Temperament
Biologically based differences in reactivity and self-regulation visible from infancy: activity, emotional intensity, fearfulness, soothability, attention. The raw material personality grows from.
What drives it
Explains why siblings raised alike turn out differently and why the same parenting fits one child and not another. For identification in adults: some reactions are wiring rather than history or choice.
How it shows
Work
Fast or slow to warm up in a new team; high-intensity people whose irritation is loud and brief; low-threshold people worn down by noise and open-plan offices; effortful control showing in sustained, unhurried attention.
Relationships
Couples mismatched on activity or intensity: one wants to process loudly and at once, the other quietly and later. Parents struggling with a child whose temperament they don't share.
Self
Look at what has been true of you since childhood across every setting: how easily you startle, your energy level, how fast you recover.
What tells it apart
Attachment theory: Temperament shows with strangers, objects and noise; attachment shows in what someone does with a particular close person under stress.
Big Five (Five-Factor Model): Big Five traits describe adult personality that partly grows from temperament; temperament refers to the earlier, more biological base observed in infants.
A test
Ask how they were described as a small child and see whether the pattern holds across settings now.
Questions to carry
- As a small child, how was this person described, and where does that still show today?
- Which of my reactions has been with me for as long as anyone can remember?
How strong the research is
strong
Where it comes from
Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess, New York Longitudinal Study, from 1956; Mary Rothbart, 1981; Jerome Kagan, 1980s
Sources
- Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017)