Nature over nurture: Temperament, personality, and life span development

Temperaments are often regarded as biologically based psychological tendenc ies with intrinsic paths of development. It is argued that this definition applies to the personality traits of the five-factor model. Evidence for th e endogenous nature of traits is summarized from studies of behavior geneti cs, parent-child relations, personality structure, animal personality, and the longitudinal stability of individual differences. New evidence for intr insic maturation is offered from analyses of NEO Five-Factor Inventory scor es for men and women age 14 and over in German, British, Spanish, Czech, an d Turkish samples (N = 5,085). These data support strong conceptual Links t o child temperament despite modest empirical associations. The intrinsic ma turation of personality is complemented by the culturally conditioned devel opment of characteristic adaptations that express personality; intervention s in human development are best addressed to these.