Temperament, mood disorder and human nature: toward an integration of psychological medicine and evolutionary biology

Temperament is an ancient concept of psychological medicine, denoting the optimum mix of emotional traits involving reactivity. Hippocratic medicine ascribed it to four humors and their temperaments. Despite a rocky history during the past 2,500 years, temperament has undergone a renaissance lately. This presentation summarizes the author's collaborative research in 12 countries worldwide, leading to the psychometrically validated Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego (TEMPS). Concurrent validity has been shown with the TPQ and the NEO-FFI. An advantage of the TEMPS is that it is formulated in subaffective terminology and can be easily applied to affective disorders, and by extension, to its biologic underpinnings. It is indeed my thesis that temperament can serve as the bridge between such remote predisposing factors as genes, early experience, and proximate stressful circumstances, with gender playing a moderating influence.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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