emotions but uses their communication skills to communicate their feelings accordingly such that they do not hurt their colleagues.
The availability of health facilities helps to produce people that are able to control their behaviors. This is because sick people mostly suffer from emotional imbalance, which makes them easily offended and quick-tempered. The availability of health facilities is very important as it enables such individuals to receive medical attention to regain their hormonal balance to enable them to have control over their behaviors. (Haney1998).
Conclusion
From the discussion above, we can conclude by saying that nature and natural factors are vital in determining the extent to which individuals can control their behaviors. The natural factors are inborn and include temperament, personality traits, personal pathologies, and virtues. The nature factors include all the environmental conditions surrounding the functioning humans. Children should be helped to become resilient by being provided with a safe, nurturing environment, spending some time listening and playing with the children, allowing them to make mistakes, teaching the children how to communicate effectively, and also praying with the children. The children should also be taken to school to learn life’s values to enable them to manage their behaviors effectively. (Milgram1974).
References
Blass, T. (Ed.) (1999). Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Haney, C. & Zimbardo, P.G., (1998). The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy. Twenty-Five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7, pp. 709-727.
Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper & Row.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). The power and pathology of imprisonment. Congressional Record. (Serial No. 15, 1971). Hearings before Subcommittee No. 3, of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session on Corrections, Part II, Prisons, Prison Reform and Prisoner’s Rights: California. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1974). The detention and jailing of juveniles (Hearings before U. S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, 10, 11, 17, September, 1973). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 141-161.
Zimbardo, P. G., Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Jaffe, D. (1973). The mind is a formidable jailer: A Pirandellian prison. The New York Times Magazine, Section 6, pp. 38, ff.
Zimbardo, P. G., Maslach, C., & Haney, C. (1999). Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, transformations, consequences. In T. Blass (Ed.), Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm. (pp. 193-237). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.