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Concept
Temperament
Summary
In psychology, temperament broadly refers to consistent individual differences in behavior that are biologically based and are relatively independent of learning, system of values and attitudes.
Some researchers point to association of temperament with formal dynamical features of behavior, such as energetic aspects, plasticity, sensitivity to specific reinforcers and emotionality. Temperament traits (such as neuroticism, sociability, impulsivity, etc.) are distinct patterns in behavior throughout a lifetime, but they are most noticeable and most studied in children. Babies are typically described by temperament, but longitudinal research in the 1920s began to establish temperament as something which is stable across the lifespan.
Temperament has been defined as "the constellation of inborn traits that determine a child's unique behavioral style and the way he or she experiences and reacts to the world."
Many classification schemes for temperament have been developed, and there is no consensus. The Latin word temperamentum means 'mixture'.
Some commentators see temperament as one factor underlying personality.
Historically, in the second century AD, the physician Galen described four classical temperaments (melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine and choleric), corresponding to the four humors or bodily fluids. This historical concept was explored by philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and psycho-physiologists from very early times of psychological science, with theories proposed by Immanuel Kant, Hermann Lotze, Ivan Pavlov, Carl Jung, Gerardus Heymans among others. In more recent history, Rudolf Steiner had emphasized the importance of the four classical temperaments in elementary education, the time when he believed the influence of temperament on the personality to be at its strongest. Neither Galen nor Steiner are generally applied to the contemporary study of temperament in the approaches of modern medicine or contemporary psychology.
Official source
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