Mar 29 2012: I'm a student of behaviorism, which looks at the myriad influences on human behavior including genetics and our learned history of reinforcement and punishment. Behaviorism, in lieu of knowledge of specific genetic circumstances, would look to the history of the individual's exposure to an interest. Inevitably, both scenarios have probable influence on shaping the individual's interest, because each individual has such a unique history of reinforcement and punishment. While one individual may have initially been encouraged by a teacher, for instance, another individual may have simply learned he or she was capable in an area by task feedback and pursued subsequent and connected employment. Another individual could have had a combination of both scenarios. This is a question to be answered on an individual basis.
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A comment on Conversation: Can we "engineer" our own interests through repeated exposure?