I believe that people can always choose regardless of their environment.
Most people's intuition says the same, but it isn't quite the full story. If we someone is conditioned to feel and behave a certain way, making the choice is not very easy and even if the choice is made, changing the behaviour is even harder. So many of us carry so much baggage, and a lot of us think that baggage is good to carry...
I'm sorry, to be so unoptimistic
There are few still alive more pessimistic than me :)