Assigned human racial personality.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

The way we think is tied to our physiology?  Great.

I guess I need to get in shape.

Actually I had a psychiatrist tell me that by loosing weight I can improve how my brain uses insulin and thus it's overall function, at least in relation to my mood.

[Xeviat]

Without hijacking the thread with too much stuff from my setting, this has actually been something I have encountered while working on the physiology of my races. Way back in the original concepts of my setting, most of the races were just magically altered humans. Sometime between then (like 10 years ago) and now, I've changed that so now only 2 other races are related to humans, and they're only related to humans in that they are reflections of each other. But even those races will have different world views than humans.

One element of my setting mechanically is that I will have a distinction of race and culture. A human raised by humans is going to end up quite different than a human raised by dwarfs. But this will only change cultural traits, as some of our personality and outlook is going to be devised by our physiology. There have been some very good points made here, so I'll try to make some new ones.

Firstly, we humans are very visually oriented. Vision is our primary sense, so we put a lot of time and thought into our appearance. We make judgments based on appearances as well. In my setting, dwarfs have very poor vision and tend to use their sense of smell to identify individuals over vision. I haven't figured it all out yet, but I am sure that will change some aspects of their personalities (they won't have makeup and all that stuff, for one).

Compared to other animals, we have a rather long period of childhood and adolescence. We are sexually mature long before we are physically mature. Now, this is mostly a modern thing, but I think our outlook and personalities are somehow shaped by this 6-8 years of not entirely being an adult. That and the whole being entirely dependent on our parents for years thing when other animals are good to leave much earlier.

Humans are comparatively weak compared to other animals. I do not mean in physical strength, I mean our general lack of a dangerous lethal weapon as part of our bodies. This leads us to using weapons to fight, which drives much of our technological advancement. A race with claws or fire breath or what-have-you might have not come to this so quickly.

There is a study referred to as the "monkey sphere" (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html), where they compared primate brain size to
the size of their packs/tribes/groups. Our number is 150; we are physiologically capable of perceiving about 150 other individuals as human beings with thoughts and feelings and lives, beyond that we begin to care less. Think about it: most people would feel bad stealing 5 bucks from their mom, but many would not feel half as bad taking an extra 20 bucks from a cashier who gave you incorrect change. So a vastly more intelligent and larger brained race might end up being far more egalitarian and socially minded than humans, because it would come naturally to them and not require the constant work that it takes for us humans to get along with each other.

Humans need to wear clothing to protect ourselves from the elements. In warm areas, this is less of a problem because humans tend to have darker skin and thus burn less readily in the sun and do not need much clothing except where modesty and displays count. In colder climates, though, clothing is a necessity. Combined with being visually oriented, this has an effect on our outlook. A race, or culture, that does not need clothing will likely prize tattoos and other types of markings.

Lastly, human females have a one month fertility cycle. This leads to us being very focused on sex, finding partners for sex, and protecting our partners from others. In my setting, my Tritons are a race of hominid amphibians; they do not have intercourse, but they do get a powerful urge to release their seed/eggs into water. Villages have communal pools where nurses work. There is no real concept of 'mother' and 'father' (those would would translate to purely scientific terms; there is no emotional or loyal bonds between parents and children). When a Triton grows up, they are taken as an apprentice by a master; their trainer is their parental figure in the human sense. Tritons have friends, but they have no reason to be possessive over them as humans do over their mates/spouses.

So ... yeah. Change up those things and you can create a still humanoid but different race. If you change them up enough, you could end up with something that has a very hard time relating to humans (a race of hive mind psychics would have a hard time viewing anything not of their hive mind as worth anything; they'd just be animals to them since they cannot hear them think).

[Steerpike]

Just thought it might interest those following this thread: I just added a race of creatures to Xell called the orchidfolk (link), who I flatter myself are a very different, inhuman race, though still a somewhat comprehensible one.