Interactionism

Interactionism: Mechanistic Vs. Reciprocal

PSY/230

12/12/12

Rochelle Matlofsky

Interactionism: Mechanistic Vs. Reciprocal

Mechanistic interactionism and reciprocal interactionism both revolve people, situations, and interactions. Mechanistic interactionism is derived from “the concept of an interaction effect as it appears in certain statistical procedures” (McAdams, p. 148, 2009).

With mechanistic interactionism, a person’s trait makes up one independent predictor, the situations makes up a second predictor, and the interaction between the two constitutes a third predictor (McAdams, p. 148, 2009). When thinking about interactionism in this manner, a person’s behavior can be predicted according to the relationship between the traits they posses and the situation they are faced with. For example, if one person has social anxiety and another does not, it can be predicted that the person with social anxiety may be uncomfortable in a large group while the second person may not.

Reciprocal interactionism, has the same components of person, situation, and interaction, but conceives a more fluid and complex pattern in which the three continually and reciprocally influence one another (McAdams, p. 149, 2009). This is a “choice of situations” idea in which a person chooses the situations they place themselves in based on the traits they posses. Similar to my earlier example, when the interaction with the situation for the person with social anxiety could be predicted with the mechanism view, in reciprocal interactionism that same person could avoid that situation all together.

Both views have strong points, but I support the mechanistic view more. In theory, the reciprocal view seems ideal because a person could avoid the predicted interaction with a situation they are uncomfortable with and shape things like their career based on their traits. However, logically, we cannot always avoid every situation that makes us uncomfortable. At some point, we have...