Temperament

Temperament

Perhaps you have spent time with a number of infants. How were they alike? How did they differ? Or compare yourself with your siblings or other children you have known well. You may have noticed that some seemed to be in a better mood than others and that some were more sensitive to noise or more easily distracted than others. These differences may be attributed to temperament. Temperament is an inborn quality noticeable soon after birth. Temperament is not the same as personality but may contribute to personality differences.

Video 10.2 Temperament, Heredity, and Genes.

According to Chess and Thomas (1977), children vary on nine dimensions of temperament. These include activity level, regularity (or predictability), sensitivity thresholds, mood, persistence or distractibility, among others.

The New York Longitudinal Study was a long-term study of infants on these dimensions, which began in the 1950s. Most children do not have their temperament clinically measured, but categories of temperament have been developed and are seen as useful in understanding and working with children. Based on this study, babies can be described according to one of several profiles: easy  (40%), slow to warm up or cautious (15%), difficult (10%), and undifferentiated, or those who can’t easily be categorized (35%; Chess & Thomas, 1986).

Easy babies have a positive disposition. Their body functions operate regularly and they are adaptable. They are generally positive, showing curiosity about new situations and their emotions are moderate or low in intensity. Difficult babies have more negative moods and are slow to adapt to new situations. When confronted with a new situation, they tend to demonstrate intense negative reactions and withdraw. Slow-to-warm babies are inactive, showing relatively calm reactions to their environment. Their moods are generally negative, and they withdraw from new situations, adapting slowly. The undifferentiated could not be consistently categorized. These children show a variety of combinations of characteristics. For example, an infant may have an overall positive mood but react negatively to new situations.

Mary Rothbart (1981) used the initial theory of temperament to develop a scale to report temperament. She suggests that there are two core components, or underlying mechanisms, of our temperament that are important parts of our adult personality—reactivity and self-regulation (Rothbart et al., 2000). Reactivity refers to how we respond to new or challenging environmental stimuli; self-regulation refers to our ability to control that response (Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981; Rothbart et al., 2011). These core components are used to organize three temperament traits with a strong biological basis: surgency, negative affectivity, and effortful control. Also called extraversion, surgency is a trait characterized by high levels of physical activity, sociability, and spontaneity. In contrast, negative affectivity is a tendency to experience and express distress, discomfort, and avoidance behavior and is associated with lower emotion regulation. Finally, effortful control includes traits related to impulse control and inhibition, including the ability to maintain attention and control responses to experiences. According to Rothbart (2007), these traits exist in different combinations. For instance, surgency corresponds to both activity and sociability, and effortful control corresponds to both distractibility and persistence. For instance, an infant who is high in both surgency and negative affectivity would be prone to anger, but an infant low in surgency but high in effortful control may enjoy quiet enduring tasks such as puzzles and cognitive toys (Shiner et al., 2012).

No single type of temperament is invariably good or bad, however, infants with difficult temperaments are more likely than other babies to develop emotional problems, especially if their mothers were depressed or anxious caregivers (Garthus-Niegel et al., 2017). Children’s long-term adjustment actually depends on the goodness-of-fit of their particular temperament to the nature and demands of the environment in which they find themselves. Therefore, what appears to be more important than child temperament is how caregivers respond to it.

Think about how you might approach each type of child in order to improve your interactions with them. An easy or flexible child will not need much extra attention unless you want to find out whether they are having difficulties that have gone unmentioned. A slow-to-warm-up child may need to be given advance warning if new people or situations are going to be introduced. A difficult child may become easily flustered by changes to their routine. A caregiver who is able to accurately read and work well with the child will achieve goodness-of-fit, meaning their styles match, and communication and interaction can flow. The temperamentally active children can do well with parents who support their curiosity but could have problems in a more rigid family.

It is this goodness-of-fit between child temperament and parental demands and expectations that can cause struggles. Rather than believing that discipline alone will bring about improvements in children’s behavior, our knowledge of temperament may help a parent, teacher, or other caregiver gain insight to work more effectively with a child. Viewing temperamental differences as varying styles that can be responded to accordingly, as opposed to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behavior. For example, a child who is persistent may be difficult to distract from forbidden things such as electrical cords, but this persistence may serve them well in other areas such as problem-solving.  Positive traits can be enhanced and negative traits can be subdued. The child’s style of reaction, however, is unlikely to change. Temperament doesn’t change dramatically as we grow up, but we may learn how to work around and manage our temperamental qualities. Temperament may be one of the things about us that stays the same throughout development.