So What Exactly Are We Even Talking About?

Emotional Intelligence and temperament are similar, and yet completely different.  However, in order to have a high EI, one must have a foundational understanding of temperament.  This can be a slightly complex concept to grasp, and yet once you understand it, you’ll wonder how any of your relationships have survived without an awareness of the role each of these things play in every single interaction we have, including our relationships with ourselves.

Emotional Intelligence, simply put, is the ability to aware of, control, and express one’s emotions.  This ability enables us to have respectful interactions and healthy, empathic dialogue and relationships.

Temperament, on the other hand, is a biologically based predisposition towards certain behaviors and ways of processing information.  Temperament is not the same thing as personality. While both are developed from a young age, temperament is stagnant meaning it does not change. Temperament refers to behavioral tendencies and different aspects of an individual’s personality, such as introversion or extroversion. We are born with—and die with—our temperament. For a variety of reasons, people may act in accordance with or out of accordance with their temperament, but their core temperament remains the same, always. Whereas personality arises based off of life circumstances such as parental influence, education, culture, etc, temperament is more the blueprint on which personality is built. An intuitive-feeling extrovert, for example, may really enjoy the attention of making people laugh and end up being very funny (a personality trait) as a result, as his/her temperament inherently seeks validation and attention. Personality is, among other things, the result of one’s temperament combined with nature, nurture, and circumstances.

Some characteristics related to temperament include one’s activity level (are they, by nature, more relaxed or do they like to keep their body moving), routine (do they prefer to keep things open-ended or structured), initial reactions (are they more likely to withdraw or approach people or situations), how adaptable they are, how intense they are, how intensely they feel, mood consistency, how distractible or persistent they are
and how sensitive they are to external stimulation.