Online personality tests are a fun way to get to know more about yourself, your friends, and your family members. But how much faith do you really put into these breakdowns of your traits and behavior? It could depend on if you’re looking to understand your partner’s love language versus what kind of dog your roommate acts like. However, there is a system to help you develop a comprehension of certain traits and reactions you’ve had since you were a child – it’s called your temperament.

What is Temperament?

The online mental health resource BetterHelp explains that temperament is another way to define a person’s character. Temperament defines your behavior, emotional disposition, and can even help to explain your reactions to certain situations. While there is still research to be done on the different types of temperament and how they can affect a person’s lifestyle, it’s generally used to describe the overall mood of a person and their personality.

Signs of a person’s temperament can develop in early childhood and even infants can display traits of their temperament. While aspects like how a child is raised, their environment, and lessons they learn can all influence the development of their personality, scientists have found that there are natural dispositions a person is most likely born with. Understanding your temperament isn’t necessarily like taking a generic online personality quiz – instead, it can help you to recognize traits and reactions in yourself and others.

How Temperament Affects Your Lifestyle

Knowing more about your temperament can provide you with more insight into creating routines, coping with stress, and even finding new hobbies. According to researchers Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess, there are nine traits to a person’s temperament: activity level, distractibility, response, regularity, sensory sensitivity, response to new things, ability to adapt, attention span, and disposition. As you can imagine, this covers practically every aspect of your lifestyle! Similar to how people tend to be more introverted or extroverted, you’ll learn one way or another in each of these traits. This can explain the effects of social interactions, learning capabilities, and even your response to stress.

It’s important to remember that while knowing the temperament of someone or yourself can help to explain behavior, it shouldn’t be used as a label. Like most areas of mental health, scientists are still learning about temperament and how the different categories affect people. It would be disingenuous to write off someone’s reactions because of their temperament; it could be especially harmful to a child if their parent were to categorize their behavior by their temperament classification, feeding into a stereotype or statistic. Instead, they should be used as general principles and guidelines with the focus put on the positive aspects and beneficial traits to use as strengths.

Can You Change Your Temperament?

You can’t necessarily change your temperament; as mentioned earlier, it’s a description of traits and the emotional disposition you’ve exhibited since you were young. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t learn to work with the temperament you have and use it to your advantage. Each trait group has its own benefits that can help you cope with challenges, work through issues, and develop your social awareness.

While you may be able to find online temperament tests, it’s important to remember that these questions are based on the interpretations you have of yourself. To find out more information on your temperament and how to cope with any challenges it may pose to your mental health or daily life, talk with an experienced mental health care professional. By discussing your emotions, reactions, and beliefs with a trained individual, you can begin to put together a more comprehensive understanding of your actions and traits. They can also help you find healthy coping mechanisms and routines that will highlight your strengths and help you work through weaknesses in order to reduce anxiety and stress while increasing motivation and inspiration.

About the author:

Marie Miguel has been a writing and research expert for nearly a decade, covering a variety of health- related topics. Currently, she is contributing to the expansion and growth of a free online mental health resource with BetterHelp.com. With an interest and dedication to addressing stigmas associated with mental health, she continues to specifically target subjects related to anxiety and depression.