Interactionism
Tekeyla Pennington
April 7, 2013
Amanda Martin

I believe that cultural has a huge influence on personality. If our culture around us is hostile and reckless, rather than kind and stable, our reactions to events and circumstances would be significantly different. However, I see a person’s reaction to something as a result of social experience because even if we are surround by unkindness or hostility, if we see something funny or something that amuses us we will smile and probably laugh, despite what we are used to doing. The position of the nature of traits that I agree with most is them being Behavioral dispositions. I do believe that traits are tendencies to act, think, or feel in consistent ways that interact with external influences, such as cultural norms and situational variables, to influence a person’s functioning. So, trait attributions can be used both to describe behavior summaries and to suggest causal or generative mechanisms for behavior. According to Neurophysiological substrates, traits are biological patterning in the central nervous system that cause behavior to occur and account for the consistencies in socio-emotional functioning from one situation to the next and over time. To me, this description states that traits are pre-determined and cause us to be happy, friendly, or sad. I do not agree with this because I do not think we can determine how we will act or react to something or someone before we are exposed to it or them.