Psychology Facts

▼ Temperament ▼

》 Temperament, in psychology, an aspect of personality concerned with emotional dispositions and reactions and their speed and intensity; the term often is used to refer to the prevailing mood or mood pattern of a person.

》 A person's temperament is formed as an infant and never changes. It simply develops over time. Studies have shown that temperament remains constant and serves as a means to help you determine how you will react to situations. It's a way to recognize consistent personality traits.

》 Temperament traits (such as Neuroticism, Sociability, Impulsivity, etc.) are distinct patterns in behavior throughout a lifetime, but they are most noticeable and most studied in children.

》 Examples for temperament are introversion and extroversion. Many psychologists believe that the traits called temperament are innate, and that they are not learned.

》 Temperament also seems to be independent of the mood of the person or animal.

》 Galen of Pergamon was among the first people to describe different temperaments, or humors, as they were called at the time. Galen identified four types:

Phlegmatic

Choleric

Melancholic

Sanguine

》 the original four types of temperament (choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine) suggested by Hippocrates and Galen resemble mild forms of types of psychiatric disorders described in modern classifications.

》 The term "goodness of fit" refers to the match or mismatch between temperament and other personal characteristics and the specific features of the environment. Differences of temperament or behavior styles between individuals are important in family life. They affect the interactions among family members.

》 The temperament mix between parents and children also affects family life. For example, a slow-paced parent may be irritated by a highly active child; or if both parent and child are highly active and intense, conflict could result. This knowledge can help parents figure out how temperaments affect family relationships.
What may appear to be a behavioral problem may actually be a mismatch between the parent's temperament and their child's.

》 At the present time the model is associated with the Structure of Temperament Questionnaire and has 12 scales:

Endurance-related scales

Motor-physical Endurance: the ability of an individual to sustain prolonged physical activity using well-defined behavioral elements

Social-verbal Endurance (sociability): the ability of an individual to sustain prolonged social-verbal activities using well-defined behavioral elements.

Mental Endurance, or Attention: the ability to stay focused on selected features of objects with suppression of behavioral reactivity to other features.

Scales related to speed of integration of behavior
Motor-physical Tempo: speed of integration of an action in physical manipulations with objects with well-defined scripts of actions

Plasticity: the ability to adapt quickly to changes in situations, to change the program of action, and to shift between different tasks

Social-verbal Tempo: the preferred speed of speech and ability to understand fast speech on well-known topics, reading and sorting of known verbal material