Is individual responsibility innate or learned?

[alexey]

It seems that many view individual responsibility as a choice - one can simply decide to start acting responsibly, make something of themselves without needing role models, etc. what are your thought on that?

[Gibbs Hog Heaven]

If you aren't accountable for your own actions to yourself, then just who are you responsible to? Self worth and responsibility starts from within. If you've not got that, then I honestly don't know what you do have to contribute to a civilized society.

Hail.

[Teller]

I think you really have to try not to be able to find SOME kind of role model in life. We have compulsory education. So you can come from the worst possible environment and spend at least 7 hours a day with someone that has a clue. I'll fully grant that in some inner city areas, and hell, out here in the beginnings of Appalachia, you may have to look harder than someone from an affluent community with well-educated parents. But if you get to 18 and truly have no clue about right and wrong, or how to be a productive person, I'd say for the most part, that's on you.

(I also expect this thread to be pretty starkly divided along party lines, FWIW. But I think it's a great question, and I look forward to reading the responses.)

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

I agree with h_h. I think it's an environmental thing but I also think that everyone has the free will to eventually become responsible. It might take you longer and you might have to suffer through some mistakes and resulting hardships to wake you up, but I don't think there's any reason a person can't learn to be responsible.

[twa]

Learned, though it could be developed independently.(probably not as well)

I suppose exercising it develops it further

[Enter Apotheosis]

Not much of a question in my eyes... it has to be learned.

[Destino]

I dont think role models and choice are mutually exclusive concepts. Especially considering that responsible behavior is a concept defined by society.

[No Excuses]

Learned it quite early, but never applied it until I was on my own.

I think people (if there are any) who choose "innate" might confuse learning vs. application. My first thought when I read the title was "innate" because I made the decision at about age 19-20 to start being responsible. And then I realized that all I did was use the principles my parents taught me.

[PokerPacker]

Like most things psychological, I'd have to say its a combination of both.

[Special K]

Both.

Just speaking from personal experience, I was raised to always try my best at everything. Without excessive pressure from the parents, however, I became a perfectionist and was extremely hard on myself if I achieved anything less than a perfect score on anything. I still have a tendency to hold myself to perfectionist standards now and it can definitely hurt my self esteem when I don't live up to the standards I set for myself. Whenever I talk to my mom, she reflects on "what she did wrong" during my childhood that made me so hard on myself. I always tell her it wasn't anything she or dad did, they were incredible parents. The harsheness on myself seems to come from within, a desire to be perfect. I've found it's a good thing to strive for the best, but it's also a bit of a curse because it can really bring your self esteem down when you don't reach perfection with everything

So, my over-verbalized answer: BOTH

[Jumbo]

I suppose exercising it develops it further

In the VAST majority of cognition/behaviors, exercising anything "develops it further" (to use a phrase). This is true in matters where the results of such exercise can be regarded as both positive and negative in various social and individual judgments.

But to address the thread topic directly: base components of "competition" and "cooperation" behaviors have a genetic/evolutionary biology nature that are species-wide and would have a relationship to many behaviors we call "being responsible." So too will the environment have a lot to do with shaping any individual. That shaping is very powerful in the earliest years.

The range (number of types), degree (level of impact), and normative values (typical or atypical---cultural, developmental, or otherwise) of the environmental experiences all play a role, often a significant one with various elements (in general accumulation and in specific events) of each able to magnify or minimize each others effects.

Then, as the teen years and the stages following, biologically and (typically) socially, allow for and invite (often "demand") more "exercise" of perception/cognition, the degree of ingrained habits already developed in these areas are both reinforced and made more pliable, in increasing ability and degree of result, all depending on the variables, and with such "exercise" being a powerful factor---independent of course of how benign or damaging the specific exercise might be judged.

So the potential for behaviors we would typically judge as "responsible" (and any other behaviors) exists, at a fundamental level, innately in our species. As do those for "irresponsibility." Just as the behavior of self-powered flight does not. After that, comes the rest. The question is like so many others in the same vein, with aspects of both "nature and nurture" being involved. The more complex our social and individual life becomes over time, the more numerous and complex the situations we are in (and thus evaluate) and the more complex people then label or define their perceptions, along with the influences of increasing linguistic sophistication and general knowledge.

Every behavior you see a human do is human behavior (duh---but there's a reason for reminding of it), and human behavior has a basic biological template that can change, and the environment plays the other major role. This all seems like no-brainer stuff. Whatever particular thoughts/direction alexy had in mind with the thread, I expect he's familiar with everything I just stated.

[Burgold]

If you look at the animal kingdom, there is a set of "understood" responsibility in many species. Pack behaviors, pack roles, or individual duties are very much determined. So, I think it is both learned and innate with a slightly heavier emphasis on nature unless you are a psychopath who has their wiring wrong therefore failed to learn empathy.

Now, ironically, I think more people unlearn how to be responsible by watching adults or their peers.

[twa]

In the VAST majority of cognition/behaviors, exercising anything "develops it further" (to use a phrase). This is true in matters where the results of such exercise can be regarded as both positive and negative in various social and individual judgments.

The winner is the one ya yell sic em to, as my daddy used to say

he was a complex man that said we can justify anything we desire...to ourselves

I am kinda curious where Alexy is going with it though

...

Bur .....how man has made the dog his own unique creation illustrates to me the difference between us and the animals

but outside influences can effect fundamental change,for good or ill.