"Mainstream" Temperament theory (i.e. in the larger Psychological field)

[Eric B]

The temperament theory accepted in mainstream psychology, rather than identifying four or however many "types" (whether the Galen humors, Keirsey (Plato) groups or any of the other names various theorists have come up with), instead just measures nine (or more) different factors.

When I had asked Lenore's Thomson about temperament and type, she had mentioned: "reactivity, adaptability, mood, distractibility, persistence, attention span, sensory sensitivity, and the like".
http://www.personalitypathways.com/thomson/type3-2.html

I later stumble on these same factors, finding out they were identified in recent decades, by a trio of theorists who had identified them mainly in children.
Most recently, in one of my wife's counseling books, From Stress to Well Being: Contemporary Christian Counseling (Craig W.Ellison, p. 27, 43)

Nine levels of temperamental differences (Chess, Thomas, Birch)

Activity level
rhythmicity
approach-withdrawal (new stimuli)*
adaptability [less=high stress]*
intensity of reaction [high=stress]*
threshhold of responsiveness
quality of mood [negative=stress]
distractibility [low=high stress]
attention span/persistence[short=strong]

*Constellations found in children:

respond to new stimili
positively--mildly negative--negative withdrawal

in response to change
adaptable--slow adaptability--struggle

mood state
moderately intense, mostly positive--
intense, generally negative

You can even see these mentioned here, now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperament
(Originally, the article only mentioned the four temperaments).

This site claims there are ten (emotional sensitivity added), with a newly discovered eleventh; "Pace":
http://www.chdinc.org/temperament/tentraits.html

I would also find other references to "temperament" in children. A book called Galen's Prophecy (Kagan) looked like it would be a promising new look at the old four temperaments, but would also turn out to deal mostly with children.

Another seemingly respectable mainline instrument is the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis (T-JTA), which uses nine similar factors. http://www.tjta.com/abouttjta.htm
Outside of that, "Type A theory" seems to be the only typological system accepted in the mainstream field.
(It has been extended to four or more types in different organizations' version of the theory. Someone created a thread either here or at PerC recently on whether it fits MBTI in amy way. Seems to me, Type A seems to match EJ's).

So I would think, a way for typology to gain some more credibility in the larger field, would be to try to hook up with these factors. (FFM seems to have a little bit more respectability, but you still don't hear about it as much in the field).

It looks to me like many of those factors are somehow related to "expressiveness" and "responsiveness", which I have identified as the primary factors of temperament types. Expressiveness in MBTI/Keirsey would be E/I and cooperative pragmatic, and responsiveness (or "people/task") is directing/informing and structure/motive (which connect SJ with NT and SP with NF).

So what does anyone else think about combining type with these concepts? Is anyone else even familiar with them? Taken a test on them?

 

[CzeCze]

I am in awe.

I will say that thinking of myself as a child how I would have scored on Birch's scale, my E and P were already pronounced.

Let's see if anyone is familiar with the other methodologies!

 

[Eric B]

Yeah; interestingly enough, Brenda Muller of Personality Page says that E/I and J/P are the first letters to develop in children. That shoould be considered in comparison to these "mainstream" temperament factors as well.

 

[sculpting]

Eric, you may want to also look up the creator of the MMTI-c to get more info about early type development in children. Elizabeth Murphy.

As it was explained to me, you can see aspects of type as early as nine months, including introversion/extroversion and P/J. As a mom I could see this, but it is nice to see that some amount of MBTI research supports the idea.

I first discovered MBTI many years ago when my olders on was diagnosed ADHD and i found a site that discussed how many hyperactive, inattentive kids fit into specific MBTI types-Se doms, Ne doms as hyperactive, many of the introverts as inattentive.

Oddly I know many ISTJs who take stimulants as they hyperfocus on details-thus they feel inattentive to their surroundings and are diagnosed as ADD-inattentive.

Just some random thoughts though.

 

[the state i am in]

well, what is the goal?

are we defining temperament to be a basic kind of neural architecture, the way your mood system distributes neurotransmitter pathways throughout your body and speculating that they could be in different distributions and patterns which would result in varying temperamental registers?

are we trying create a syncretistic temperament theory that reduces terms to create more fundamentally precise, unified axes of difference? because we still need to connect that to something for it to be grounded in anything, and we still need hypotheses that unify temperament theory with other theories in order to situate such learnings within a more applied, useful way of understanding human psychology, child development, individual differences, communicative needs, pedagogies, parenting, etc.

 

[Eric B]

It seems the former is what the mainstream psychological field has gone with, while the latter is what we are more familiar with, but has been disregarded in the modern field. What I am thinking of is connecting the two so the latter would have some form of recognized grounding.

The neural theory is claimed to have some sort of empirical support, which is why it's accepted. But again, I don't see it as necessarily that different from the precise axes theory.

 

[the state i am in]

i'm interested, but it takes a lot of work and sifting through junk. just in typology we also have strengthsquest, multiple intelligences, mbti vs cognitive functions, berens, etc.