Temperament

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Temperament

Temperament is defined as biologically based individual differences in emotional and motor reactivity, attention, and self-regulation (Rothbart and Bates 1998). Temperament is an aspect of personality that is seen in human infants and in other animals; it constitutes the core of the developing personality. Temperamental characteristics are dispositions or capacities; temperament is not seen continually, but only in situations that bring out the reaction or the capacity. There has been increasing interest in the possibility that biologically based temperament will affect children's social experiences and personality development. Taking temperament into account emphasizes what the child brings to the family, and the way parenting and child temperament work together to influence the child's social development. Temperament is also related to adult patterns in forming a family and having children.

Measurement of Temperament

Methods of measuring temperament include self-report and caregiver-report questionnaires, laboratory observations, and home observations (Roth-bart and Bates 1998). Questionnaires ask parents and other caregivers to report on the behaviors of their children, and the researcher then combines this information across situations and conditions for a measure of temperament. For older children and adults, self-reported feelings and behaviors in specific situations are also assessed. With the exception of reports of sadness, moderate levels of agreement are generally found between children's and parents' reports of the child's temperament.

Strengths of questionnaires as a method for measuring temperament include the broad range of information they can assess and the ease of their administration. Limitations include the possibility that parents may describe their child in a generally positive (or negative) way. Many studies, however, have found significant agreement between questionnaires and other measures of temperament (Rothbart and Bates 1998).

Laboratory studies focus on children's reactions to presentations that are likely to lead to an emotion, action, or focus of attention, comparing one child's reaction with that of other children. The child's behavior in the home has also been observed. Strengths of laboratory methods include the ability to use standard situations to elicit temperament in all children, and to measure heart rate and other psychological reactions. Limitations of the laboratory include high cost and emotional carryover from one measure to another. Use of home observations permits researchers to see the child's temperamental responding in a natural setting, but home observations lack the standardized control of the situation allowed by the laboratory.

The Structure of Temperament

Groundwork was laid for research on temperament in childhood by Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, and their colleagues in the New York Longitudinal Study (Thomas et al. 1963). They analyzed interviews with parents about behaviors of their two-to-six-month-old infants, and identified nine dimensions of temperament: activity level, approach/withdrawal to new situations, adaptability to the desires of the parent, mood (positive versus negative), threshold, intensity, distractability, rhythmicity, and attention span/persistence.

Major revisions to this list have been proposed, based on factor analytic research on children's temperament. Factor analysis examines correlations among items or variables to determine which items or scales cluster together and which are relatively unrelated. The list of temperament dimensions in infancy and early childhood includes activity level, positive affectivity, fearfulness, anger/frustration, and by early childhood, effortful control (Rothbart and Mauro 1990). Effortful control refers to the capacity to inhibit a dominant response, such as opening a present, in order to perform a less dominant response, such as waiting for the appropriate occasion.

Studies of temperament in childhood have identified three broad factors of individual differences (Rothbart and Bates 1998). The first is surgency or extraversion, including activity level, high-intensity pleasure (risk seeking), impulsivity, positive excitement, smiling and laughter, and low shyness. The second is negative emotionality, including discomfort, sadness, anger/frustration, fear, and low soothability. The third is effortful control, including inhibitory control, attention, perceptual sensitivity, and low-intensity pleasure. Data on a large sample of toddlers in the Australian Temperament Project have yielded broad factors of negative emotionality, self-regulation, and sociability (Prior et al. 1989) that are very similar to negative emotionality, effortful control, and extraversion/surgency.

Typologies

Some psychologists have suggested that there are categories or types of people based on their temperament. Jerome Kagan (1998), for example, has argued that behaviorally inhibited and uninhibited children are two temperament types. Thomas and Chess (1977) described types of children labeled difficult, easy, and slow to warm up. In their view, difficult children were high on negative mood, withdrawal, adaptability, intensity, and low on rhythmicity, whereas easy children were defined by the opposite pattern. Slow to warm up children were seen as having mild, negative reactions to new stimuli, adapting slowly to the new situations. Because the factor analysis on which their typology was based has not held up in later research, the term difficult has not had consistent meanings. There are other problems with typologies: often many children do not fall into any of the categories. In addition, one of the types is often judged as negative, leading to expectations of future negative behavior from the child that may not be justified. John Bates's (1980) view of difficultness as defined by negative emotionality and demandingness has been a helpful contribution to the field, but his definition does not require the use of a typology.

The end of the twentieth century brought additional typologies of temperament (Robins, John, and Caspi 1997) related to Jack and Jeanne Block's (1980) categories of personality. One type, called overcontrollers, includes children who appear to be high in control of their impulses, often showing rigid patterns of behavior. Undercontrollers include children who are impulsive and who may act aggressively against others. A third type, resilients, includes children who respond in a flexible way to the demands of the environment. The expectation would be that overcontrollers would be high on fearfulness, undercontrollers would be high on surgency, low on fear and effortful control, and probably also high on anger/frustration. Resilient children would likely be high on effortful control. Future research may bring typologies and more dimensional approaches together.

Stability and Development of Temperament

Looking at children's temperament across time and development, seven-year-old temperament has been predicted by laboratory measures of fear, anger, and positive affect/surgency in infancy (Rothbart, Derryberry, and Hershey 2000), although attention showed little stability from infancy. This is probably related to the relatively later development of the executive attention system. As this system develops, the child's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can come increasingly under self-control (Posner and Rothbart 1998). By the age of four, children's ability to delay going after a reward predicts higher achievement and greater emotional control in adolescence. Avshalom Caspi and Phil Silva (1995) found that children who were high on approach or confidence at three to four were also more impulsive at age eighteen, and higher on social potency, that is, taking charge of situations. More fearful children at age three to four were later higher on harm avoidance (avoidance of danger), lower on aggression, and lower on social potency. Children's distress proneness, when combined with lack of attentional control at three to four years, predicted higher distress tendencies at age eighteen.

The same longitudinal study (Caspi et al. 1995) predicted behavior problems at age fifteen from behavior at three to five years. Preschool approach predicted later lower anxiety and withdrawal in boys, and preschool distress combined with lack of attentional control predicted problems such as impulsivity and aggression, in both boys and girls. A number of links have now been identified between temperament and the development of psychopathology (see review by Rothbart and Bates 1998), as well as between temperament and health status, including adolescent substance use (Wills et al. 2002).

Parenting

Temperament, conscience, and discipline. Temperament measures allow study of the way temperament and social experience influence each other in personality development. For example, children's fearful temperament interacts with their treatment by parents in the development of conscience. Grazyna Kochanska (1995) found that more fearful children showed greater early development of conscience than less fearful children. She also found that gentle parenting (without using punishment) predicted conscience development among fearful children, but not among fearless children. In contrast, moral behavior of less fearful and more uninhibited children, but not fearful children, was greater when their mothers were responsive and when the mother/child attachment was secure (Kochanska 1995).

Kochanska's studies suggest that there are different developmental pathways to conscience for children who are temperamentally different. Gentle discipline de-emphasizing power may fit well by not allowing fearful children's arousal to reach such high levels that the child cannot take in parental messages. The use of power and punishment may raise these children's arousal to levels that may interfere with internalizing parent messages. Gentle discipline does not, however, promote morality in fearless children, who appear to be more sensitive to rewards associated with responsive parenting and to a close relationship with their parent.

Temperament and attachment. Attachment refers to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors shown by a child in a close relation to others, most often the mother or other primary caregiver. Although research findings have not been altogether consistent, there are reports of significant relationships between temperament and attachment measures (Rothbart and Bates 1998). One of the most interesting was reported by Dymphna van den Boom (1989). She found that infants who were irritable as newborns were more likely to be insecurely attached to their mothers at the end of the first year than nonirritable newborns. In a second study, van den Boom enrolled irritable newborn infants and their mothers for an intervention study. One group of mothers was taught parenting skills, including how to soothe and play with their babies; another group was not. With intervention, the trained mothers became more responsive to their babies, and more of their infants were identified as secure in their attachment at one year. Continued positive effects of this intervention on children's social behavior have been found for the children up to ages two and three years (van den Boom 1995).

Goodness of fit. Thomas and Chess developed the idea of goodness of fit to think about how temperament and parenting may interact to influence children's adjustment. Goodness of fit was said to result "when the child's capacities, motivations, and temperament are adequate to master the demands, expectations, and opportunities of the environment" (Chess and Thomas 1989, p. 380). The idea behind this concept is that different family situations may be a better fit for some children than others, depending on the child's temperament. Parents may also place different values on temperament-related behaviors. Behaviors seen as negative by parents would be considered a "poor fit." Thus, behaviors of an extraverted child may match one parent's values, but be seen as inappropriate by other parents.

Chess and Thomas (1984) gave as an example of poor fit the case of Roy, a highly distractible child. As an infant, Roy's distractibility allowed parental soothing to be quick and effective. Later, however, the distractibility that had been helpful to the parent in infancy was a problem as Roy became unreliable and forgetful as an older child. His mother nagged him to get things done, and in time, Roy ignored his mother's messages. This, in turn, led Roy's mother to judge him in negative terms. Roy's behavior did not improve, and the mother did not recognize that what had made him a good baby was now leading to unreliable behavior at home and at school that led her to judge him negatively. Although goodness of fit has been difficult to study, there is now some evidence of relations between goodness of fit, higher achievement, and more positive classroom behaviors (Paterson and Sanson 1999).

Additional Influences on Temperament and Parenting

Other factors may influence the relationship between temperament and parenting (Sanson and Rothbart 1995). These include the age and sex of the child, as well as social factors. In studies of mothers' responses to children's temperament, similar behaviors may lead to different responses depending on the child's age. At younger ages in infancy (e.g., six and twelve months), higher distress is related to more mother involvement. At later ages (e.g., eighteen and twenty-four months), the same behavior is related to lower mother involvement (Sanson and Rothbart 1995). Parents may begin by showing greater effort in raising a distress-prone child, but may not be able to sustain the effort over time and development.

Differences have also been found in parents' reactions to similar behaviors depending on the child's sex. More positive response to boys' than girls' irritability and negative emotion has been found, especially from fathers (Sanson and Roth-bart 1995). Different beliefs of parents about how acceptable a temperamental attribute is for boys and girls might lead to different parent responses to similar behaviors from girls or boys.

Some studies examining the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and temperament have found no relationship. In a study of temperament and parenting in children aged three to four years, however, Margot Prior, Ann Sanson, and their colleagues (1989) found twice as many significant correlations between temperament and parenting measures in a high SES group than in a low SES group. The authors interpreted this as evidence of possible greater sensitivity and accommodation to the individuality of their children among high SES mothers.

Temperament and marriage. Temperament's relevance to marriage and the family involves adults as well as children. For example, temperament is related to age of marriage and of having children. In both U.S. and Swedish samples, childhood shyness was found to be related to later age of marriage and having children for men, but not for women (Kerr, Lambert, and Bem 1996). These findings suggest a tendency of less outgoing men to be less forward in the mating area. For women, these characteristics may be less important.

With data from a longitudinal sample followed for thirty years beginning at ages eight to ten, Avshalom Caspi, Glen Elder, and Daryl Bem (1989) found similar marriage patterns in adults who were shy as children. Men who were shy as children married an average of three years later, became fathers an average of four years later, and entered into a career path an average of three years later than men who were not shy as children. Childhood shyness in females predicted more traditional marriage and career paths, although women who were shy in childhood married at the same age as their nonshy counterparts, they spent fewer years in the workforce than women who were outgoing in childhood (Caspi, Elder, and Bem 1989).

Caspi, Elder, and Bem (1987) also examined the life-course patterns of adults with a history of explosive behaviors as children. Men who were illtempered as children (showing frequent and severe tantrums) were more likely to divorce and to have erratic work lives in comparison with men who were not ill-tempered as children. Women with histories of childhood tantrums tended to marry men with lower occupational status, were likely to divorce, and were considered to be illtempered as mothers (Caspi, Elder, and Bem 1987).

Differences in marital and family functioning have also been related to child temperament (Stoneman, Brody, and Burke 1989). For both fathers and mothers, consistent ratings of their older girls' temperamental difficulty (defined by Stone-man et al. as active and emotional) was related to decreased marital satisfaction and a less positive family climate in two-child families. Marital and family distresses were also related to having two temperamentally difficult siblings.

Temperament and culture. Numerous studies have found both similarities in the structure of temperament across cultures, and differences in levels of temperament between children of different cultures. A study of children's temperament in the People's Republic of China found lower surgency and higher negative affect than in a U.S. sample, with the two cultures also showing differences in relations among temperament variables (Ahadi; Rothbart; and Ye 1993). In the United States, but not China, children with higher effortful control were reported to have lower negative affectivity (fear, sadness, etc.). In China, but not the United States, higher effortful control was related to lower surgency. Culture may influence behaviors of children seen as worthy of control, and these behaviors can vary across cultures. In the United States, it may be more important to control negative feelings, whereas in China, stress may be placed on controlling one's outgoing and impulsive behaviors.

In an examination of relationships among culture, parental attitudes, and temperament, Xinyin Chen and colleagues (1998) studied two-year-old Chinese children in the People's Republic of China and Caucasian children in Canada. Chinese children were significantly more inhibited than the Canadian children, and inhibition was related to more acceptance and warmth from the Chinese mothers. In Canadian children, inhibition was negatively related to mothers' acceptance and encouragement. Again, there is the suggestion that cultural values may shape temperament by encouraging valued and discouraging de-valued characteristics.

Conclusion

This review has focused on individual differences in temperament and development, including family interaction. However, temperamental individuality among adult partners and its relation to family functioning is worthy of greater research interest. Future research on marriage and family processes should increasingly make use of measures of individual differences in temperament. Results of these studies, in turn, can be applied to marriage and family counseling. A temperament approach adds complexity to our view of childrearing and our thinking about how families function, but it also offers possibilities for increased understanding that would not be possible with simple, one-directional views of how parents influence children.

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MARY K. ROTHBART

JENNIFER SIMONDS

International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family