When we were young, most of us used to say — in conversations about our hypothetical future partners — that we wanted someone with “a good personality.” It was clear what we meant, back then: someone stable, charming, upbeat, and funny. But looking back, it seems like “personality” might not have been what we were really describing. After all, personalities vary greatly, and not just according to how witty or lively a person might be. So maybe we weren’t really talking about personality, but something deeper — something called temperament.

Colloquially, temperament isn’t the structure of a personality itself, but the ground that personality is built on. It’s the foundation of all personality traits, governing the basic ways in which each person responds to new situations, handles emotions, and interacts with others. You might say “disposition” or even “style” when you’re talking about temperament; some people have a “sunny” temperament, while others might be described as more “fiery” or “gloomy.” “Temperament refers to early-appearing variation in emotional reactivity,” say researchers David Rettew and Laura McKee in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry (2005). Schröder et al (2022), writing in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, put it in more detailed terms, describing temperament as “relatively consistent, basic and individual dispositions that underlie and modulate the expression of activity, reactivity, emotionality and sociability.” They, along with Rettew and McKee as well as Stifter and Dollar in their 2016 book, Temperament and Developmental Psychopathology, point out that temperament is based in biology — which means it is stable throughout the human lifespan, from infancy to old age.

If you’re wondering about your own temperamental predisposition, ask yourself how often you feel negative emotions. Think about how easy it is — or how difficult........

© Psychology Today