Our personality, temperament, and character are three related but often confused concepts. Personality is understood as a structure formed by the conjunction of temperament and character. Basically, it can be said that temperament is what is genetically inherited and fixed, while character is what is acquired and modifiable.
Temperament is an innate and instinctive constant determined by genetically inherited biological factors and the part most reluctant to change. Aspects of our temperament include reaction times, nerve strength, sensitivity to stimuli and perceptual thresholds. This personality trait is also directly related to the way we experience and express our emotions, i.e., our personal way in which we react emotionally.
Temperament can be subdivided into four groups: sanguine (strong, affective, cheerful, excited, optimistic); choleric (irascible, irritable, unbalanced); phlegmatic (apathetic, uncommunicative, rational, isolated); and melancholic (weak, depressed, dejected, sad).
Character represents the expressive and observable side of our personality and is composed of innate and acquired traits. It is the component that involves habits obtained and determined by the environment, being more a circumstantial manifestation since, as not being inherited, it is less stable than temperament. Character is manifested in our behavior through the purposes of our actions and the environment shapes it since it provides the opportunities for our evolution.
Temperament, character, and behavior
Our personality is expressed through our skiing behavior, being the former a predictor of the later. It is accepted that our personality traits influence our skiing performance in both the most and the least efficient.
We generate a series of actions in the environment we face and notice that certain behaviors respond to our needs. At the beginning of skiing, our behavior tends to be impulsive and thoughtless through reactions provoked by our temperament, but as we develop in a social environment in which we must respect the rules of conduct, we learn to regulate our temperamental reactions replacing them with character, that is to say, we acquire a skier’s character imposed by the social skiing environment in which we try to evolve, influenced by learning and by skiing together with others.
Character is not fixed but variable and modifiable through the different stages of skiing, indicating the direction and mastery of the conduct which becomes rules of varied actions. The beginner skier is not just a passive recipient of the influences of the mountain environment but an active participant in the effects of environmental forces. He will form his character as a skier by assimilating and taking advantage of knowledge by learning to control his actions, to establish habits of behavior by directing his interests and desires through his own decisions.
Conclusions
- Temperament is the innate and instinctive part of our personality due to genetic inheritance. It is difficult to modify, so we will tend to act in the same way.
- Character is the psychological and modifiable. It is constituted by habitual patterns of behavior under preponderant influence of the environment.
