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This is the term used to describe a particular person’s predisposition to certain emotions or moods. Our temperament also affects the way we learn to express our feelings, so it can have great bearing on the development of our personality.

We experience and observe temperament as our habitual ‘life-long’ feelings which seem to be integral to our identity. We often talk about them guiding our behaviour and our attitudes. For example:

I’m a worrier → you won’t see me smiling when there are too many changes around

I’ve got a bit of a temper → I usually stay quiet if I see trouble brewing

I’m extrovert like my mum and her mum → we’re always the noisy ones at a party!

Our temperamental patterns are set by a mixture of the following factors:

– our genetic inheritance (e.g. a family can have a history of men who suffer from depression, or of women who are emotionally ‘explosive’)

– the physical structure of our brains (e.g. someone who has been born with emotional damage to their brain in a specific area may be described as ‘being quick-tempered’ because that section of their nervous system cannot control their feeling responses very efficiently)

– our life experiences (e.g. a person whose childhood was peppered with disappointments often develops a pessimistic temperament).