How Do External Factors Affect One's Identity?

Everyone changes because of something that happened to them at one point or another, and it changes how they may think. External factors do affect one's identity, because, in reality, how could it not? Just seeing a poor person on the street could change one’s strain of thought. A few ways that external factors affect a person are that; external factors can shape how one thinks about someone or something, it can change one’s personality or reactions, and it can change one’s mood for long periods of time.

First off, if one may have had a bad experience with dogs, then they may perceive dogs much differently than for an individual who may have had great experiences with dogs. The first individual may now hate dogs and the second love dogs. Things like that happen all the time, changing how people think about that person or thing. Even if an individual hears something about another person, that may or may not be true, that may change how they think about the other individual. It depends on how much that individual is willing to shape their thoughts over something that they heard.

Which, eventually becomes part their personality itself. For example, like in The Outsiders, if an individual grew up in an area or with a group of people that stole, drank, smoked and jumped others all the time, they would start to think it’s okay and they would become more like that. Like with when Johnny died, Ponyboy started to become more like the others, in a way, losing some of his innocence. Johnny shaped Ponyboy’s personality to keep him more innocent, and since he died, Ponyboy started to change because there was no one else to understand and stand by him like