Personality is a difficult-to-decipher tangle found within people. Temperament and character make up that personality that makes us unique with our own idiosyncrasies. In fact, personality, temperament and character are the three concepts that are used in psychology to be able to talk about the different ways of feeling and thinking. It is normal for people to confuse their meanings.
So that you do not get confused any more if this is what happens to you, we are going to explain what each concept means so that, from now on, you will understand more what they mean but also, that you better understand yourself and how your personality is shaped.
Temperament
Temperament is the basis of everything, it is your most natural form of your personality and it is closely linked to your genes and your ancestors. ANDIt's the biological and most instinctive part of your personality… and it will always come first. The temperament appears since we are babies. There are babies that get irritated more easily than others and that is so without learning, it is a temperament that they have from birth.
Temperament is not something that can be easily modified or changed because you have a difficult temperament to handle. You can work on the temperament but it takes an extra effort because the basic temperament will always be within the personality. A conscious effort can be made to prevent temperament from causing problems in interpersonal relationships.
Character
El character What it has goes after temperament and this will depend directly on the experiences that you have to live in your life. It comes from the environment you have had in your life, what you have learned at home or at school ... everything that has been learning for you is what has formed your character. Habits are formed within character and all of this forms your personality.
That is why culture is so important in people, because social culture forms the personality of many who grow up within it. Character is less stable than temperament because it does not come from genetics, it can be shaped and even changed depending on the circumstances that are experienced. The character goes through different stages and it is in adolescence when it is fully formed, although it can continue to change during life.
Personality: the combination of everything
Personality is the sum of character and temperament. Personality is what makes us unique and unrepeatable. Sometimes we can feel that there is something about the personality that we do not like very much and in that case, it is necessary to reflect on what it is and look for solutions and new ways of acting that make us feel better about ourselves.
Personality is the set of inherited characteristics as well as the set of personal experiences that have made you who you are today. Within the field of psychology, the personality is made up of a group of emotions, perceptions and actions that form the behavior of the person.
Personality is the way you feel about things and the way you relate to others. Personality is a group of processes that interact with each other and that will help you see the world in one way or another. Although it is possible to understand what personality is with these traits explained, the reality is that experts do not agree on a unanimous explanation since it encompasses many aspects of a person's life.
Although there is no unanimous explanationWhat is true is that all explanations have one thing in common: there is a specific pattern in all that leads people to behave similarly in similar situations. Although there are many variables because each person is different, the trend can be similar in itself.
Differences between character and temperament
Once we have reached this point, we will better understand what character and temperament are, so you will understand it even better. It is commonly said that each living creature, each animal, insect or human being has its own particular character or, to put it more generally, its particular characteristics. What's more, In everyday conversations, people often confuse the terms 'character' and 'temperament' even though, in fact, they are not the same, as we discussed above.
Basically, temperament is something related to the vital dimension of a human being. It is a synthesis of all the instincts, tendencies and impulses that humans are practically incapable of changing or eliminating because they are rooted in their biological and physiological dimension. Temperament, therefore, it is closely related to the animal nature of man.
Character, on the other hand, although it cannot be dissociated from temperament, represents the intellectual, conscious and voluntary dimension of man. The character of a person is the result of his conscious effort to modify, by addition or subtraction, certain aspects of his innate temperament through the use of their intellectual and emotional faculties and the use of their will power.
Character is the behavior of a conscious human being who knows what he is doing and where he is going, while temperament represents the impulses of his biological nature, the tendencies that lie beneath the surface of his consciousness. Character is, so to speak, a synthesis of all the particular characteristics of a man's temperament that have been conquered and controlled.
Can it be changed?
As we have said, it is almost impossible to change temperament, since every human being born into the world has received a clearly defined temperament in advance. But as character is formed by the conscious tendencies of a reasoning and reflecting being who wants to affirm himself by improving or deteriorating the inheritance with which he was born, this results in an attitude, a way of manifesting that is often in direct contradiction to one's basic temperament.
This is what we mean by character. The character of a person is, so to speak, a new 'version' of his temperament, a colored version, modified and oriented towards a specific goal, an ideal. It is like a deliberately acquired habit and it becomes second nature. Character is not something that exists at birth, it is formed gradually, over the years. You can see this in children: they have a temperament but they don't have character yet.
As you have seen, personality, temperament and character are different concepts but they make up a single unit. The differences that they have form their great value and thus you will be able to better understand your behavior. Once you understand your own behavior, it will be easier to modify it in case you want to do it to feel better about the life you have.