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Temperament

Definition

The innate or biologically based individual differences in physical, emotional, and attentional reactivity and self-regulation.

Analogy

Think of temperament as the default settings on your phone. These are the features and behaviors that come pre-installed, like how quickly your screen dims or how loud your ringtone is. Just like you can't change these default settings, you can't fundamentally change your temperament—it's part of who you are from the start.

Related terms

Personality: The combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character, which includes but is not limited to their temperament.

Nature vs Nurture Debate: A psychological debate about whether human behavior is determined by the environment (nurture) or genetic inheritance (nature). Temperament is often cited in this debate as it appears early in life and seems largely unaffected by environmental influences.

Easy/Difficult/Slow-to-Warm-Up Temperaments: These are three types of temperaments identified by psychologists. Easy children are generally happy and adaptable; difficult children tend to be more irritable and harder to soothe; slow-to-warm-up children have a low activity level and may withdraw from new situations but gradually become more receptive with repeated exposure.