Which of these choices is not a cultural influence on our wellness?

The answer

The choice that is not a cultural influence on wellness is hereditary diseases. Culture is the set of shared beliefs, values, customs, and messages we absorb from the people and media around us. Things like our attitudes toward health, our behaviors and habits, and the media we consume are all shaped by that surrounding culture. A hereditary disease, by contrast, is written into our DNA and inherited from our biological parents. It comes from genetics, not from the community, traditions, or messaging we grow up with — so it is a genetic factor, not a cultural one.

Why each option is or isn't cultural

This is the part most answer keys skip. To see why the answer is hereditary diseases, classify each option by its source:

• Attitude — cultural. How we think and feel about exercise, diet, mental health, and doctors is largely learned from family, peers, religion, and community norms.
• Behavior — cultural. Habits like what and how we eat, whether we smoke, and how we handle stress are heavily influenced by cultural practices and social expectations.
• Media — cultural. Advertising, social media, television, and influencers are products of culture and actively shape body image, food choices, and health beliefs.
• Hereditary diseases — genetic, not cultural. Conditions such as sickle-cell disease, cystic fibrosis, or a family history of certain cancers are transmitted biologically through genes. No amount of cultural messaging creates or removes the inherited gene.

Because three of the four options trace back to the shared social environment and only one traces back to biology, hereditary diseases is the odd one out.

Cultural vs. genetic vs. environmental factors

Wellness is shaped by several categories of influence, and mixing them up is the trap this question sets:

• Cultural / social influences — attitudes, behaviors, values, and media messages you learn from others. These are largely controllable and changeable.
• Genetic / hereditary factors — traits and disease risks inherited through DNA. These are uncontrollable; you cannot change the genes you were born with, though you can manage risk.
• Environmental factors — air and water quality, neighborhood safety, and access to care, which sit outside the individual but are not "cultural" in the values-and-beliefs sense.

Understanding this distinction matters because it tells you what you can and cannot change. You can reshape a cultural habit; you cannot rewrite a hereditary gene — but you can reduce its impact through screening, lifestyle, and medical care.

The bigger picture

The reason exams test this is to make sure students separate influences they can control from those they cannot. Cultural factors like attitude, behavior, and media are powerful precisely because they are learned and therefore changeable — public-health campaigns work by shifting them. Hereditary disease risk is fixed at birth, so the health strategy is different: early screening, awareness of family history, and managing modifiable risk factors around the unchangeable genetic baseline.