• What is character?
• character and temperament
• character and personality
• The study of character
• character examples

We explain what character and temperament are. Difference between character and personality. Examples and character types.

weather or it is difficult for him to forgive the mistakes of others, he will say that he is rancorous. In both cases it is a generalization.

In addition to being used to indicate someone's habitual behavior, the word character It is used in everyday speech with several meanings. Thus, to refer to a person with great firmness in his convictions, it is said that has character or is it a person of character.

Likewise, it is usual to distinguish between characters powerful Y weak, either have a good character either bad character, according to different evaluation ranges, which are generally associated with irritability, patience, the temperance Y resilience or submission and passivity, depending on the context.

In psychoanalysis, character is the fundamental psychic organization of an individual, reflected in a fixed or structured mode of response.This organization corresponds to the way in which the person usually tries to harmonize internal drives (the id), the limits imposed by the outside world (the reality principle) and ethical and moral principles (the superego).

From the perspective of psychoanalysis, character is the result of the concurrence of several factors, among which are the forces of the id, environmental influences (especially from parents) and the defenses that, during childhood, the ego rehearses. versus the other factors.

Outside the psychoanalytic field, character assessment is today a useful tool for Business Y organizations who want to have a quick and general profile of their possible employees.

character and temperament

Character is related to temper and many times both terms are taken as synonyms. However, there are important differences between them.

General description:

• Character comprises a set of traits that a person acquires through learning.
• Temperament is a constitutive tendency of the individual.
• The character originates in the interaction of the individual with the environment of her.
• Temperament has its origin in biological inheritance and is innate.

Factors that influence their formation:

• The social environment influences the formation of character.
• The formation of temperament is determined by biological factors and linked to endocrine and nervous functions.
• Character begins to develop in childhood and is consolidated in adulthood.
• The temperament is already developed at birth and manifests itself from the first months of life.

Possibility of modification:

• Character changes with experience, as the person interacts with the social environment.
• Temperament, on the other hand, is difficult to modify, although some of its manifestations can be regulated by character.

character and personality

Character is one of the elements that make up personalityalong with temperament. If character is a predominant reaction to specific situations, personality, on the other hand, is a complex and diverse conjunction of virtues, defects, tendencies, feelings and thoughts of a person. In other words, it is the integration of a person's cognitive and affective traits.

Thus, while character can be reduced to an attribute or an idea that encompasses a certain tendency to act in a certain way, personality is a construction rich in nuances, difficult to grasp in its entirety, which makes it difficult to establish some type of character. pattern based on which to predict the behavior of the individual.

The study of character

The study of character dates back to ancient times. In the fourth century a. C., the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, a disciple of Aristotle, described in his work the characters a variety of character types, understood as moral types. Each character corresponds to a predominant defect or vice (the hypocrite, the false, the indiscreet, the arrogant, etc.). The work was imitated in the 17th century by the French Jean de La Bruyère in a book with the same title.

In the nineteenth century the term was coined characterology to refer to the study of character. The first characterological theories lacked a scientific basis, and were philosophical studies that sought to go beyond the description of moral types made by Theophrastus and La Bruyère.

With the arrival of the 20th century, studies based on psychodiagnostic tests and statistical data began to be carried out, from which the first typologies of characters with empirical foundations were elaborated. Some of the criteria used in these typologies correspond to aspects of the individual that are currently related to temperament, and not only to character. They can be grouped into two classes:

• Typologies that start from the observation of the physical and morphological constitution of individuals (athletic, stocky, thin).
• Typologies focused on the identification of dominant psychological factors (emotivity, activity and resonance or repercussion of impressions).

Today it is accepted that these and other psychological typologies are approximations to personality, useful in certain contexts and that they must be evaluated in combination with approaches that have other aspects of the human being.

character examples

The French René Le Senne (1882-1954) established a classification of the characters of the human being. For Le Senne, character is "the structure of the dispositions that the individual possesses by inheritance and that form his mental skeleton". In this way, he incorporates into the notion of character elements that today are considered part of temperament (such as the influence of genetic inheritance).

Le Senne's character classification is the result of the combination of three fundamental character properties:

• emotionality It is the commotion produced by the events of everyday life. Typical traits of the emotional individual are restlessness, mood swings, and a tendency to exaggerate.
• Exercise. It is the drive to action, manifested in the way you react to an obstacle. The asset feels pushed into action. On the contrary, the inactive doubts and is frequently discouraged.
• Resonance. It is the effect that impressions have on people's moods. It can be primary, if the impressions have an effect at the moment, as occurs in highly emotional situations, or secondary, if the effect is subsequent to the emotion.
  Individuals in whom the primary resonance predominates react quickly to offenses, but soon forget about them; They live in the present and adapt to changes. Individuals in whom the secondary tendency predominates are reflexive and can be spiteful.They live in the past and cling to their memories, routines and principles.

From the various ways in which these properties are combined, 8 types of character arise:

• Nervous character: emotional, inactive, primary.
• Passionate character: emotional, active, secondary.
• Choleric character: emotional, active, primary.
• Sentimental character: emotional, inactive, secondary.
• Blood character: non-emotional, active, primary.
• Phlegmatic character: non-emotional, active, secondary.
• Amorphous character: non-emotional, inactive, primary.
• Apathetic character: not emotional, inactive, secondary.

Much more recently, the American psychiatrist C. Robert Cloninger proposed a model in which character is the result of the interaction of three dimensions, which are not inheritable (or very little inheritable) and which are modified throughout life:

• Self direction. It is the person's ability to regulate and adapt her behavior in different situations, based on her own values ​​and goals. It reflects the way in which the individual perceives himself as an autonomous being.
• Cooperation. It is the ability to identify and collaborate with others. It reflects the degree to which someone perceives himself as a member of society.
• self-transcendence It is the set of characteristics of a person related to their spirituality and their creativity. It reflects the degree to which the individual perceives himself as part of the universe and his ability to accept uncertainty.