ADVERTISEMENTS:
The upcoming discussion will update you about the differences between personality and temperament.
Personality may further be differentiated from temperament which can be called a system of emotional dispositions. “There is a certain amount of consistency in the emotional reactions of any individual which is called this temperament.”
Temperamental differences are sometimes accounted for in terms of the inborn physiological constitution determined by endocrine secretion or in terms of the changing activity of the sympathetic nervous system. According to Warren, temperament is “the general affective nature of an individual as determined by his inheritance and life-history. Quoting McDougal.
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Warren says that to him temperament is the sum of the effects upon one’s mental life of the metabolism or chemical changes that are constantly going on in all the tissues of one’s body.
The classical doctrine according to which temperaments changed due to humours of the body has persisted long enough and claims are made by some modern writers that biochemical constitution determines the foundations of personality as in the exaggerated lables “Glands Regulating Personality.”
Physique and Character. However, it is difficult to deny the importance of constitutional differences in the determination of one’s temperament which gives and specific tone to one’s personality.
But the system or emotional dispositions by which we understand temperament is only the effective side of personality, and as Allport suggests it would be better for the biologists and endocrinologists to drop the term personality in their enthusiasm to explain all human nature in terms of hormones or physiological factors and only talk about temperament in so far as they deal with the constitutional changes.