The concept of temperament is one of the oldest in an attempt to understand human behavior. According to Fountoulakis and Gonda (2019), temperament originally referred to those personality aspects that are intrinsic, as opposed to being learned. It was later perceived that temperament is the emotional aspect of personality that is stable throughout an individual’s life. Some authors such as Jankowski (2014) describe temperament as morningness and eveningness. The former is supposed to describe brilliance and happy moods while the latter denotes a dull mood. Deguchi et al. (2017) definition is even clearer in an attempt to explain the meaning of temperament. The authors posit that temperament refers to genetic personality traits that remain stable over time and depict a person’s reactivity, mood, and energy at baseline. Different people react to different situations and experiences differently, and the underlying causes of these different reactions are what constitute temperament. Additionally, temperament is the foundation of the different personality types such as extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness (Simpson et al. 2006). Although there are numerous scales which have been suggested to measure personality traits, the above five traits are the most common in psychology.
Suggestions have been made about the existence of a relationship between temperament and occupational stress. The main argument is that since people react differently to certain situations because of the different temperament, they may have different stress levels when exposed to the same job conditions. For instance, Deguchi et al. (2017) study evaluated the relationship between temperament and occupational stress among local government employees in Japan. Individuals who measured high on neuroticism were more vulnerable to occupational stress than individuals who measured high on extroversion and conscientiousness. While the former reacted on the negative aspects of their jobs, the latter perceived their work more positively and tended to view challenges in positive light.
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My research will adopt an experimental research design. In this case, I will examine the causal relationship between temperament and occupational stress. My research will involve nurses working in a busy hospital, preferably in an emergency unit. Firstly, I will evaluate their temperament and I will categorize it into two; the approach and avoidance temperament dimensions. The approach temperament dimension according to Simpson et al. (2006) shows a person’s general sensitivity to a rewarding stimulus either imagined or actual. Conversely, avoidance temperament dimension captures a person’s general sensitivity to imagined or actual negative stimuli. In simple terms, the approach temperament dimension relates to personality traits of extroversion while avoidance temperament relates to neuroticism. Participant nurses will be placed into these categories in relation to how they measure in relation to extroversion and neuroticism. The personality test will be modeled from the various free online tests.
To measure occupational stress, the participant nurses will be evaluated on how they cope with situations like working overtime, under pressure and dealing with emergencies. Additionally, demographic variables such as age, sex, and family life will be considered because they are external factors that might affect how nurses cope with occupational stress. The scale used to measure occupational stress will be from 0-5, with 0 representing no stress, 1 representing low stress, 2 and 3 mild stress and 4 and 5 representing extreme stress, just like the scale used in the Smith (2000) study titled “The scale of perceived occupational stress.” The data collected from this aspect will be used to compare with their temperament types. The ages and sex of the nurses will be noted to compare with how they measure on the occupational stress scale. Nurses will also be asked to respond on whether their family life contributes to occupational stress. The response will simply be either Yes or No. Just like with age and sex, their responses on family life will be compared to their ratings on the occupational stress scale.
In this study, the independent variables are the temperament types while the dependent variable is occupational stress. I predict that nurses with the approach temperament dimension cope better with stressful situations while those with avoidance temperament are vulnerable to stressful situations and can therefore experience mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. I speculate that there is a positive relationship between temperament and stress; Individuals with high temperament scores are susceptible to high stress levels and vice-versa. Possible limitations of this study could be time and finances. I might not have enough time to interview a large number of nurses, as well as enough financial resources to travel and organize all the logistics and miscellaneous expenses that might arise during the research.
References
Deguchi, Y., Iwasaki, S., Ishimoto, H., Ogawa, K., Fukuda, Y., Nitta, T., Mitake, T., Nogi, Y., & Inoue, K. (2017). Relationships between temperaments, occupational stress, and insomnia among Japanese workers. PloS one , 12 (4), e0175346. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175346
Fountoulakis, K. N., & Gonda, X. (2019). Modeling human temperament and character on the basis of combined theoretical approaches. Annals of general psychiatry , 18 (1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12991-019-0247-1
Jankowski, K. S. (2014). The role of temperament in the relationship between morningness–eveningness and mood. Chronobiology International , 31 (1), 114-122. https://doi.org/10.3109/07420528.2013.829845
Simpson, J. A., Winterheld, H. A., & Chen, J. Y. (2006). Personality and relationships: A temperament perspective. The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships , 231-250. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232510702_Personality_and_Relationships_A_Temperament_Perspective
Smith, A. (2000). The scale of perceived occupational stress. Occupational Medicine , 50 (5), 294-298. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12347336_The_Scale_of_Perceived_Occupational_Stress
