Easy Temperament

Easy temperament is one of three broad temperament categories identified by the psychiatrists Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess through their New York Longitudinal Study, a landmark project following the same children from infancy that they began in 1956, describing infants who show generally positive mood, regular and predictable biological rhythms such as sleeping, eating, and elimination schedules, moderate rather than extreme intensity in their emotional reactions, and relatively easy, quick adaptability when faced with new people, situations, or changes in routine. In Thomas and Chess's original sample, infants classified as having easy temperament made up the largest single group, roughly forty percent of the children studied, and this pattern was generally found to make caregiving comparatively straightforward, since these infants tend to establish predictable routines readily, respond well to new experiences without prolonged distress, and communicate their needs in ways caregivers can interpret and respond to fairly easily. Thomas and Chess were careful to stress, however, that easy temperament is not simply the same thing as good or healthy development in some absolute sense, since even an easy-temperament child can experience adjustment problems if the surrounding caregiving environment fails to provide adequate stimulation or otherwise creates a poor overall fit, a broader principle their research summarized under the related concept of goodness of fit. The easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm-up categories together remain among the most widely cited early frameworks in the study of infant and child temperament.