Temperament As An Explanation Of Adolescent Risk

Others who don’t agree with with the idea that teens are incapable of making good decisions may say teenagers actually overestimate risks. In “Why the Teen Brain Is Drawn to Risk”, a researcher named Valerie Reyna’s data,” has shown how excessively teens tend to overestimate the risk: for example when asked about the risk of AIDS in one study, adolescents estimated that a teenage girl who is sexually active has a 60% chance of contracting HIV. (The actual odds are miniscule for most Americans.)” (qtd. in Szalavitz); basically saying teens overestimate risks they are aware of. While this data has scientific approval, a weakness in this statement is that other data has proven that adolescents engage in risky behavior when a risk is unknown (Szalavitz).

What role, if any, does temperament seem to be playing? . Temperament plays a major part

Dispositional personality theories contend that each person per certain stable, long lasting dispositions. These dispositions make a person display certain emotions, attitudes, and behaviors. These dispositions appear in many different kinds of situations, which lends the belief that people behave in predictable ways even when they are in different

1a) In the research article “Personality Predictors of Successful Development: Toddler Temperament and Adolescent Personality Traits Predict Well-being and Career Stability in Middle Adulthood” by Marek Blatný, Katarína Millová, Martin Jelínek, Terezie Osecká. The problem that these researchers identified was the relationship between personality and psychological functioning and well-being, or the relations between personality and social functioning. The authors conducted this study mainly to determine whether ones’ personality affects his/her satisfaction with their quality of life in adulthood. They believe that personality traits play a major role in who/what you become in the future and they wanted to see if they could predict it. If yes, they wanted to know how early? – As early as childhood, adolescence or early adulthood.

As humans, we are social beings. However, some of us are more social than others. Research shows that temperament does seem to be related to genetics, but to what degree? Kagan (2008) argues that children are born with a physiology that makes them biased toward a particular type of temperament (Shriner B., & Shriner M., (2014). An example of some being more social than others, me and my oldest son are very sociable people, while my youngest and my husband are not as sociable.

Temperament is defined as the individual behavioral style of the child, the way in which he characteristically reacts to environmental stimuli. Temperament is distinct from the child’s innate abilities and motivation. Their are nine temperament traits; activity being the first which is based on the level of motor component in a child’s functioning, rated as regular,variable, or irregular. I would rate myself as moderate. I prefer to be independent; I rather do a task myself so that I don't have to watch someone else do it. I also don't like to be confined I prefer to explore the areas and things that surround me. Rhythmicity being the second temperament trait is all about the regularity or predictability in the timing of recurrent activities, rated as regular,variable, or irregular. Regular best describes me because I stick to a routine everyday and if it is changed I have a very hard time dealing with it. I eat the same thing everyday and at the same time everyday. I wake up every morning at the same time, but I fall asleep at different times depending on what I did that day. And lastly I have a difficult time adjusting to different time zones whenever I go away on vacation. The Approach/Withdrawal is the third temperament it is about the nature of a child's response to a new stimulus, rated as approach, variable, or withdrawal. Withdrawing child best fits me; it takes me awhile to warm up to new things, I'm cautious with new people, things and places. I prefer to surround

Obviously genes influence ones behavior in the sense they dictate the limits on what is possible. Heredity contributes many individual differences in temperament and personality, especially differences in emotionality, activity

Temperament is the characteristics and aspects of personality that we are born with. Temperament often relates to emotional aspects of our personality. For example, an infant who is nervous and anxious tends to be the same way when they are older. Temperament is heavily influenced by genetics. The three temperament types are the easy/flexible child, the difficult/feisty child and the slow to warm up/fearful child. The easy child is regular in biological rhythms and is generally in a positive mood and is easy and low maintenance for their caregivers. The difficult child is the opposite of an easy child, this child is hard to get to bed, hard to feed, etc. This child may cry a lot and have spurts of very bad moods. Lastly the slow to warm up child is usually shy. This child has discomfort and adapts to new things rather slowly. This child may also have negative moods but may not be irregular in sleep and hard to feed. Lastly, this child is very dependent on their caregiver and doesn’t like to leave their caregivers

After taking the temperament quiz, the scores showed that I was more phlegmatic. Phlegmatic individuals are quite, relaxed, easy-going, shy, and kind. If we look at the temperament scale, there are many aspects that led me more to being strongly persistent because I always try to keep working and improving many task. Also, I would say that I am not easily distracted, which helps when being around family while doing homework. However, after having a newborn my energy and activity level has decreased dramatically, but will pick back up after a few months. Having change throughout your life could be very difficult to adapt too. Although change may be difficult within some families, my husband and I have adapted to our sweet newborns schedule

Another key element of maturity is through personality. A person’s personality can determine whether a person is more likely to be immature in their actions or mature. This next article, Genetic And Environmental Influences On Personality Trait Stability And Growth During The Transition To Adulthood: A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study; determines that as adolescents age, the ability to control their impulses increases, whereas their decision on negative emotions will decrease. Throughout this article there are two controversies; personality changes come from the genes and the other argument is that it has to do with a person’s social environment. These personality changes affect the way a person matures and this is shown through a test they had performed for seventeen-twenty-nine year olds. This test is called a Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire and this revealed that as a person matures and comes to understand themselves, their personality is less likely to change or alter.

There have been research that links the temperaments of an infant with well they acclimatize them self as adults. Though it need more research to verify. the study that have been temperament have linked that baby with an amenable temperament were more stable as adults. infant who were challenging tended to be less stable in their adult minds. Study have also that three year old children who had inhibitions temperament were linked with being shy after fours years. a inhibitions child is seldom likely to be assertive as an adult. I find it interesting to learn about how your temperament as a child can influence how you are as an adult.

There are many areas of adolescent development that can be evaluated. I believe the way adolescents behave is one of the most important areas of development for adolescents because during this age it is common to experience many emotions which impact a person’s behavior. For adolescents, there is a lot going on with the body physically and mentally which can affect the way one acts, or behaves. These experiences can affect the way an adolescent behaves in every situation, especially at school. This is significant because at this age is where adolescents start to experiment and become acquainted with the notion that education is not that important. The way an adolescent behaves can impact the student’s education in many ways, good and bad. Before explaining the ways that behavior can

To begin, we will discuss the genetics aspect of behavior. In the late 1800s, Sir Francis Galton conducted an experiment that resulted in shocking findings. In Galton’s study, it was found, rather consistently, that genetics influenced almost every aspect of human behavior, personality, emotions, and temperament (Hamer 1). In the same study, Galton stated that almost all characteristics and behaviors were attributed to genes except learned traits, such as language. However, current research has been inconsistent. Researchers have been trying to correlate certain strains of DNA to personality traits or certain behaviors and have

This essay will give a description of Personality before critically analysing the biological basis of personality approach. The biological basis approach tries to account for the mechanisms between genes and personality by looking at various different brain structures whilst the biochemical approach looks at the impact of hormones and neurotransmitters. The majority of our understanding of personality from a biological perspective focuses on the three main behavioural systems; the reward system, the motivation system and the punishment system. Within this essay I will be discussing the three main theories that have come from these ideas, Eyenck’s three-factor model, Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) and Cloningers model of personality.

Test analysis. Analysis of personal temperament is one of the most important tasks dictated by the requirements of scientific and technical progress and by the very life. It is aimed at solving many personal problems and is designed to identify the specifics of character of every person. It is important to determine if the test achieves this goal, which requires its in-depth analysis.