Impact of Poverty on Personality Development

Does Poverty affect personality development from early childhood into adolescence?

Eric Fromm said that ”Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality” (Fromm, 1947, p.237).Fromm believes that an individual’s purpose in life to is to come fully into themselves so that they may be able to exceed their own expectations. Fully coming into oneself comes from growing into one’s personality. Personality is the combination of behaviors, emotions and thought patterns that define an individual or make up their character. Over the course of our lives we go through many changes. Changes that makes us stand taller or our voices grow deeper. Changes that happen on the inside and on the outside. Throughout the course of our lives our behaviors change and develop into habits that shape our very personalities that can lead us into success or prove to be a seemingly permanent obstacle on the path to success.

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These behaviors either change for the good or bad carry over into our older years as our personalities change. Our personalities dictate who we connect with and get along with, they are central to the way we go through and experience through the world in many different experiences. There is no singular personality that ensures success for anyone but what if the environment influences or fosters a certain type of personality? Can someone truly be a product of their upbringing and environment? In this case, we will be viewing poverty as a type of environment in which individuals live and grow within. Poverty is a long-standing injustice and social issue that restricts specific resources and opportunities for those who are affected by it (Utsey & Constantine, 2008). Across many studies there are many varying definitions of poverty. But how does poverty exactly affect personality development? Specifically the personality development from childhood into adolescence.

The definition of poverty in this paper will be defined as condition or way of life where people’s basic needs aren’t being met. Those needs being food and shelter. Poverty is operationally defined across many studies and experiments and sometimes grouped differently. Each study looks at a specific factor that comes directly into play with poverty. Establishing differences in the level of poverty is important in terms of noting how much exposure the developing individual has had to poverty or a lack general lack of resources because in some cases the longer the exposure the more of an effect it has on someone.

An example would be impoverished neighborhoods split into three groups where high poverty rates being between 30-40%, moderate poverty with the rates between 20-30% and low poverty rates being 20% (Leventhal & Brooks 2011). In some cases, there can be brief periods of poverty because sometimes individuals manage to get out of an impoverished area. There is sometimes a period where there is a flux between persistently being impoverished and being recently impoverished (Leventhal & Brooks 2011).

Experience of poverty can be into terms such as persistent poverty and transitional or intermittent poverty (Ackerman, Brown & Izard 2004). Persistent poverty is related to lower quality home environment that lasts or ”persists” that later is connected to problem behaviors. Neighborhood poverty is defined as neighborhood hardship that is caused by a lack of economic, social and familial resources (Harden, Copeland-Linder & Nation 2011). Two different definitions of poverty are identified: the first says that poverty and the behaviors of the poor are explained by their occupation, socioeconomic status and their level of income. The second explains poverty by talking features of persons personality that can connect with a culture of poverty in society from (Sailing & Harvey 1981). So, if there is a culture of poverty and disadvantage what does that mean for the youth or the future? Will the cycle be continued or can they possibly find a way to get out of it?

There have been studies conducted on how youth and adolescents in poorer areas are academically affected by being surrounded or growing up in poverty (Anderson, Leventhal & Dupéré 2014) and about how neighborhood affluence and poverty can affect achievement and behavior. They wanted to find out how poverty affects academics and behavior. Does poverty affect academics and behavior in negative or positive ways? Does their behavior indicate a risk factor in their personality? When it comes down to these children that go from early childhood into adolescence who have bad relations with the law and substandard test scores tend to have higher externalized behaviors that get them into trouble. Is this truly their faults? Are their potentials met or are they held back by the environment that they are surrounded by?

Poverty is something that holds back many promising individuals that have potential to do so many amazing things. This is an important topic because the thing that many people fail to realize is that individuals from these impoverished areas that are considered high risk are only that because of what they are surrounded by. It is an important topic to speak on and to bring up because it brings attention to a marginalized group of people that are mostly overlooked and not heard about. Well-being is challenged and constantly put under duress due to the pressures and anxieties of being impoverished. So, how does poverty affect personality development from childhood into adolescence?

What Poverty effects

The claim that I am making is that poverty first and foremost affects opportunities within the communities that it is prevalent and present in. Opportunities can be defined as chances or a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something. Opportunity comes with levels of educational attainment, employment and quality of resources. Levels of attainment can increase levels of affluence in the area. Resources could be food, water, shelter, clothes or several things that can contribute to the standard of living being higher. They are chances for an individual to exceed their own expectations and attain a goal that they previously hadn’t thought they could attain. Depending on the area in which an individual is surrounded by opportunity can either be given or not be not given. The level of affluence in a neighborhood implies an accessibility to certain resources that can improve the quality of life and can make life easier for families and children in that area. Affluence within neighborhoods can be broken down into adults or parents within a neighborhood that have B.A. degrees and those who were currently employed in managerial or professional occupations (Anderson, Leventhal & Dupéré 2014).

Access to quality resources is maintained through a consistent salary so when they run low they are able to replenish them with no problem. They are also able to maintain the possessions that they already have. Within maintaining the possessions and a certain quality of life along with experiencing the stability that can come with affluence a sense of self-worth is fostered. Self-worth can be fostered through competency in daily tasks or within the academia. For those who happen to not be in a stable and plentiful environment academic achievement can be seen as the opportunity that can grant some a beginning foundation or a means to aspire to move away or out of poverty. One of the main things that can certainly help alleviate the instability of poverty is educational attainment that can lead to so many opportunities for gainful employment. Affluence and poverty correlated with participant’s outcomes achievement in regards to Math and Reading scores affluence of the neighborhood correlated with higher achievement (Anderson, Leventhal & Dupéré, 2014).

Although in some cases there can be periods of poverty because sometimes some individuals manage to get out of an impoverished area (Damian et al., 2014).. Over time family needs increased so family wealth increased. But, neighborhood poverty indicators declined from early childhood to middle childhood and early adolescence. If participants in this study moved from an impoverished area into a better one, they tended to move during early or middle childhood, not so much during adolescence (Anderson and Leventhal & Dupéré, 2014). Affluence and poverty in this study correlated with participant’s outcomes achievement and with behavioral problems.

In regards to Math and Reading scores affluence of the neighborhood correlated with higher achievement and the internalizing/externalizing behavior hypothesized models had no support as well. Children who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely than those in affluent ones to undergo a negative personality change which can create a stigma (Hart, Atkins & Matsuba, 2008). There is sometimes a period where there is a flux between persistently being impoverished and being recently impoverished. So, there are different kinds of poverty levels in this study, one that is consistent and persistent while the other is transitional because sometimes people can get out of poverty (Eamon, 2000).

Lower-quality environments, strained relations between the family or mother, and low stimulation quickly impact recent poverty’s effect on internalizing behaviors. Lower quality environments refer to the state of the home itself, so if it is clean, safe and uncluttered the environment is of higher quality. Strained relations mean the ways that the parent interacts with their child or other family members after recently becoming impoverished. Stimulation comes in with social interactions with people outside of the family. Recent poverty means that the family had not previously been in poverty but due to a circumstance they have fallen into poverty. So, it is the Persistent poverty that seems to have in regards to have the longest lasting impact behavior in developing children (Eamon, 2000).

I think that children are aware of when there is a lack of something or when they don’t have access to some of the things that they want or some of the things that they see other people with. They are quick to acknowledge the lack of what they want and even more quick when asking for the object or thing that they want. Sometimes the line between what one needs to have and what one wants to have is very blurred especially when the things that are essentially needed care out of reach. Individuals from disadvantaged or impoverished areas experience unpredictable childhoods tend to feel as if they themselves have no actual control. Poverty happens for a varying amount of reasons that most of the time boil down to not being the individual’s fault or out of the individual’s control. For example, a family or an individual could fall below the poverty line because of job loss, loss of finances, unemployment and income level that changes their socioeconomic status.

Poverty affects Behavior

Poverty affects behavior in negative or positive ways. Poverty creates a complex and demanding environment that are mostly not conducive to development. Individuals are put under a lot of stress, duress and pressure when growing up in an impoverished environment. Behavior is how an individual acts towards others. Within this limited and high stress environment many frustrations arise. Being in poverty or living in poverty can make a person feel hopeless and out of control (Mittal & Griskevicius, 2014). When people feel a lack of control they try to find other things that they can exercise effective control over. In trying to exert control or find control in smaller situations they can become reckless and risky in their judgement. To adapt to this environment of poverty certain behaviors are expressed and these behaviors form into habits. Habits that aren’t always good are formed to find ways to get by or adapt with the environment. Some of the harmful ways frustrations by being in an impoverished environment can manifest themselves is through maladaptive and unsavory behaviors; for example yelling or fighting or refusal to comply with requests (Castellanos-Ryan et al.,2013).

For example, aggressive behaviors like physical damage that can cause hurt or harm to an individual themselves or someone else. These horrible and sometimes aggressive or violent tendencies that are seen or portrayed don’t necessarily mean that that is what the adolescent or individual truly is or how they truly are. Maybe the reason the individuals are acting in such a way is that they themselves do not know how to process their own emotions or feelings. So, instead of trying they resort to lashing out either at themselves or others. Does behavior indicate a specific personality or personality traits? Some negative ways that behaviors can be expressed are known as internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Across the studies that use the terms externalizing and internalizing the definitions are quite similar.

Externalizing behaviors as problem behaviors that are expressed externally (Castellanos-Ryan et al.,2013). Aggressive behaviors like yelling, screaming or fighting can be seen as externalizing behaviors.Internalizing behaviors as negative behaviors that are expressed inwardly (Leventhal, Brooks & Gunn , 2011). So, these behaviors are inflicted upon the self. Anxiety and depression are two forms of the behavior that are frequently experienced. Stress can cause a number of emotional and behavioral problems. Poor children were rated and found to have more externalizing problems in comparison to those who weren’t poor.

Tying back into the availability of specific resources for the need and the enjoyment of the individual. If there are not enough financial resources to help support the lives of the individual some strain and stressors may arise. These strains can be felt in different ways and some of them may even be acted out in harmful or destructive ways that add more tensions and frustration into the very situation itself. There is also a correlation between family income and behavior issues, it was discovered that family income was related to externalizing problems. Children had fewer problems when their family’s income was higher than children whose family’s income was low. The children that had been severely impoverished had more outward problems as opposed to those children who never had experienced of were even in poverty themselves (Dearing, McCartney and Taylor, 2006).

The longer the exposure to poverty the more likely children are to experience sadness, anxiety, and dependency or other forms of problems. The behavior, the externalizing and internalizing problems begin in childhood when exposed to poverty and then carry on into adolescence when poverty is persistent and consistent through development which lead to other areas like academic achievement and opportunity along with personality disorders or anger issues (Ackerman, Brown & Izard, 2004). The longitudinal study looked at the connection between the amount of family income and the rate of poverty over a 6 year period through the use of assessments or questionnaires given out to the children and to their parents or caregivers and went from when the child was in preschool to 5 years of age. They found that as the years went by the children were very likely to experience sadness, anxiety and dependency (Ackerman, Brown & Izard, 2004).

When breaking up neighborhoods their levels of poverty the main thing to remember is that there is a relationship between the level of poverty itself and the prevalence of specific behaviors. My claim is that levels in poverty itself also play a role in the mediating or eliciting specific behaviors. So in a high poverty neighborhood the presence of decreasing poverty would help alleviate problem behaviors meanwhile in a moderate poverty neighborhood the presence of increasing poverty would be the source of youth problem behaviors (Leventhal, Brooks & Gunn, J., 2011).

There seems to be a trend in the behavioral development of boys, young children and toddlers when in poverty or in an at-risk area that they tend to have more externalizing behavior issues (Holtz, Fox & Meurer, 2014). Low-income families are at higher risk for family and social stressors, for example job loss, poor quality child care, inadequate supervision, unaddressed medical issues, maternal mental health issues, and unsafe neighborhoods, which in turn, negatively impact parenting practices that have been found to be related to the development and exacerbation of behavior problems in children (Holtz, Fox & Meurer, 2014). An extension on the aforementioned definition of externalizing behaviors can be called challenging behaviors. These challenging behaviors can include throwing temper tantrums, destroying property, refusing to listen, noncompliance and elevated levels of aggression (Holtz, Fox & Meurer, 2014).

This study implemented the use of Early Childhood behavior screenings to be able to track the exact time or time frame of when the problem behaviors arose in the toddlers that were being used as subjects. The Early Childhood Behavior Screen is a 20 item questionnaire that was made for the toddlers and preschool kids. The questions within the questionnaire were made to measure the positive behaviors and challenging behaviors. The ECBS were measured by the frequency or the prevalence of challenging behaviors then the complete score was between 10 and 30. There were gender differences found for the challenging behaviors items, for example on items like ”throws things at others” and ”kicks others”the boys had higher percentages respectively with the first item mentioned being at 60% for boys and 43% for girls and for the second 25% for girls and 40% for boys (Holtz, Fox & Meurer, 2014).

My claim is that not only behavior but other facets that can be acted upon or increased due long exposure to poverty are poor impulse control, bad decision making including risky behaviors. Risky behaviors can be having unprotected sex, having multiple partners or doing drugs. Bad decision making can be tied to criminal or delinquent behaviors like theft or robbery (Griskevicius et al, 2013). Long time exposure to harshness and unpredictability were the markers that were used in Griskevicius et al. (2013) to track the rise of risky behaviors from before birth and well into adolescence. Unpredictability was operationally defined through the changes in mother’s employment status, residence and living arrangements; harshness was assessed by socioeconomic status (Griskevicius et al., 2013). Changes in employment status means a change to salary and could lead to poverty. In the study they measured five different outcomes over the span the ages between 6 and 16 then age 23; the first two components deal with sexual history and the other three deal with deviant behaviors and they were aggression, delinquency and ties to criminal activity (Griskevicius et al., 2013).

Results showed that the male participants had many more sexual partners and participated in more delinquent behaviors than that of the female participants. It was also found that unpredictability in the early stages of childhood correlated with the amount of sexual partners later on in life, levels of aggression and criminal behaviors (Griskevicius et al., 2013). So instability throughout early years of childhood are indicators of a possible risky personality forming later on in life which was measured when the participants answered questionnaires when they turned 23. Instability and unpredictability can also be a good indicator for aggression and delinquent behaviors that can continue well on into adulthood and have a major effect on the many things that can potentially happen in someone’s life. So what can actually be done to help alleviate the problem of the instability, unpredictability and harshness of poverty so that children don’t grow up and become products of their own environments? The outlook after this looks a bit bleak and not so hopeful.

Although it does seem hopeless in many ways and that only negative things come from growing up impoverished like externalizing and internalizing behaviors, lack of availability to resources and a higher chance of being unstable and not having good sense of well-being there are some positive behaviors that can come out of growing up within an impoverished community or area. This is not to say that there should not be any efforts to relieve and help close the gaps that let people fall into poverty and stay there. Coping, adaptability and resilience are all positive behaviors that can come from growing up in adversity. Impoverished children grow up learning how to cope which helps them learn how to better manage and deal with stress and stressors that can arise from the unpredictability of life (Wadsworth & Berger, 2006).

Within the poverty environment stress plays another role in development. Poverty related stress has been shown to have a strong correlation with the development of anxiety and depression but the way in which an individual responds or reacts to the stresses or stressors is called coping. But there are different kinds of coping that work for each individual separately, everyone has their own strategy that helps them deal with their own kinds and varying amounts of stress; the two types of coping are referred to as primary control coping and secondary control coping (Wadsworth & Berger, 2006).

So, primary control coping consists of strategies that have more of a direct approach to dealing with one’s own feelings and this includes problem solving, emotional expression and emotional regulation while secondary control coping consists of trying to adapt one’s self to differing environments, like for example stressful environments or events, and this this includes acceptance, changing one’s outlook, distraction and positive thinking (Wadsworth & Berger, 2006). Both types of coping can be seen as beneficial in comparison to disengagement coping, which is coping that is unhealthy and includes avoidance, denial and wishful thinking; all of which do not exactly interact with the problem or deal with the emotional side to arising stressors (Wadsworth & Berger, 2006). Coping is only really helpful when it is effective towards the type of stress it is up against. It has also been suggested that coping interacts with both internalizing and externalizing behaviors by changing the degree at which they affect the person.

But is something like coping with poverty based stressors and stresses going to happen when an individual is an environment that doesn’t have that many poverty related issues or challenges? Is the effectiveness of coping dependent on the interaction with the poverty linked stressors? During an 8 month period poverty based stressors, responses those stressors and the behaviors that arose in response to those stressors were observed in Wadsworth & Berger (2006). The responses were collected by the responses to stress and youth self report questionnaires. The RSQ has 16 factors while the YSR had 112 factors. Their findings indicated that the level of stress elicits a certain stress reactivity to it that is correlated with coping itself.

My other claim is that individuals, namely, adolescents who either grew up in unpredictable and impoverished areas to tend to be flexible and can adapt to new situations with more ease since they have had to adapt and be more flexible due to their upbringing (Mittal et al, 2015). As seen before, with different levels of stress and stressors comes different approaches to coping with the arising stress. They believed that the influence of high stressful environments and they went about proving that by doing two experiments. The first one has two deal with inhibitions and shifting. The following experiments served as replications of the first. Inhibition is the deliberate overriding of dominant responses and Shifting can also be called task switching, it involves flexibly changing between different tasks (Mittal et al., 2015). Participants gave information about their backgrounds and then were either sorted into groups that had inhibition tasks or shifting tasks amongst different environments. They found that people who had remembered having unpredictable childhoods did better on the shifting tasks and worse on the inhibition tasks (Mittal et al., 2015). So the very the environment of unpredictability requires an individual to be quite flexible and adaptable. This trait can carry well on into adulthood and serve the individual well in the long run.

Poverty and Personality

Personality is the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s unique and distinctive character. There are many facets and parts that compile it and they are called traits. Personality is one of the things that keeps growing, evolving and changing throughout the rest of our lives. It takes some time for people to develop their own distinctive personality because it can be influenced by so many outside factors like their environments, parents, friends, family or a plethora of reasons. It takes time for people to truly come into themselves and to come into their own personalities. Individuals go through many stages in their lives. The first formations of personality come from the behaviors that are learned and acted out from the earlier stages of development and then carried on into the later stages. Repeated behaviors can in turn become habits (Salling & Harvey, 1981). And habits become harder and harder to break as time goes on.

If personality is negatively affected by poverty then that could lead to the of a risky personality and predict negative behaviors that can extend well beyond adolescence and have effects on adulthood behaviors and interaction between people (Hart, Atkins, & Matsuba , 2008). As exemplified by the aforementioned studies poverty has a significant role in the increase and prevalence of negative behaviors of both kinds being externalizing and internalizing. Sometimes these behaviors don’t arise in opposition to the environment but to cope with the demand and stresses of the environment itself (Wadsworth & Berger, 2006). Sometimes the ways in which individuals decide to cope happen to be the wrong ways, instead of trying to work with the problems presented within the challenging and demanding environment, they shut down or completely disengage from the environment or try to detach themselves from the problem (Wadsworth & Berger, 2006).

Poverty related stressors can take tolls on groups and families with tension rising between them. When there is tension due to poverty related stressors it can cause chaos and issues within the household itself and this can strain the social climate of the home and can be an indicator of children’s ability to recognize and properly process their own negative emotions (Raver, Blair, & Garrett-Peters, 2015), It was found that the higher the amount of exposure to conflicts and tension within the home the harder or more difficult it was for children from that home to be able to process and understand negative emotions when faced with them. These negative behaviors become habit and then these habits are carried into adulthood that turn into risky behaviors that can create a risky personality.

Conversely, if personality is positively affected by personality it can lead to better overall well-being, mental health and in self-worth and self-esteem (Eamon, M.K, 2000). From the research presented before I claim that some of the positive behaviors that can come from growing up in an unpredictable, unstable and impoverished environment can be successful and healthy coping, adaptability and flexibility in difficult and uncertain situations. So not only do individuals who grow up in poverty cope well, they cope the right way. As mentioned before there are two types of coping that can be seen as the healthy way to cope although coping is different for everyone; primary control coping is the more direct approach to dealing with one’s own feelings and secondary control coping is consists of trying to adapt one’s self to differing environments (Wadsworth & Berger, 2006).

Although those are two different ways in which an individual can cope they both give time for the person to actually process what they are feeling and interact with the stressor or the problem in their own ways. I think that through these processes of coping understanding how to handle negative emotions is learned. It is through learning how to handle negative emotions that can arise with stress and strain from stressors that negative behaviors can be diminished.

Conclusion

Poverty does indeed change and affect personality in many ways even if the individual can move from a place with high levels of poverty. The lack of resources leaves individuals brought up in poverty at a deficit in some areas that carry on into adulthood and it is very unlikely that deficit can be closed. It can increase the prevalence of outwardly aggressive and violent actions which can only lead to negative outcomes for the future. But there are also some positives that come from this restricted lifestyle, like the ability to cope and the ability to be flexible. Although it is difficult to say that poverty can be eradicated so that everyone has the same equal and equitable opportunities it is still a worthy course of action so that everyone can meet their full potential.