ABSTRACT
The position taken up by the Behaviourist I school of psychologists in reference to the existence or function of temperament is uncompromising. ‘I wish to draw the conclusion,’ says Mr. J. B. Watson, ‘that there is no such thing as an inheritance of capacity, habit, temperament, mental constitution and characteristics.’ 1 We may be inclined hopefully to imagine, that it is the question of inheritance which he stresses and that to the later activities of the individual as a whole he might allow a temperamental colouring, but we can find no evidence in his writings to give support to this view. It is unnecessary to enter into a detailed account of his theories supporting the view that the whole of human activity consists in conditioned reactions based on a few unlearned responses which, so far as he has been able to discover, are present at birth or can be spontaneously evoked shortly afterwards. The concept of personality cannot, he claims, be understood otherwise than as the reflection of the ‘genetic history’ of our habits. These habits are distinguished in turn as manual, vocal and visceral.
