Temperament & Character Scales

Thirty scales describe both temperament, the emotional and behavioral tendencies that appear early and are relatively stable, and character, the values, goals and self-understanding that develop through experience. Temperament-like scales include Harm Avoidance, Variety-Seeking, Recklessness, Impulse Control, Dependence and Social Discomfort; character-like scales include Compassion, Morality, Self-Acceptance, Resourcefulness, Tolerance, Initiative and Optimism.

The distinction between temperament and character has a long history and was given an influential psychobiological form by Cloninger, Svrakic and Przybeck (1993), who proposed that personality develops from the interaction of inherited temperament with learned character. The scales here were assembled from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999), covering many traits that appear in that and related models.

Each scale is scored separately. Higher scores describe a stronger version of the named trait; lower scores describe its absence or opposite. Reading the temperament-like scales next to the character-like ones can show how a person's values and self-understanding shape the expression of their underlying tendencies.

The scales are used in research and in detailed personal assessment. On this site, the Emotional and Temperamental Disposition Scales focus on emotional disposition, the IPIP Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Scales measure threat and reward sensitivity, and the IPIP-VIA-R describes character strengths.

Factorially, principal-components analysis of the thirteen character subscales supported three factors corresponding to Self-Directedness, Cooperativeness, and Self-Transcendence (about 59% cumulative variance before rotation; Cloninger et al., 1993). Predictively/criterion-wise, Svrakic, Whitehead, Przybeck, and Cloninger (1993) studied 136 consecutive adult psychiatric inpatients (66 with interview-diagnosed DSM-III-R personality disorders): low Self-Directedness and Cooperativeness strongly predicted the number of personality-disorder symptoms and the presence of any personality disorder, differentiating risk from about 11% to 94%; temperament profiles helped distinguish clusters (low Reward Dependence with Cluster A, high Novelty Seeking with Cluster B, high Harm Avoidance with Cluster C). Discriminantly, that report argued these character dimensions captured personality-disorder variance better than the five-factor NEO inventory in that inpatient design. IPIP-specific convergent matrices for this exact keyed set were not located; scores here are not TCI clinical scores.

This version uses public-domain items from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al., 2006) keyed to the same dimensions.

“Accept challenging tasks.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Your report explains each of your scale scores in plain language.