Many anthropologists believe that a person's personality and social self is created by their environment and society (for example you take a five or six year old and put them in a place where they are taught to play nice, how to share, their ABCs, and how to behave in relation to other people, from that a kindergartener will emerge). Something that kind of irked me in "The Winters Tale" was how Perdita was acting like a blue blood even though she was raised by an old Shepard. I know that some things are inherent or passed on from parents, but I don't think she would be as royal acting as she appeared. If a society creates a person, Perdita should have been more of a Shepard's daughter.
Another aspect of this is that people create their society while the person is created by society. So Perdita could have had an influence on her society and environment to make the county side less peasant-esque with her feminine ways, but it probably wouldn't have seemed like as big of a difference.
YA! i took a human development class, and I was thinking along the same lines. there is really no way she would be that socially fluent in the ways of royalty, except she have grown up around it. Maybe shakespeare thinks that genetics/bloodline is much more influential in personalities than we think today? maybe he was stuck with some awful quirk he got from his dad... he must be a little bitter about that terrible snort... (?)
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