BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie

that take internal thoughts and feelings into account. Behavioral theorists
include B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson.
Humanist theories emphasize the importance of free will and
individual experience in the development of personality. Humanist
theorists include Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.
In following paragraphs we will unfold the main features of some
significant type personality theories.
2.2. Behavior and temperament. Temperament typology
The concept of personality type refers to the psychological
classification of different types of individuals. An early form of
personality type theory was the Four Temperaments system. What is
temperament? From at least classical times, temperament has referred to
an individual's stable pattern of behaviour or reaction, one that persists
across time, activity, and space.
Temperament theory has its roots in the ancient four humors
theory developed by the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC). He
believed certain human moods, emotions and behaviors were caused by
body fluids (called "humors"): blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.
Next, Galen (AD 131-200) developed the first typology of temperament in
his dissertation De temperamentis. He mapped them to a matrix of
hot/cold and dry/wet taken from the Four Elements (fire, air, earth, water).
The word "temperament" itself comes from Latin "temperare", "to mix". In
the ideal personality, the complementary characteristics or warm-cool and
dry-moist were exquisitely balanced. In four less ideal types, one of the
four qualities was dominant over all the others. In the remaining four
types, one pair of qualities dominated the complimentary pair; for
example; warm and moist dominated cool and dry. These latter four were
the temperamental categories Galen named "sanguine", "melancholic",
"choleric" and "phlegmatic" after the bodily humors. Each was the result
of an excess of one of the humors that produced, in turn, the imbalance in
paired qualities. Thus sanguine suppose the excess of blood and
dominance of hot/wet qualities, choleric – yellow bile - hot/dry ,
melancholic – black bile - cold/dry and phlegmatic – phlegm - cold/wet.
Although each person was deemed to have his or her own individual
temperament, they were generally described as variations on four basic
types: choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. What are the basic
features of each type of temperaments?
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