Impact of Environment on Habits and Behaviour Research Paper

Do individuals and societies truly impact each other’s development by being influenced by one another? Habits and behavior, outbursts because of the individual being controlled by society, and how an individual's actions are socially controlled are all the key factors that further argue that who we are changes from moment to moment depending on where we happen to be. 

Habits and Behavior have a great impact on an individual. An individual lifestyle’s activities may result from their values and norms shaped by society. Habits tend to occur subconsciously and are repeated regularly. Your behavior is mostly affected by your surroundings. In Where We Are Shapes Who We Are by Adam Alter he researched and held experiments to determine whether habits and behavior are based on your environment and explained theories such as a littered parking lot. They placed fliers on the car and recorded how many people actually took the flier and left it on the ground because the lot was already littered which made people believe it was okay to do so. However, once they cleaned the parking lot and placed the flier onto people’s cars they discovered fewer people to litter.  “It’s comforting to believe that there’s an essential version of each of us, that good people behave well, bad people behave badly, and those tendencies reside within us. But the growing evidence suggests that on some level, who we are, litterbug or good citizen, for example, changes from moment to moment, depending on where we happen to be” (Alter 4).The quote from Where We Are Shapes Who We Are discusses how conducting many experiments led them to conclude that some individuals behave badly when they are surrounded by poverty and crime which further relates to who we are changes from moment to moment depending on where we happen to be. Certain words they include like “changes from moment to moment” show us that our actions are influenced by what is around us which relates to how we behave and influences our habits. Adding on,  another quote that demonstrates that habits and behavior have a great impact on an individual is “These environmental cues can shape and reshape us as quickly as we walk from one part of the city to another” (Atler 4). The environment we are in determines how we act. The phrase “shape and reshapes us as quickly” discusses how our habits and behavior change from time to time as we change places. Atler shows how if an individual is constantly around a wealthy town their habits are quickly going to change as they try to act how others act which would be proper. However, if an individual is around a town that consists of crimes and poverty they are more likely to inherit bad habits and act how the neighborhood is treated which indicates how the environment shapes how we act. This tells us that the environment we live in affects our habits and behavior.