temperament
The temperament describes the way in which a living being acts and reacts, i.e. its style of behavior. This is deeply anchored and consists of emotional, motor, attention-related reactions and self-regulation. The term describes relatively constant (and therefore typical) characteristics of behavior such as endurance , stimulus threshold , mood and speed.
The traditional divisions into temperaments and their associated behavioral patterns are highly dependent on the culture. The best known are the Greek and Chinese classifications of temperaments.
Word origin
Etymologically, the word ( Latin temperamentum , from temperare : moderate, (correct) to mix; as a translation of Greek krasis : mixture) from the Middle Ages to the 16th century mainly in the sense of "balanced mixing ratio" ( bonum temperamentum , eukrasia ) in the Used in medicine , it describes the "mixing ratio of the body fluids" (see humoral pathology ) and received its current meaning in the 18th century.
Teaching from antiquity to early modern times
For a long time, a distinction was made in Europe between four types that go back to Galenus of Pergamon and that are based on the four-element theory and humoral pathology . The world was thus composed of four elements, which in turn combine four main properties: fire (warm and dry), air (warm and humid), water (humid and cold) and earth (cold and dry). Humans also consist of these elements, to which the four humors correspond: yellow bile, black bile, blood and mucus. If the juices are mixed harmoniously, the person has a harmonious temperament; If one juice outweighs all others, the person has a distinctive character (constitutional type) as phlegmatic , sanguine , choleric or melancholic .
Modern temperament theories
In the 20th century, research became more differentiated, but could not agree on any typology . In today's empirical psychology , clearly demarcated personality types are no longer used, but personality traits are measured on a continuous scale, e.g. B. Neuroticism .
In personality psychology of the last century different temperament theories have been developed; among the best known are:
- the research of Hans Jürgen Eysenck
- a modification of Eysenck's model was developed by Jeffrey Alan Gray made
- the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI)
- the Keirsey Temperament Sorter , a variant of the MBTI
- the temperament characteristics according to Strelau
- the research of Jerome Kagan (Harvard University)
Temperament has been defined from the psychological point of view as the particularly pronounced sensitivity of a person to a certain feeling . A person with a shy, timid temperament e.g. B. is therefore a person who tends more than others to react to certain impulses (such as encountering strangers or new situations) with fearfulness.
literature
- Jerome Kagan: Galen's Prophecy: Temperament in Human Nature , Westview Press, 1997, ISBN 0813333555
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ J. van Wageningen : The names of the four temperaments. In: Janus. Volume 23, 1918, pp. 48-55; here: p. 48 f.
- ↑ Klaus Schönfeldt: The theory of temperament in German-language manuscripts of the 15th century. Phil. Dissertation, Heidelberg 1962
- ^ Peter Assion : Altdeutsche Fachliteratur. Berlin 1973 (= Basics of German Studies , 13), p. 139 f.
- ↑ Konrad Goehl: Avicenna and his presentation of the medicinal effects. With an introduction by Jorit Wintjes . Deutscher Wissenschafts-Verlag, Baden-Baden 2014. ISBN 978-3-86888-078-6 , pp. 29–86, here: p. 30.
- ^ Daniel Goleman : Emotional Intelligence . Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. 1st edition. Bantam, New York 1995, ISBN 0-553-09503-X . , P. 215; Jerome Kagan: Galen's Prophecy: Temperament in Human Nature , Westview Press, 1997, ISBN 0813333555