Temperament Inventory: an Instrument To Empirically Verify the Four-Factor Hypothesis

Abstract

The four temperament theory appears, from a psychometric per spective, to be one of the soundest theories of personality in exis tence. Factor analyses of several existing personality tests, such as those conducted by Eysenck and Eysenck (1969), generally have re vealed that two dimensions of personality, together yielding four temperaments, provide the most straightforward and parsimonious explanation of temperament. However, the most popular four-tem perament test, the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI), yields tem perament scores that are mutually exclusive. Following the lead of Buss and Plomin (1975), the researchers hypothesized that a four temperament test that allowed scores on all four temperaments to be presented would be more useful and conceptually sound. The results of this study support that hypothesis. A temperament test, called the Temperament Inventory (TI), was constructed and administered to a nonprobability purposive sample of 3409 subjects. Factor analysis of the test data yielded four orthogonal factors, as hypothesized. In ad dition, 1533 of the original subjects were selected at random and ad ministered the EPI. Validity studies of TI with EPI as criterion yielded statistically and practically significant coefficients.