Eccentricity and Temperament

Temperament

Temperament refers to basic dimensions of personality rooted in biology, rather than culture or upbringing. Though shaped by experience and maturation, temperament is considered relatively stable throughout an individual's development and across situational contexts.

Temperament has been extensively studied for more than 50 years. The best-known and most [Page 279]influential study was the New York Longitudinal Study of Child Temperament conducted by psychologists Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas. Chess and Thomas collected data from 138 children, following them from infancy to middle childhood. Chess and Thomas identified 11 aspects of behavioral style: activity level, self-control, concentration, intensity, regularity, persistence, sensory threshold, adaptability, regularity, initial response, and predominant mood. Cluster analysis indicated three fundamental types, evident in about two-thirds of the sample: easy children, difficult children, and slow-to-warm-up children. No correlation was made with intelligence or creativity, nor were temperamental extremes connected to mental health diagnoses.

Using Chess and Thomas's model, William Carey, director of behavioral pediatrics at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, developed a series of questionnaires (later renamed TemperaMetrics) designed to assess children as young as one month. Mary Rothbart, a developmental psychologist at the University of Oregon, defining temperament as “constitutionally based individual differences in reactivity and regulation,” also developed a series of age-based questionnaires to assess activity level, soothability, impulsivity, intensity of pleasure, inhibitory control, perceptual sensitivity, anger and frustration, fear, and sadness.

Other researchers focused on the hereditary aspect of temperament. Robert Plomin and David Rowe studied 91 pairs of twins, identifying five dimensions of temperament—sociability, emotionality, activity, attention span-persistence, and soothability—which they believed were determined by genetics. Plomin and Arnold Buss then developed the EAS theory of temperament, EAS standing for core traits of emotionality, activity, and sociability. Others have posited heritable features of novelty seeking/risk taking, harm avoidance/timidity, and reward dependence.

There have also been attempts to understand the neurobiology of temperament using EEG probes, PET scans, and fMRIs. A National Institute of Mental Health study, The Psychobiology of Childhood Temperament, is using fMRI technology to see if differences in temperament, related to differences in brain functioning, put some children at risk of psychiatric disorders.

Temperament is currently an active area of research with applicability to a number of issues including behavior problems, school achievement, psychopathology, stress, and resilience. Although the importance of temperament is well established, important questions remain about its exact components, how they interact, how to measure them, and how they are affected by context, maturation, and experience.

Temperament and Giftedness

Kazimierz Dabrowski, a Polish psychologist, developed a theory he believed could explain the intensity, sensitivity, and unusual behavior (i.e., eccentricity) of gifted individuals. He posited five overexcitabilities or heightened responsiveness to specific stimuli: psychomotor, sensual, emotional, imaginational, and intellectual. Although Dabrowski did not use the word temperament, these overexcitabilities resemble “high end” versions of temperamental traits of activity/arousal, response threshold, intensity, and emotionality.

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