Our individual physiology limits or allows us to learn certain behaviors- that is always changing as we age.
This is especially evident in developing children or in older age, where there are limiting factors in place. Disability, disease, or less than optimal cognitive functioning can also be a limiting factor in learning behaviors.
The biggest obstacle in learning new behaviors are behaviors/information/processes that are already in place in the brain- they have physical neural locations that may compete or impede with the desired new one. Think about a person heavily biased against people that are not their race, in order for them to learn to think and behave differently, they have to reckon with hundreds of memories of themselves behaving alongside that bias as well as the multitude of complex factors in the brain that culminate in that biased behavior. Like playing Jenga. If we knew the locations that store information that drives a specific behavior and went into “erase” it (to make way for a new one), then we would likely also obstruct processes for other seemingly unconnected behaviors.
When we introduce factors that affect the brain, like drugs, alcohol, chemicals, poor nutrition, poor sleep, etc. then we can see that this also affects a person’s ability to learn new behaviors.
Learning new behaviors often requires us to unlearn and rewrite physical locations. That’s why it takes so long to develop a habit or achieve desired personal growth. And also the reason why bias is so difficult to get rid of.
We cannot always choose what behaviors to learn. Only in theory, when there aren’t limiting factors.