Good Example Of Essay On Person Situation Interaction

ABSTRACT

Persons and situations interact in different ways. Human behavior is not simply a combination of reflexes, instincts and conditioned response. It occurs in response to the stimulus, i.e. to the situation and reflects the processes of observing, understanding, learning, thinking and communication. Apart from that, humans are social creatures and their actions and behavior occur in social contexts and situations such as cooperation, competition, membership and various structures. For that reason it is very important to understand the relations between the individuals and the situations that happen to them in the daily life. In this paper, we will examine six types of interaction between the person and the situation, see the examples of each situation and discuss how these interactions can be used by the company management and consultants to manage their human resources better and more effectively.
According to Buss (1987), persons react to situations differently – they chose some situations, avoid the others and use various strategies to influence aspects of the situations which are relatively adaptive.
There are 6 ways in which a person and the situation interact. The first interaction is how situations choose a person. According to Kenrick et al. (2007), in many cases it is not possible to select preferred situations. Students get rejected by the college they opted for, are not accepted into a popular sorority and have troubles finding a job. The reason for this is because situations choose the person. If I was a consultant for a large company, I would give overqualified persons more responsibility, and would try to bring under qualified persons up to speed or suggest moving them to another location more suited to their skills.
A second interaction is how different people respond to the same situation. According to Roach (n.d.), persons respond to situations displaying various emotions. Different kids will definitely react differently to the same material, and there are many reasons for these variations. As Rich (2009) states, to understand the reasons we have to take into account age, temperament and the circumstances and events of the kid’s life. As a supervisor, I would want to get to know my team members so that I can put them into proper situations that draw from their experience and get the best results out of their efforts.
The third interaction is how people chose their situations. My husband may choose to get out one Saturday night and go see a movie with his friends while I rather sit home and rent a movie on Netflix. It is improper to say that situations simply happen to persons; usually persons to a large extent determine their situations themselves. (Kenrick et al. 2007). As a supervisor in this situation, I would always try to give a choice to each of the workers to choose what they are qualified for versus being told to go do it.
The forth interaction is how different situations prime different parts of the person. According to Irvine (2013), this means that different situations bring forward different parts of person’s identity. An example of this would be me coming home from work on a very stressful evening. I had to bring most of my work home with me on top of having to get in a school assignment. My bad day and attitude automatically brought a bad vibe into the household. As Irvine (2013) indicates, the supervisor can use this to find among the workers those attributes or personalities that are most productive and happy.
The fifth interaction is how a person can change the situation. Anyone can turn a situation run along a different course by their interaction with it. As Irvine (2013) pointed, just one happy person can cheer up the mood of the whole room. As a supervisor, I could use this to pair the highly skilled workers up with difficult task; and to pair the miserable worker up with the positive one to get the miserable worker more motivated.
The sixth interaction is how situations can change a person. We examined how persons can change situations, but an opposite can occur as well (Kenrick et al. 2007). Young inexperienced parents may turn a calm infant into an anxious toddler filled with fear and insecurities. Using this in management, put negative people in positive situations to boost morale and increase production.
I believe that the fifth interaction may work best. I had many projects that I was not happy doing because I was either unfamiliar with the topic and was not willing to do the research. Working with others who had a high knowledge of the task and could provide me with the information I was not aware of, will boost up my willingness to learn and help out my team.
As Lee (1960) wrote, the only way to really understand a person is to try to look at things from this person’s perspective.

REFERENCES

Buss, D. M. (1988b). Human mate selection. American Scientist, 73, 47-51
Irvine, P. (2013). 6 Points of Perspective in Situations. The Online Self Improvement Community. Retrieved from http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/6-points-of-perspective-in-situations
Kenrick, D., Neuberg, S., Cialdini, R. (2007). Social Psychology: Goals in Interaction (4th ed.). New York: Allyn and Bacon
Lee, H. (1960). To Kill a Mockingbird. Philadelphia New York:  J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Rich. M. (2009). Why do different kids respond differently to media violence? Center for Media and Child Health. Retrieved from http://cmch.tv/why-do-different-kids-respond-differently-to-media-violence/
Roach, C. (n.d.). Why People React Differently to the Very Same Situation. Retrieved from https://general-psychology.knoji.com/why-people-react-differently-to-the-very-same-situations/