Klinische Psychologie 1A PB3002
Temperament and Personality” uit The Oxford Handbook of Treatment
Processes and Outcomes in Psychology
Temperament and Personality Maria A. Gartstein, Samuel P.
Putnam, Elaine N. Aron, and Mary K. Rothbart The Oxford
Handbook of Treatment Processes and Outcomes in Psychology
Edited by Sara Maltzman
Abstract and Keywords This chapter provides an overview of theory and
research addressing temperament and personality, particularly as these
are relevant to clinical applications. Our review begins with a brief history
of influential frameworks and foundational constructs, including aspects
they share in common and others engendering disagreement.
Measurement approaches, development of temperament/personality, the
biological underpinnings, and studies addressing cross-cultural and gender
differences, are also noted in this review. The chapter concludes with
problems in adaptation associated with temperament, focusing on
ameliorating those difficulties through clinical applications of temperament
and personality constructs with children and adults. Importantly, a
developmental, empirically focused perspective informed this chapter, and
as a result, this work includes references to developmental periods from
early childhood to adulthood, emphasizing approaches that have received
empirical support. Keywords: temperament, personality, clinical
applications, developmental, cross-cultural, gender differences
Introduction The concept of temperament has grown in prominence with
the recognition of its importance for multiple processes and outcomes
throughout the life span, incorporating many areas of functioning (e.g.,
relationships, socialemotional adjustment, physical health). This
recognition, in turn, is in large part a reflection of theoretical and empirical
research efforts providing consistent evidence of the important roles
played throughout life by temperament attributes (Zentner & Shiner,
2012). Although multiple definitions of temperament have been proposed,
these share a common foundation of outlining a set of early-appearing and
biologically influenced individual differences that form a core of the
emerging personality and enhance understanding of both socialemotional
development and adult functioning. Although temperament influences the
development of personality (Rothbart, 2011), and temperament constructs
overlap both conceptually and empirically with constructs of personality
(De Pauw, Mervielde, & Van Leeuwen, 2009; Evans & Rothbart, 2007;
Mervielde & De Pauw, 2012), these domains can be conceptually
differentiated. Specifically, personality is a more inclusive, broader
construct (encompassing attitudes and self-concept, among other
attributes and characteristics), whereas temperament represents a subset
1
,of biologically based personality dimensions that can be measured in the
first few years of life, with some traits apparent at birth—and some would
argue prenatally—as well as being observed in non-human species
(DiPietro, Hodgson, Costigan, & Johnson, 1996; Panksepp & Burgdorf,
2003; Snidman, Kagan, Riordan, & Shannon, 1995). In this chapter we
provide a brief account of how the understanding of temperament has
developed historically, including descriptions of influential frameworks and
foundational constructs. We then describe measurementapproaches
related to construct validity and reliability, before focusing on the
development of temperament/personality, its biological underpinnings,
and studies addressing cross-cultural and gender differences. Finally, this
chapter describes problems in adaptation associated with temperament
and ways to address these difficulties through clinical applications of
temperament and personality constructs with children and adults. These
applications vary considerably at different developmental stages,
reflecting the different tasks or milestones individuals are expected to
achieve at specific times. Brief History of Temperament and Conceptual
Definitions The study of temperament traits has a long history, with only
relatively recent attention devoted to the development of these attributes.
Earlier and more contemporary models of temperament have framed it in
different ways, some in terms of types, others using continuous
dimensions to capture the nature of these individual differences. Various
temperament models, theories, and systems attempt to build on earlier
ones, offering some improvements, and the resulting frameworks are not
mutually exclusive. Rather, these successive systems function like lenses
through which a researcher or a clinician could view an individual,
choosing the lens that appears to be most appropriate given individual
and contextual considerations. Individual differences in temperament were
initially described in the fourfold typology of the Greco-Roman physician,
Vindician, which persisted throughout the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. That framework described different types of temperament as
being linked with various fluids within the body: Melancholic-sadness
(black bile), Choleric-anger (yellow bile), Sanguine-positive affect (blood),
and Phlegmatic-slow to warm-up (phlegm). All individuals were viewed as
demonstrating a propensity for one of these four temperament types, and
all differed in the strength and balance of the four components of
temperamentIn the early twentieth century, major schools in Europe
contributed to temperament research. In the United Kingdom, studies of
individual differences in temperament and personality were carried out
using adults’ selfreports, which yielded several factors, or broad
dimensions, including introversion-extraversion (a more reserved style,
marked preference for solitary activities on one end of the continuum, and
energetic and outgoing behavior on the other end), and emotional
2
,stability-instability, later labeled “neuroticism,” wherein individuals low on
neuroticism are emotionally stable, in part as a result of being less
reactive to stress (Eysenck, 1947). Jeffrey Gray revised this model,
proposing individual differences in behavioral activation (produced in
response to opportunities for reward) and inhibition (resulting from
punishment-related cues), as well as in tendencies to exhibit fight/flight, a
physiological reaction in response to a perceived threat to survival.
Arguably, in making this revision Gray was influenced by the Russian
school of temperament research, led by Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov was strongly
interested in the individual differences he observed among animals used in
his studies of learning, and proposed the existence of excitatory and
inhibitory brain processes to account for his observations, also referring to
his dogs in temperament terms such as “quick to anger” and “hard to
frighten” (Gray, 1980, p. 106). Referring to Pavlov’s model, Jan Strelau
(1983) wrote that temperament results from a biological evolution peculiar
to both humans and animals. The usefulness of considering connections
across species in the origins of individual differences is evident in a recent
collection of papers on the emergence of personality in animals (Trillmich
& Hudson, 2011). Additionally, evidence of analogous traits in primates
and other social animals has been suggested as a criterion for
temperament (Buss & Plomin, 1984; Zentner & Bates, 2008). Personality
research with adults has focused in large part on the five factors model,
often referred to as the Big Five: Openness, Conscientiousness,
Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (Digman, 1990; Goldberg,
1993). Perhaps the single most influential investigation of children’s
temperament, the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS), was initiated in the
1950s by Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (e.g., 1977; Thomas, Chess,
Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963). Thomas and Chess referred to temperament
as the “how” of behavior, describing the style or manner with which a
particular action is performed more so than “what” behaviors were
demonstrated, and identified nine dimensions of temperament: 1. Activity:
The level, tempo, and frequency of motor activity. 2. Approach/withdrawal:
The child’s first response, positive or negative, to unfamiliar persons,
objects, situations. 3. Threshold: The intensity of stimulation required for a
child to respond. 4. Mood: The amount of pleasant, joyful, friendly
behavior, as contrasted with unpleasant, crying, unfriendly behavior. 5.
Intensity: The energy level of the child’s reaction, irrespective of the type
of stimulation or reaction. 6. Rhythmicity: The regularity and predictability
of sleep, hunger/feeding, and elimination. 7. Adaptability: The ease of
modifying the response to new or altered situations in a manner desired by
the caregiver. 8. Distractibility: The interference with or changes in
direction of the child’s behavior with respect to external stimuli. 9.
Attention span/persistence: The duration of the child’s activities and their
3
, continuation, even when the child becomes frustrated. These researchers
also described “difficult temperament” as including low rhythmicity, high
withdrawal, slow adaptation, high frequency of negative mood, and
intense reactions. The “easy temperament” category, on the other hand,
was described as including regular eating, sleeping, elimination cycles, a
positive approach response to new situations, along with frustration
tolerance; whereas “slow-to-warm-up children” were characterized as
showing negative responses when exposed to new situations, but were
able to slowly accept these situations with repeated exposure. Thomas
and Chess also introduced the concept of “goodness-of-fit” to characterize
the degree of match between the child’s characteristics and the parent’s
demands or expectations. The basic thesis is that a good match between a
child’s temperament and his or her environment (parenting in particular)
leads to more positive adjustment, whereas a poor fit between child
characteristics and the demands of his or her surroundings leads to
problematic outcomes. These ideas paved the way for a variety of
theoretical models and empirical investigations addressing early-
appearing individual differences. Buss and Plomin (1975; 1984) applied
five criteria as defining properties of temperamental traits: (a) existence of
the trait in animals, (b) adaptive function, (c) heritability, (d) early
appearance and stability, and (e) little change evidenced over time. These
restrictive criteria discount a number of traits that change substantially in
form throughout development, and Buss and Plomin contended that only
emotionality, activity, and sociability qualified as the three key dimensions
of temperament. While heritability plays a key role in their
conceptualization of temperament, Buss and Plomin noted that
environmental forces could act on the individual to promote change.
Goldsmith and Campos (1982) proposed an alternative definition, arguing
that the basic emotions (i.e., anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, interest,
and surprise) represent the core of temperament. They described
individual differences in temperament as the likelihood of experiencing
and expressing the primary emotions, and the frequency and intensity of
emotional reactions. Goldsmith and Campos noted the importance of both
the expressive and receptive aspects of individual differences in social
interactions; that is, in children’s ability to express emotions and to
recognize, decode, and understand the emotional expressions of others.
Rothbart and Derryberry (1979, 1981) proposed a psychobiological model
of temperament. These investigators defined temperament as
constitutionally based individual differences in emotional, motor, and
attentional reactivity, and in self-regulation, demonstrating consistency
across situations and relative stability over time. The term “constitutional”
emphasizes the connection between temperament and biology. Over the
long history of study, individual differences in temperament have been
4
Temperament and Personality” uit The Oxford Handbook of Treatment
Processes and Outcomes in Psychology
Temperament and Personality Maria A. Gartstein, Samuel P.
Putnam, Elaine N. Aron, and Mary K. Rothbart The Oxford
Handbook of Treatment Processes and Outcomes in Psychology
Edited by Sara Maltzman
Abstract and Keywords This chapter provides an overview of theory and
research addressing temperament and personality, particularly as these
are relevant to clinical applications. Our review begins with a brief history
of influential frameworks and foundational constructs, including aspects
they share in common and others engendering disagreement.
Measurement approaches, development of temperament/personality, the
biological underpinnings, and studies addressing cross-cultural and gender
differences, are also noted in this review. The chapter concludes with
problems in adaptation associated with temperament, focusing on
ameliorating those difficulties through clinical applications of temperament
and personality constructs with children and adults. Importantly, a
developmental, empirically focused perspective informed this chapter, and
as a result, this work includes references to developmental periods from
early childhood to adulthood, emphasizing approaches that have received
empirical support. Keywords: temperament, personality, clinical
applications, developmental, cross-cultural, gender differences
Introduction The concept of temperament has grown in prominence with
the recognition of its importance for multiple processes and outcomes
throughout the life span, incorporating many areas of functioning (e.g.,
relationships, socialemotional adjustment, physical health). This
recognition, in turn, is in large part a reflection of theoretical and empirical
research efforts providing consistent evidence of the important roles
played throughout life by temperament attributes (Zentner & Shiner,
2012). Although multiple definitions of temperament have been proposed,
these share a common foundation of outlining a set of early-appearing and
biologically influenced individual differences that form a core of the
emerging personality and enhance understanding of both socialemotional
development and adult functioning. Although temperament influences the
development of personality (Rothbart, 2011), and temperament constructs
overlap both conceptually and empirically with constructs of personality
(De Pauw, Mervielde, & Van Leeuwen, 2009; Evans & Rothbart, 2007;
Mervielde & De Pauw, 2012), these domains can be conceptually
differentiated. Specifically, personality is a more inclusive, broader
construct (encompassing attitudes and self-concept, among other
attributes and characteristics), whereas temperament represents a subset
1
,of biologically based personality dimensions that can be measured in the
first few years of life, with some traits apparent at birth—and some would
argue prenatally—as well as being observed in non-human species
(DiPietro, Hodgson, Costigan, & Johnson, 1996; Panksepp & Burgdorf,
2003; Snidman, Kagan, Riordan, & Shannon, 1995). In this chapter we
provide a brief account of how the understanding of temperament has
developed historically, including descriptions of influential frameworks and
foundational constructs. We then describe measurementapproaches
related to construct validity and reliability, before focusing on the
development of temperament/personality, its biological underpinnings,
and studies addressing cross-cultural and gender differences. Finally, this
chapter describes problems in adaptation associated with temperament
and ways to address these difficulties through clinical applications of
temperament and personality constructs with children and adults. These
applications vary considerably at different developmental stages,
reflecting the different tasks or milestones individuals are expected to
achieve at specific times. Brief History of Temperament and Conceptual
Definitions The study of temperament traits has a long history, with only
relatively recent attention devoted to the development of these attributes.
Earlier and more contemporary models of temperament have framed it in
different ways, some in terms of types, others using continuous
dimensions to capture the nature of these individual differences. Various
temperament models, theories, and systems attempt to build on earlier
ones, offering some improvements, and the resulting frameworks are not
mutually exclusive. Rather, these successive systems function like lenses
through which a researcher or a clinician could view an individual,
choosing the lens that appears to be most appropriate given individual
and contextual considerations. Individual differences in temperament were
initially described in the fourfold typology of the Greco-Roman physician,
Vindician, which persisted throughout the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. That framework described different types of temperament as
being linked with various fluids within the body: Melancholic-sadness
(black bile), Choleric-anger (yellow bile), Sanguine-positive affect (blood),
and Phlegmatic-slow to warm-up (phlegm). All individuals were viewed as
demonstrating a propensity for one of these four temperament types, and
all differed in the strength and balance of the four components of
temperamentIn the early twentieth century, major schools in Europe
contributed to temperament research. In the United Kingdom, studies of
individual differences in temperament and personality were carried out
using adults’ selfreports, which yielded several factors, or broad
dimensions, including introversion-extraversion (a more reserved style,
marked preference for solitary activities on one end of the continuum, and
energetic and outgoing behavior on the other end), and emotional
2
,stability-instability, later labeled “neuroticism,” wherein individuals low on
neuroticism are emotionally stable, in part as a result of being less
reactive to stress (Eysenck, 1947). Jeffrey Gray revised this model,
proposing individual differences in behavioral activation (produced in
response to opportunities for reward) and inhibition (resulting from
punishment-related cues), as well as in tendencies to exhibit fight/flight, a
physiological reaction in response to a perceived threat to survival.
Arguably, in making this revision Gray was influenced by the Russian
school of temperament research, led by Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov was strongly
interested in the individual differences he observed among animals used in
his studies of learning, and proposed the existence of excitatory and
inhibitory brain processes to account for his observations, also referring to
his dogs in temperament terms such as “quick to anger” and “hard to
frighten” (Gray, 1980, p. 106). Referring to Pavlov’s model, Jan Strelau
(1983) wrote that temperament results from a biological evolution peculiar
to both humans and animals. The usefulness of considering connections
across species in the origins of individual differences is evident in a recent
collection of papers on the emergence of personality in animals (Trillmich
& Hudson, 2011). Additionally, evidence of analogous traits in primates
and other social animals has been suggested as a criterion for
temperament (Buss & Plomin, 1984; Zentner & Bates, 2008). Personality
research with adults has focused in large part on the five factors model,
often referred to as the Big Five: Openness, Conscientiousness,
Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (Digman, 1990; Goldberg,
1993). Perhaps the single most influential investigation of children’s
temperament, the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS), was initiated in the
1950s by Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (e.g., 1977; Thomas, Chess,
Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963). Thomas and Chess referred to temperament
as the “how” of behavior, describing the style or manner with which a
particular action is performed more so than “what” behaviors were
demonstrated, and identified nine dimensions of temperament: 1. Activity:
The level, tempo, and frequency of motor activity. 2. Approach/withdrawal:
The child’s first response, positive or negative, to unfamiliar persons,
objects, situations. 3. Threshold: The intensity of stimulation required for a
child to respond. 4. Mood: The amount of pleasant, joyful, friendly
behavior, as contrasted with unpleasant, crying, unfriendly behavior. 5.
Intensity: The energy level of the child’s reaction, irrespective of the type
of stimulation or reaction. 6. Rhythmicity: The regularity and predictability
of sleep, hunger/feeding, and elimination. 7. Adaptability: The ease of
modifying the response to new or altered situations in a manner desired by
the caregiver. 8. Distractibility: The interference with or changes in
direction of the child’s behavior with respect to external stimuli. 9.
Attention span/persistence: The duration of the child’s activities and their
3
, continuation, even when the child becomes frustrated. These researchers
also described “difficult temperament” as including low rhythmicity, high
withdrawal, slow adaptation, high frequency of negative mood, and
intense reactions. The “easy temperament” category, on the other hand,
was described as including regular eating, sleeping, elimination cycles, a
positive approach response to new situations, along with frustration
tolerance; whereas “slow-to-warm-up children” were characterized as
showing negative responses when exposed to new situations, but were
able to slowly accept these situations with repeated exposure. Thomas
and Chess also introduced the concept of “goodness-of-fit” to characterize
the degree of match between the child’s characteristics and the parent’s
demands or expectations. The basic thesis is that a good match between a
child’s temperament and his or her environment (parenting in particular)
leads to more positive adjustment, whereas a poor fit between child
characteristics and the demands of his or her surroundings leads to
problematic outcomes. These ideas paved the way for a variety of
theoretical models and empirical investigations addressing early-
appearing individual differences. Buss and Plomin (1975; 1984) applied
five criteria as defining properties of temperamental traits: (a) existence of
the trait in animals, (b) adaptive function, (c) heritability, (d) early
appearance and stability, and (e) little change evidenced over time. These
restrictive criteria discount a number of traits that change substantially in
form throughout development, and Buss and Plomin contended that only
emotionality, activity, and sociability qualified as the three key dimensions
of temperament. While heritability plays a key role in their
conceptualization of temperament, Buss and Plomin noted that
environmental forces could act on the individual to promote change.
Goldsmith and Campos (1982) proposed an alternative definition, arguing
that the basic emotions (i.e., anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, interest,
and surprise) represent the core of temperament. They described
individual differences in temperament as the likelihood of experiencing
and expressing the primary emotions, and the frequency and intensity of
emotional reactions. Goldsmith and Campos noted the importance of both
the expressive and receptive aspects of individual differences in social
interactions; that is, in children’s ability to express emotions and to
recognize, decode, and understand the emotional expressions of others.
Rothbart and Derryberry (1979, 1981) proposed a psychobiological model
of temperament. These investigators defined temperament as
constitutionally based individual differences in emotional, motor, and
attentional reactivity, and in self-regulation, demonstrating consistency
across situations and relative stability over time. The term “constitutional”
emphasizes the connection between temperament and biology. Over the
long history of study, individual differences in temperament have been
4
