We can ask a number of questions about individuals:

are we as independent of one another as we appear to be? How much are we influenced by others?
how “free” is our “free will” to act? do we really have “free will?” or are we constrained by the values and rules of our group?
are individuals born or are they made? Are people genetic or social creations, or mixtures of the two?
why do people differ from one another? Why are we not all more or less the same in terms of our behaviour as we are in terms of our physical structure?

These questions are very important. They help us define the terms by which we understand the world about us and our place in it. How we think about people and illness, how we understand why people behave the way they do. For example, it is not uncommon for people to take the credit for things when they go well, but blame circumstances when they go badly. This is called “self-serving bias” and is found all around the world. How do people come to understand their place in the world? Their attitudes and values are very closely shaped by their cultural context. Culture refers to the sum of knowledge, behaviour and beliefs that a person possesses, particularly that component that is commonly shared or held by others in the in-group (the group with which you identify or belong).

We know from research that babies are socially responsive from their earliest hours of life. They prefer stimuli associated with people to any other kind of stimuli, so we must assume that they have some predisposition to be attuned to social signals. This sensitivity to and importance of social signals remains throughout life.

Language provides the main system of symbols that helps shape the person and in-forms their being; literally, it creates the means by which we can understand, and the very terms we use to express that understanding are no different from the understanding we are capable of holding. As we are regulated and controlled, first by our parents and then teachers who in-struct us with orders; then by ourselves as we instruct ourselves both externally, and after the age of 7 years, internally through the in-corporation of language, silently internalised as “thought”.

What is the first memory you have? Can you remember your first, second or third birthday or other event from that age? No. Why not? Because you were not in possession of the in-structions needed to construct a framework of understanding. your behaviour was still being in-formed by those around you. “You” had not been formed.

The meaning that we possess gives us the capacity to understand. From this comes the ability to predict and anticipate, and therefore structure our behaviour to manipulate the environments we inhabit.