In psychology, temperament broadly refers to consistent individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes.
Some researchers point to association of temperament with formal dynamical features of behavior, such as energetic aspects, plasticity, sensitivity to specific reinforcers and emotionality.
[2] Temperament has been defined as "the constellation of inborn traits that determine a child's unique behavioral style and the way he or she experiences and reacts to the world.
[6] Historically, in the second century AD, the physician Galen described four classical temperaments (melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine and choleric), corresponding to the four humors or bodily fluids.
[7] This historical concept was explored by philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and psycho-physiologists from very early times of psychological science, with theories proposed by Immanuel Kant, Hermann Lotze, Ivan Pavlov, Carl Jung, Gerardus Heymans among others.
This model based on the longest tradition of neurophysiological experiments started within the investigations of types and properties of nervous systems by Ivan Pavlov's school.
This experimental tradition started on studies with animals in 1910–20s but expanded its methodology to humans since 1930s and especially since 1960s, including EEG, caffeine tests, evoked potentials, behavioral tasks and other psychophysiological methods.
[5][11][12] At the present time the model is associated with the Structure of Temperament Questionnaire and has 12 scales: Jerome Kagan and his colleagues have concentrated empirical research on a temperamental category termed "reactivity."
However, when observed again at age 4.5, only a modest proportion of children maintained their expected profile due to mediating factors such as intervening family experiences.
Teenagers who had been classed as high reactives when they were babies were more likely to be "subdued in unfamiliar situations, to report a dour mood and anxiety over the future, [and] to be more religious.
Chess, Thomas et al. rated young infants on nine temperament characteristics, each of which, by itself, or with connection to another, affects how well a child fits in at school, with their friends, and at home.
The specific behaviors are: activity level, regularity of sleeping and eating patterns, initial reaction, adaptability, intensity of emotion, mood, distractibility, persistence and attention span, and sensory sensitivity.
[23] Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig and Korn showed that easy babies readily adapt to new experiences, generally display positive moods and emotions and also have normal eating and sleeping patterns.
Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig and Korn found that these broad patterns of temperamental qualities are remarkably stable through childhood.
[24] Rothbart further defines temperament as individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation that manifest in the domains of emotion, activity and attention.
[30] Solomon Diamond described temperaments based upon characteristics found in the animal world: fearfulness, aggressiveness, affiliativeness, and impulsiveness.
[14] Several psychiatrists and differential psychologists have suggested that temperament and mental illness represent varying degrees along the same continuum of neurotransmitter imbalances in neurophysiological systems of behavioral regulation.
Most experts agree that temperament has a genetic and biological basis, although environmental factors and maturation modify the ways a child's personality is expressed.
[35] The term "goodness of fit" refers to the match or mismatch between temperament and other personal characteristics and the specific features of the environment.
By taking a closer look at the nine traits that Thomas and Chess revealed from their study, parents can gain a better understanding of their child's temperament and their own.
Parents can encourage new behaviors in their children, and with enough support a slow-to-warm-up child can become less shy, or a difficult baby can become easier to handle.
More recently infants and children with temperament issues have been called "spirited" to avoid negative connotations of "difficult" and "slow to warm up".
When a parent takes the time to identify and more importantly respond to the temperaments they are faced with in a positive way it will help them guide their child in trying to figure out the world.