This article reviews evidence on the reliability and validity of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ), and presents CBQ data on the structure of temperament in childhood. The CBQ is a caregiver report measure designed to provide a detailed assessment of temperament in children 3 to 7 years of age. Individual differences are assessed on 15 primary temperament characteristics: Positive Anticipation, Smiling/Laughter, High Intensity Pleasure, Activity Level, Impulsivity, Shyness, Discomfort, Fear, Anger/Frustration, Sadness, Soothability, Inhibitory Control, Attentional Focusing, Low Intensity Pleasure, and Perceptual Sensitivity. Factor analyses of CBQ scales reliably recover a three-factor solution indicating three broad dimensions of temperament: Extraversion/Surgency, Negative Affectivity, and Effortful Control. This three-factor solution also appears to be reliably recovered in ratings of children in other cultures (e.g., China and Japan). Evidence for convergent validity derives from confirmation of hypothesized relations between temperament and socialization-relevant traits. In addition, parental agreement on CBQ ratings is substantial. The CBQ scales demonstrate adequate internal consistency, and may be used in studies requiring a highly differentiated yet integrated measure of temperament for children in this age range.
This article reviews how a temperament approach emphasizing biological and developmental processes can integrate constructs from subdisciplines of psychology to further the study of personality. Basic measurement strategies and findings in the investigation of temperament in infancy and childhood are reviewed. These include linkage of temperament dimensions with basic affective-motivational and attentional systems, including positive affecl/approach, fear, frustration/anger, and effortful control. Contributions of biological models that may support these processes are then reviewed. Research indicating how a temperament approach can lead researchers of social and personality development to investigate important person-environment interactions is also discussed. Lastly, adult research suggesting links between temperament dispositions and the Big Five personality factors is described.
We present a psychobiological approach to personality development, incorporating developmental principles outlined by R. B. Cairns (1979). We review individual differences in temperament and ask how a temperamental approach to personality might be congruent with these complex and flexible principles. We then illustrate the nature of temperamental processes by considering several developmental topics. We first consider the interaction of infant distress-proneness and maternal behavior in the development of attachment. We then describe the development of self-regulatory mechanisms, emphasizing development of conscience, aggression, and mastery motivation. Finally, we briefly review mechanisms of temperament and environment interaction, illustrating these processes through variable developmental pathways for risk of adolescent and adult psychopathology. Throughout, we stress the idea that temperamental models of personality development are dynamic, interactive, and fit well with Cairns's developmental principles.
The authors examined the interplay of personality and cultural factors in the prediction of the affective (hedonic balance) and the cognitive (life satisfaction) components of subjective well-being (SWB). They predicted that the influence of personality on life satisfaction is mediated by hedonic balance and that the relation between hedonic balance and life satisfaction is moderated by culture. As a consequence, they predicted that the influence of personality on life satisfaction is also moderated by culture. Participants from 2 individualistic cultures (United States, Germany) and 3 collectivistic cultures (Japan, Mexico, Ghana) completed measures of Extraversion, Neuroticism, hedonic balance, and life satisfaction. As predicted, Extraversion and Neuroticism influenced hedonic balance to the same degree in all cultures, and hedonic balance was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction in individualistic than in collectivistic cultures. The influence of Extraversion and Neuroticism on life satisfaction was largely mediated by hedonic balance. The results suggest that the influence of personality on the emotional component of SWB is pancultural, whereas the influence of personality on the cognitive component of SWB is moderated by culture.
We report the results of research investigating temperamental characteristics of children in the PeopleS Republic of China and the US using a parent-report instrument, the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ), defining temperament as individual differences in emotional, motoric, and attentional reactivity and self-regulation. Subjects were 624 6-to 7-year-old children, from Shanghai and the north-western region of the US. The 15 CBQ scales were factored for both samples, employing a principal axis factor analysis with an oblique rotation. Ourfindings indicatedconsiderable similarity of factor structure in the two cultures, obtaining three factors labelled Surgency, Negative Affect, and Attentional Self-Regulation or Effortful Control, Differences across cultures were also found, with Surgency and Effortful Control scores being relatively higher than Negative Affect in the US sample and NegaJive Affect being relatively higher than Surgency and Effortful Control in the Chinese sample. Gender differences were also found to vary across cultures. Our findings are congruent with a view of underlying cultural similarities in temperamental variability across these cultures, influenced over time by the children's culturally varied experience.. . . Gone are the days, I hope, when students would rebel when I talked in one lecture about innate capacities and individual differences and in the next about the different way in which character is formed in different cultures systematically and how different the results were. Someone was sure to go away muttering: 'She can't have it both ways.' But, of course, we can.. . .' Mead (1972) Margaret
Used a Monte Carlo study to investigate the magnitude of various relations among behaviors and traits in the context of a multiple-determinant framework. It was found that when only 3 traits determined each of 2 behaviors and the 2 behaviors were influenced by only 1 common trait, there was an upper bound correlation of about .30 between the 2 behaviors; there was also an upper bound correlation of about .50 between measures of the common trait and the behaviors. When only 4 traits determined each of the 2 behaviors with both behaviors being influenced by 1 common trait, there was an upper bound correlation of about .25 between the 2 behaviors and an upper bound correlation of about .45 between measures of the common trait and the behaviors. Given these findings, it is argued that researchers should abandon the implicit assumption of a one-to-one relation between traits and behavioral consequences and instead make explicit the adoption of a multiple-determinant framework in the study of behavior, focusing not only on the additive effects of multiple determinants but also on the interactions between these determinants.There has been much discussion in recent years regarding the magnitude of trait-behavior correlations and the relative importance of the underlying relationships based on the magnitude of these coefficients (Funder & Ozer, 1983;Ozer, 1985;Rosenthal & Rubin, 1979, 1982). An entire literature has developed around the issue of effect sizes and includes articles that compare the magnitude of effect sizes found in personality and social psychological studies (Funder & Ozer, 1983;Sarason, Smith, & Diener, 1975); discussions of the importance of effects given moderate correlations between a variable and some criterion (Rosenthal & Rubin, 1982); and a method for increasing the magnitude of correlations found between personality variables and behavioral criteria (Epstein, 1979(Epstein, , 1980(Epstein, , 1983.Whether intentional or not, the discussions of effect size have worked under an implicit assumption of a one-to-one relationship between some behavioral determinant and the behavioral criterion. However, it is likely that behaviors are complex and are influenced by multiple determinants. To expect any psychological variable to correlate with some behavioral criterion on the order of .5 or greater is to deny the complexity of human behavior. It is a simple property of effect sizes that as the number of independent determinants of some behavior increases, the magnitude of correlations between any one of the determinants and the behavior must decrease.
Investigated early development of temperament across three cultures: People's Republic of China (PRC), United States of America (US), and Spain, utilizing a longitudinal design (assessments at 3, 6, and 9 months of age). Selection of these countries presented an opportunity to conduct Eastern-Western/Individualistic-Collectivistic comparisons. The greatest number of significant differences (i.e., involving more temperament dimensions) was anticipated for the US (Western/Individualistic) and PRC (Eastern/Collectivistic) comparisons. The US sample included 66, the PRC group 69, and the Spanish sample, 60 mothers, all of whom completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ) 3 times, when their infants were 3, 6, and 9 months of age. Results related to mean group differences were generally consistent with our hypotheses, demonstrating a greater number of significant differences for US versus PRC, with fewer differences observed for US and Spain. Analyses addressing developmental changes in temperament indicated patterns consistent with a priori expectations and cross-cultural differences.
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