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Contents
- Abstract
- Definitions
- Temperament in Infancy
- Parent Reports of Infant Temperament
- Home Observations of Infant Temperament
- Laboratory Assessment of Infant Temperament
- Temperament in Preschool and Middle Childhood
- Longitudinal Stability and Predictions
- Psychobiological Models
- Approach/Positive Affect (Extraversion)
- Fear/Behavioral Inhibition
- Irritability/Anger
- Orienting
- Effortful Control
- Understanding Brain Functions Serves to Constrain Psychological Models
- Behavioral Findings
- Approach/Positive Affect (Extraversion)
- Fear
- Irritability/Anger
- Duration of Orienting
- Effortful Control
- Temperament and Social Development
- Temperament and the Social Environment
- Cross-Cultural Research
- Temperament in Adulthood
- Summary
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Abstract
This article reviews how a temperament approach emphasizing biological and developmental processes can integrate constructs from subdisciplines of psychology to further the study of personality. Basic measurement strategies and findings in the investigation of temperament in infancy and childhood are reviewed. These include linkage of temperament dimensions with basic affective–motivational and attentional systems, including positive affect/approach, fear, frustration/anger, and effortful control. Contributions of biological models that may support these processes are then reviewed. Research indicating how a temperament approach can lead researchers of social and personality development to investigate important person–environment interactions is also discussed. Lastly, adult research suggesting links between temperament dispositions and the Big Five personality factors is described.
Temperament arises from our genetic endowment. It influences and is influenced by the experience of each individual, and one of its outcomes is the adult personality. An important goal of our research has been to specify processes at the levels of biology and social development that may link a child's early endowment to its later expression as an adult. In this article, we suggest that understanding temperament is central to understanding personality. Individual differences in temperament have implications for development in infancy and childhood, and they form the core of personality as it develops. Temperament also provides process-oriented models that are often lacking in trait theories of personality, by establishing links between individual differences in behavior and their psychological and biological substrates. Temperament also can be used to relate human individual differences, through evolutionary models, to individual differences in nonhuman animals.
The purpose of this article is to review our approach to temperament research, indicating ways in which thinking about temperament can illuminate the understanding of individual differences. Many of the guiding principles of this...