Definition
Individual differences in emotional reactivity (i.e., the predisposition to experience positive and negative emotions) and self-regulation (i.e., the ability to modulate dominant emotional and behavioral responses) that demonstrate consistency across time and contexts and are at least partially driven by genetic and other biological influences.
Introduction
Beginning early in life, humans vary in activity level, positive and negative emotionality, and self-regulation. Eminent psychologists such as John B. Watson argued that such individual differences had no implications for subsequent development: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”...
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Kotelnikova, Y., Hayden, E.P. (2017). Child Temperament. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2267-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2267-1
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