In practical life, there are many recognitions of the part
played by social factors in generating personal traits. One of them is our
habit of making social classifications. We attribute distinctive characteristics
to rich and poor, slum-dweller and captain of industry, rustic and suburbanite,
officials, politicians, professors, to members of races, sets and parties.
These judgments are usually too coarse to be of much use. But they show our
practical awareness that personal traits are functions of social situations.
When we generalize this perception and act upon it intelligently we are
committed by it to recognize that we change character from worse to better only
by changing conditions—among which are our own ways of dealing with the one we
judge. We cannot change habit directly: that notion is magic. But we can change
it indirectly by modifying conditions, by an intelligent selecting and
weighting of the objects which engage attention and which influence the fulfillment
of desires.
--John Dewey*
* "Habits as Social Functions",
from Human Nature and Conduct
"The Place of Habit in Conduct"
