Interactionist Model of Organizational Creativity

The Interactionist Perspective on Behavior

Personality theorists have had a long tradition of competing explanations for human behavior that have oscillated between extreme positions where personality was considered to be completely determined by heredity versus the notion that the individual differences we think of as personality are explained solely by the environment (the classic nature versus nurture debate). In contemporary times, a balance of sorts has become the most commonly accepted position. Most psychologists today, working in the personality arena, argue that personality is determined both by genetics and by the influence of the environment or situation, though they might disagree about the relative contributions of heredity and learning. The “nature versus nurture” debate in personality development finds a parallel in a fundamental dichotomy concerning the origins of human behavior: How best to theorize about the human being? Is behavior largely a function of characteristics and attributes of the person, or is human behavior most readily explained by the situation or context within which the behavior occurs?

As with personality, the interactionist position is also the predominant one with regard to the larger issue of human behavior in general. That is, an interactionist perspective on behavior suggests that the behavior of an individual, at any moment, is determined both by the situation within which the individual is behaving and by what the individual brings to the situation, so to speak. In other words, behavior is a function of both characteristics of the person and aspects of the situation or context. Interactionist psychology (sometimes called interactional psychology) has become such a mainstream notion that the terminology has almost disappeared from the literature. One would be hard-pressed to find a behavioral scientist who would argue that an understanding of behavior could rely solely on specifying the “environmental press” or, on the other hand, rely solely on understanding personality and other important individual differences. Simply put, most behavioral scientists view behavior as a function of both person and situation. In the same vein, theorists and researchers concerned with explaining creative behavior have developed a variety of perspectives that have mirrored the theoretical debates occurring with regard to behavior in general.

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