Religious of the World
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Behavior is influenced by cultural background; society may also influence a change in culture that will in turn affect our behavior. We hail from different background with a fast range of cultural differences and were made to understand by way of teaching from our parents or by mere observation as we grow through this culture, to accept it as the moral standard of living and all the traces of this culture will often reflects in our behavior as we move on to the next stage of our life.
As we venture into the society through the school system in our early age, we would experience societal culture and behaviors, which may be quite different from our traditional culture. There is every likely probability to be influenced or captivated and pick some of this behavior, because of the exposure through peers, movies, music, and fashion industries. As we grow older and aware of the social trend and behaviors exhibit by the society, in order for us to be accepted by our peers or due to the fact that we are fully matured now to use our judgment, we are most likely to do something different from that of our original cultural background.
Majority of these influential behaviors imposed by the society, could be described as lifestyle. Despite the fact that we have family, ethnic culture, state culture, corporate culture, and national culture, lifestyle can be described as the way a person lives. It includes the way he or she eats, dresses, thinks, talks, behaves etc. It is the imbibed or adopted culture of a man from the society at large. For example, the lifestyle of New York or London is the mixture of different cultures of the inhabitants. Lifestyle affects culture and culture affects lifestyle in the society
Furthermore life style is a result of culture, climates, socialization and technology. Therefore culture and lifestyle are the major determinant factors of human behavior.
There are other factors such as social value , norms and beliefs which may have impact in the way we lives as well as on the societal lifestyle. Religion, experience and education may change the influence of culture and lifestyle in behavior slightly but not totally. For example, most children who are born into the family of cigarette smokers do smoke at early age .This is a behavioral trait from culture. These children learn smoking through intuition and grow to imbibe it as a life style.
It is very clear and obvious that culture and life style can affect behavior to a degree, but does not necessarily become a dominant factor, people have choice and choice make change possible. However, values and beliefs inevitably affect behaviors. Culture and life style choices are the outcome of those values. We have the way we do because we choose our personality, develop our character and express it through free will. For example, drugs are freely consumed in the Western cultures for recreational purpose and not much thought is given to the possible outcome