How Where You Grow up Affects Your Personality

Would you be a different person if you had grown up somewhere else? A growing body of research is helping to answer this age-old nature versus nurture question and what it means for your identity.

It was a hot afternoon in the little village near Kolkata, India, and the adults were asleep. My cousin and I were sitting on the floor munching on puffed rice with mustard oil when she turned to me and asked: “Is it true that people in Sweden eat cows and pigs?” I, just about 10 years old at the time, felt ashamed as I nodded. “So do they eat dogs and cats too?” she probed. It was a perfectly logical question. If you can eat one four-legged mammal, why not another?

Having grown up in Sweden, albeit with an Indian mother, it wasn’t something I had thought about before – vegetarianism was rare at the time, especially in Europe, and Swedish kids were accustomed to seeing cows as a source of food. My cousin, on the other hand, was a passionate animal lover with a habit of rescuing creatures she perceived to be in danger. She didn’t eat meat.