Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

4-25-2025

Keywords

adjustment problems, behavior, difficult temperament, easy temperament, genetics, temperament

Disciplines

Developmental Psychology

Abstract

John Locke, an English philosopher, stated that all babies come to the world with a blank slate or tabula rasa, ready to absorb everything that their outside world has to offer. Behaviorists like John B. Watson similarly advocated the power of nurture (i.e., learning) and disregarded the contribution of nature (i.e., biology, genetics) to human development. Researchers today agree that babies are born with unique characteristics called temperament and that these individual differences in behavior, affect, and attention are believed to have genetic and biological bases. However, researchers also agree that temperament is not immune to environmental influences. In other words, it is both nature and nurture that shape individuals’ personality later in life.

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