curious-traited rolled determined by events?

[Janna]

I was wondering how much what a sim experiences affects the traits that are given to it.
We all know that if the mother has a bad pregnancy, or the sim child has a bad time during each stage we don't get to pick the trait, it is rolled and given to the sim.

But, does what happens during that time a factor in whether it is a good trait, negative or middle ground trait?

Example:  The mother is doing fine  until she is scared by the a ghost, then she is unable to pick at least one of the traits.
The sim child does bad in school, or get caught out past curfew, skipping school or something else and you don't get to pick the trait.  Does the programing then roll only negative traits (or what I see as negative ones) of insane, mean, evil and such or is it totally random?

It is so seldom that I don't get to pick traits, until I was doing the town jump projects, that it had me curious in total random or a specific random, such as the roll of what could be seen as negative, positive or even middle ground traits. 

[McHazy]

That's an interesting theory and has got me thinking back to when my sims rolled random aging due to either random events or poor clicking by me! It does seem to be totally random in my experience, although I did have a child who got scared by a ghost (amongst other traumatic events!) and randomly rolled the brave trait when aging up. Maybe it is related, but I am not sure.

[Zyffyr]

Unless they changed something, it is totally random - no different from you hitting the 'random' button.

[Hosfac]

I asked a game modder about this a while back, and was told that there is no coding in the game that would give specific traits if you don't get the opportunity to pick them yourself.  So unless this has changed recently, it's 100% random.

[Serenity S.]

That's an interesting theory and has got me thinking back to when my sims rolled random aging due to either random events or poor clicking by me! It does seem to be totally random in my experience, although I did have a child who got scared by a ghost (amongst other traumatic events!) and randomly rolled the brave trait when aging up. Maybe it is related, but I am not sure.

One of my Sims also got Brave after seeing a ghost. But "ghost" was his mother, and who is afraid of his own mother? Maybe she was coming to scold him or something