3 Factors That Shape Our Core Beliefs

The way our core beliefs develop is an inter play between the cultural influences we have had, the parenting styles our parents adopted, our temperament as a child – and the specific inputs we received from our environments like home, school.

Cultures can be categorized under two types – Individualistic cultures vs Collectivist cultures.

Western cultures like in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US are known to have individualistic cultures. Most Asian and Middle Eastern  countries like China, India, Qatar, Bahrain have collectivist cultures.

In an individualistic culture people value self-direction, autonomy, privacy and self-reliance. Most collectivist cultures value dependability, being self-sacrificing and social cooperation. People are expected to sacrifice their own comfort for the greater good of community. Collectivist cultures usually restrict and hold back those who believe in their own unique thoughts and ideologies. Personality traits like inter-dependence, duty, conflict avoidance and a sense of togetherness are valued the most here. Self-expression is most often, neither nurtured nor encouraged.

Moving on to the influence our parents and their parenting styles have had on our core beliefs – cultural norms about parental practices typically influence how children are raised. These norms affect what beliefs and values parents teach their children, what behaviors are considered appropriate, and the methods used to teach these values and behaviors. There are three broad parenting styles that we are going to explore now.

• Authoritative Parenting – Parents who subscribe to this are conscientious and unconditionally committed to their children. They state behavioral expectations clearly, they respect their children’s opinion and independence, they set realistic goals and give them the support they require.
• Authoritarian Parenting – These types of parents have a high level of control over their children and require them to be very responsive to parental demands, they are punitive and emotionally distant. Most children raised in this manner tend to have low self-esteem, poor communication skills and social skills.
• Permissive Parenting – These types of parents exercise low parental control and have low expectations of their children, exercise little discipline and allow their children to be responsible as they deem fit.

Lastly let us look into the temperament that one had as a child. All children generally display a combination of the below mentioned traits, in varying degrees.

• Wonder – Curiosity and wonder are innately present in every child, and this causes them the need to know, to experiment, and to explore.
• Optimism – Children naturally believe the world is friendly place and everyone can be trusted
• Naivety – Children are life oriented; they live in the now, they lack any sense of right and wrong. At first, they lack direction because they are so interested in everything, that it is hard to choose any one thing. If caregivers are not patient and understanding – they will expect far too much and want the child to behave more maturely than is possible for his age – because parents often conclude that the child was deliberately being mischievous and disobedient
• Dependence – Children are dependent and needy by nature and not by choice. Unlike an adult, a child cannot meet his own needs. Parents who struggle with meeting their own needs usually will either get angry at the child’s neediness or will try to get their own needs met by making the child an extension of themselves.

Where does temperament come from? Is it genetic or something learned as we experience life? There is some genetic/biological basis for temperament and the environment, life experiences also play a role in its development. There are 3 general categories for a child’s temperament – difficult; slow to warm up; easy. Remember these are to be considered less a distinct category and more as a continuum. The main dimensions for these different types of temperaments are reactivity and self-regulation.

Reactivity focuses on the child’s responses to stimuli – external (loud noise) or internal (feeling angry)

Self–regulation refers to the child’s ability to manage his reaction in any given situation.

So in conclusion, our core beliefs have taken shape by the inter play of our temperament  when we were children, our parents temperaments and the parenting styles they adopted, and the cultural influences that had an  encompassing effect on us.