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[Da Spadger]

A few examples:
Urist McMiner, a dwarf that likes Giant Toads wouldn't be likely to think much of them after one of them have killed his dog and later on get a more anxious personality if he escapes death by cave-in with a few bruises and two more dead dogs. Contrarily, Urist McAnxiousSoldier could get a whole lot less anxious when he has done something heroic like fighting and killing an ettin all by himself.

His squad mate (Who probably also has a funny name of the Urist variety) however, who suffered injuries from the cave crocodiles the goblins rode at three separate occasions might start to detest them and if preferences and personalities are planned to have impact on combat situations, he could be more susceptible to retreating when fronted with one or several. (Or perhaps fight them even harder)

Urist McNoble likes zinc. He likes zinc a lot, in fact. Most or all of the stuff in his room is made out of it, even. But after a few years he might be a bit tired of that particular material and start to like and make demands for something else like schist, slade or rose gold. A nice dining room may be influential if it contains a lot of a specific material. ("Yes! Green glass! That's what my room needs! OVERSEER!")

Edit: Fixed a few errors.

[Medicine Man]

This sounds awesome. Maybe a dwarf could have flashbacks to a traumatic experience which makes them stay still for a few seconds and get a bad thought?

[Shade-o]

"The mayor is surrounded by toads..."

[Audioworm333]

Holy crap carp. That's an awesome idea. I like the flashback idea too. But imagine a dwarf remembering his wife getting slaughtered by cave crocodiles while he is getting slaughtered by a goblin...

[Kurouma]

he could be more susceptible to retreating when fronted with one or several. (Or perhaps fight them even harder)

It's determining which of these options happens that would be the hard thing with this. Obviously it would depend on his other personality traits, I guess, those inherent and those that are also learned. Determining what outweighs what and how they add inside his head is probably going to be a b*tch to program an algorithm for. But it could probably be done. It if were, this would add massively to the quality of the game in my opinion.

Maybe traits could be associated with the *spheres* idea Toady's going to use for regions and culture association, and be graded by the traditional 1-7 scale of dwarfiness, then spheres could combine in determined ways and numerous traits in each sphere could add up to a single number value for each sphere, then the spheres could interact given the specifics of what's happening around the dwarf.
So a "fear of ___" at lvl 5 would outweigh a "hates/wants to kill ___" lvl 3 on that same thing unless Urist has "is brave" lvl x or "is foolhardy" lvl y or something to make up the difference. All these things would be in the 'combat sphere', and a kill order would interact only with this sphere, so you could say that maybe a 'kill order' had to have a 'combat sphere' score greater than zero in order for the dwarf to be ok with it. (((Or a score greater than -x, where x is the dwarf's "respect for authority" level or something)))

This could also work out for determining how a dwarf acts when faced with conflicting entity beliefs, which Toady has been talking about. For example, as above, if we have that same kill order: ordinarily it would only interact with the combat sphere, but say one of our squad members is a member of a "___-worshipping" religion, or maybe he has "really likes ___", the first of which would fall under the 'religion sphere' and the other the 'aesthetics sphere'. Since the kill order is now associated with those spheres as well, they have to be taken into account too, or at least those emotions associated with "___". Probably a kill order should carry more weight than sissy feelings, otherwise players are going to start getting frustrated pretty quickly. Weighting could be done on the dwarf's hard-coded personality traits, which are already sphere-aligned (?). So if a dwarf has "an iffy sense of aesthetics" at lvl 2 of 7 or whatever, then the "really likes ___" only counts as 2/7 the value.

Thoughts? Sorry about the text dump, it's fairly stream-of-consciousness and I just thought about this now...

[Interus]

I want to talk about this, but there's so much detail, and all I can add is a little bit.

Why would somebody who's already anxious become less anxious after being attacked by an Ettin while all alone, even if he does single handedly defeat it.  That seems like the kind of thing where it'd change from "Gee, I hope I don't get attacked" to "Gee, I hope another Ettin doesn't attack me when there's nobody around to help, because that first one was terrifying"

[ungulateman]

It's the dwarf gaining some self-confidence, because "Boo yeah, I just slayed me an ettin!"

[rephikul]

What'd one think of his own race if his wife throw his baby to its death during tantrum? Or whenever he throw party, his leader immediately demand dismissal? Or ordered to drag his beloved animal to slaughter while its cubs following closely behind with tearly eyes?

[Farthing]

It usually seems that the way someone reacts to a situation is already included in a dwarf's personality, and that could be used to determine any alterations that may occur.