Negative emotions and regulative notion of temperament in children

Pages:313-316
Nity Sharma (Defence Institute of Psychological Research, DRDO, Delhi)
C.R. Darolia (Department of Psychology, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, Haryana)

In last few decades, there has been a burgeoning interest in the construct of temperament, including its relationship with elicitation and expression of emotion. Although there is not a clear consensus on the meaning of the construct, there is a general acceptance that temperament involves individual differences in behavioural and emotional processes during development and is shaped by biological processes. Among the many determinants of individual differences, negative emotions, occupy a special place in research along with temperament. Negative emotionality is a broad construct that is central to most models of temperament. It includes fine-grained constructs/facets of anxiety, sadness, anger and irritability. The present study focuses on the relation of temperamental traits given by Strelau (1974, 1993) while developing Regulative Theory of Temperament (RTT), with negative emotions of fear, anxiety, depression and anger in a non-clinical sample of 403 children. The results of Pearson’s correlations indicate a significant relationship between most of the temperamental traits and negative emotions.