Temperament

Temperament is the view of a person and how they interact with their environment. In class we talked about the way temperament affects the effectiveness in social settings, and in self control. Temperament is affected by both the life experience, and genetic backgrounds, and can be observed as early as infancy, but can change over time. Essentially, temperament controls how the environment a person is in can affect them and their behavior. The factors taken into account when evaluating temperament are:

–Rhythmicity of biological functions
–Activity level
–Approach or withdrawal from new stimuli
–Adaptability (regulatory)
–Sensory threshold
–Predominant quality of mood
–Intensity of mood expression
–Distractibility (regulatory) Persistence/attention span (regulatory

These factors affect the ability of a person to self regulate their behaviors, such as inhibiting a natural response in order to use a more socially acceptable behavior. An example is the urge to shout an answer in the classroom being inhibited and raising a hand to answer instead. While shouting answers may produce the same effect as raising the hand to answer, shouting produces a sense in the classroom that the child has no control over their self and will cause disorder in the case that everyone else will just start shouting answers too.

The factors above also affect positive and negative reactivity, essentially the expression and development of emotions. Positive reactivity involves positive emotions such as happiness, while negative reactivity involves sadness or anger.

While temperament affects the individual's experience of the environment, the individual is also able to influence the environment based on this, whether it is a change to an aspect of the environment, or changing the environment entirely by moving to a new niche. While the environments of many people are the same, temperament determines how the individual experiences each environment and how they feel about it, explaining why some people are entirely dissatisfied with their lives, while others in the same situation are completely happy.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to let me know what you think about temperament!