Question

Define temperament and gives examples of temperament in infants. How similar or different in temperament would identical twins be compared to fraternal twins. How do you explain these differences or similarity? Does this make you think people are born ‘blank slates’ or are ‘products of their environment’?

Answer 1

Temperament: The hereditary aspects of personality, including sensitivity, activity levels, prevailing mood, irritability, and adaptability. Personality is also distinct from temperament, the “raw material” from which personalities are formed. Even newborn babies differ in temperament, which implies that it is hereditary. Temperament has a large impact on how infants interact with their parents.

Temperament refers to early observable, steady differences between individuals in terms of self-regulation and reactivity. Temperament lays the foundation of adult personality. Research suggests that temperament raises a child’s probability of facing psychological problems or, contrarily, may also serve as a protective buffer against the negative effects of stressful home life on the child; however, parenting practices can influence children’s temperaments significantly. For example, some children cry easily and intensely whereas others are more easy going; some are highly active and always on the go where others are more sedentary; some attend and persist in tasks for long periods of time where others’ attention wanders quickly.

Dimensions of Temperament: On the basis of temperament, children have been broadly classified into three types by Thomas and Chess;

• The Easy Child is one who readily forms consistent routines during infancy, is usually joyful, and adjusts to novel experiences with ease.
• The Difficult Child has inconsistent daily routines, is less accepting of new experiences, and more likely to respond in an intensely negative way.
• The Slow-to-warm-up Child is usually inactive; tends to show meek, less in intensity responses to stimuli in the environment; has negative mood; and slow to adjust to novel experiences.
• Some children do not fit into any of the above three classification rather they present unique blends of temperamental characteristics.

Research has shown that the difficult children are more likely to experience trouble in adjustment- they may withdraw due to anxiety and/or show aggressive behavior in early and middle childhood. While, slow-to-warm-up children tend to experience lesser problems in early childhood. However, they are at higher risk for unwarranted apprehension and time-consuming, restricted behavior in situations that require them to participate actively and quickly, like in peer group and classroom settings in the late preschool and school years.

Temperament can also be classified on the basis of discrepancy between a sociable, extraverted, bold child and a shy, subdued, timid child (Asendorph, 2008). According to Jerome Kagan, shyness in presence of an unfamiliar person (peers or adults) can be taken as an indicator of the general category of temperament known as inhibition to the unfamiliar. Around 7 to 9 months of age onwards, such children respond to various facets of unfamiliarity with avoidance, anguish, or restrained affect initially. Kagan reports that inhibition shows significant consistency in the early years of life, beginning with infancy to early childhood.

The earliest effort to explain human behaviour involved the use of personality typologies, which classified behaviour into discrete, all-or-nothing categories. For example, Hippocrates a Greek Physician (and later on Galen, too) classified individuals into four exclusive types according to four basic internal fluids or humors, each associated with a particular temperament. These four basic fluids were : blood, phelgm, black bile and yellow bile. The dominance of any one fluid led to a particular personality temperament. For example, dominance of blood produced Sanguine temperament (cheerful and active), dominance of phelgm produced Phlegmatic temperament (apathetic and sluggish), the dominance of black bile produced Melancholic temperament (sad and brooding) and dominance of yellow bile produced Choleric temperament (irritable and exitable). This is known as four-humor theory and remained popular for centuries although today it is regarded as a baseless theory because it has been established now that personality and moods are not driven by bodily fluids.

Another interesting typologies were that of William Sheldon, a U.S.A. Physician. He tried to relate physique to temperament. On the basis of somatotype (body build), he assigned each individual to one of the three categories , viz., (i) ectomorphic (thin, long and fragile), (ii) endomorphic (fat, soft and round) and (iii) mesomorphic (muscular, strong and rectangular). According to Sheldon, ectomorphs are artistic, brainy and introverted, endomorphs are relaxed, fond of eating, sleeping and sociable whereas mesomorphs are affective, dominant, filled with energy and courage.

Temperament in the Indian Tradition: Trigunas

The concepts of ‘tridosha’ and ‘triguna’ are central to Ayurvedic practice. These physical and psychological predispositions are present at birth and even beyond it. The tridosha consist of vata, pitta, and kapha and are physical predispositions. Of the trigunas, rajas and tamas are the psychological traits that contribute to physical ill health, while sattva is a predisposition to wellbeing. An individual is seen as a product of inheritance of various components of the gunas and doshas. These are the endogamous factors, but they interact with the various physical and psychological factors in the environment.

Twin and adoption studies suggest that individual differences in infant and child temperament are genetically influenced. Studies of temperament in twins have found that identical twins are more alike in temperament than are fraternal twins. Genetic aspects of temperamental differences were studied in 43 pairs of twins seen at the ages of 2 months, 9 months, 6 years, and 15 years. Identical twin pairs showed closer similarity than non-identical twin pairs at later ages, and reasons for this are suggested. The variables of Activity and Approach showed the most genetic influence and were most stable over time.

The discoveries suggesting genetic components to temperament started with that workhorse of the human behavioral lab-twin studies, monozygotes versus dizygotes versus siblings versus strangers. Clear findings emerged. Using infant temperamental inventories, the degree of resemblance (correlation) for identical twins was shown to be about 0.4. For fraternal twins and non-twin siblings, the resemblance score was between 0.15 and 0.18. In these studies, about 60% of kids who seemed very inhibited as youngsters grew up to be inhibited as adults. They were prone to the same strong fears and phobias shown previously and were the most anxious in the group. Ninety percent of the uninhibited group stayed uninhibited as a group when adults.

A 0.4 resemblance score is enough to start thinking about DNA. These findings suggest the heritability of some personality traits such as temperament. Research suggests that many of our personality characteristics have a genetic component. People are not entirely the product of the environment. Each personality, then, is a unique blend of heredity and environment, biology and culture. We are not — thank goodness — genetically programmed robots whose behavior and personality traits are “wired in” for life. Where you go in life is the result of the choices you make. Although these choices are influenced by inherited tendencies, they are not merely a product of your genes.