Temperament

Definition and Basic Concepts

Mary Rothbart depicts temperament as having two major components: emotion reactivity and emotion regulation. Emotion reactivity involves individual differences in physiological and behavioral responses, such as exuberance when receiving a gift or fearfulness when meeting new people. Emotion regulation refers to higher-order attentional processes and cognitive control in response to emotion reactivity. Temperamental effortful [Page 1632]control, for example, is the ability to suppress a dominant response to perform a secondary response, such as counting to 10 when angry rather than striking another person. Temperament is rooted in the infant's neurophysiology and shaped by both genetic and environmental factors. With development, individuals gain more conscious control of their emotions and activity. By interacting with the environment over time, temperament evolves into a predictable pattern of behavior or personality style. Thus, temperament is conceptualized as constitutionally based individual differences in emotional and motor reactivity and self-regulation.

The study of temperament has a long history in the field of developmental psychology, and Rothbart's theory stems from the pioneering work of two psychiatrists, Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess. Based on parental descriptions of infant behavior and observations across a number of different contexts, Thomas and Chess identified nine dimensions to describe characteristic ways of responding emotionally and behaviorally to environmental events. These nine dimensions are activity level, rhythmicity or regularity of functioning, approach-withdrawal in novel situations, intensity of emotional expression, overall valence of mood, adaptability to changes in routine, persistence, distractibility or soothability, and threshold of sensory responsiveness.

Thomas and Chess formed three temperamental types from these dimensions: easy, slow-to-warm up, and difficult. Easy children are high in rhyth-micity (high regularity in sleep, eating, defecating), high in adaptability (accept change readily), and not overly active, intense, or moody. Slow-to-warm-up children have slower adaptability and higher negative responsivity. Difficult children are characterized by low rhythmicity (irregularity in biological functions), low adaptability, and high negative moodiness. Children classified as difficult are more likely to experience later behavioral problems than are easy or slow-to-warm-up children; however, the prediction depends on the goodness of fit with their environment. Goodness of fit refers to the match between the child's temperament and the demands of the situation or expectations of others. A good fit predicts healthy development, whereas a poor fit generates stress and leads to problem behaviors and disorders. For example, highly irritable children need predictable family routines to assist them in regulating these behaviors, whereas children low on irritability are less sensitive to unstructured environments.

Contemporary empirical studies have demonstrated that Thomas and Chess's nine dimensions of temperament are overlapping; thus, Rothbart's two components of temperament are more typically used in research today.

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