Temperament, Development, and Personality

Abstract

Understanding temperament is central to our understanding of development, and temperament constructs are linked to individual differences in both personality and underlying neural function. In this article, I review findings on the structure of temperament, its relation to the Big Five traits of personality, and its links to development and psychopathology. In addition, I discuss the relation of temperament to conscience, empathy, aggression, and the development of behavior problems, and describe the relation between effortful control and neural networks of executive attention. Finally, I present research on training executive attention.