Final answer:
Personality traits are characteristic ways of behaving with temperament being an inborn aspect of it. Reactivity and self-regulation are two dimensions of temperament. Such traits and how they manifest are important in the study of social psychology.
Step-by-step explanation:
Personality traits refer to characteristic ways of behaving, and temperament is one aspect of personality. According to trait theories, there are certain central traits that everyone possesses to different degrees. Raymond Cattell narrowed down personality traits to 16 factors which include warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, and others. A high or low score on these factors, such as warmth, can describe how caring or distant a person is.
Furthermore, temperament refers to the inborn, genetically based personality differences. There are also two dimensions of our temperament that are significant: reactivity and self-regulation. Reactivity is how we respond to new or challenging environmental stimuli while self-regulation is our ability to control that response. Understanding these aspects of personality is vital for a field like social psychology which focuses on situational factors as well as inherent traits to explain behavior.