ABSTRACT
The chapter title implies that a set of attributes called temperament is basic to later personality and uses the chemical term substrates to refer to the relationship. Our use of the term substrates has a sense analogous to its use in chemistry. Substrates are substances that are acted on and modified by other influences — in chemistry, by enzymes and in human development, by the biological and social environment. That is, from an individual difference perspective, temperamental traits represent raw material that is modified —and sometimes radically changed —to yield the recognizable features of mature human personality. Like chemical substrates, which are generally synthesized from other compounds, behavioral temperamental substrates do not come ready-made with the neonate. They too are constructed from other substrates. In some cases, the substrates of temperament might be even more basic perceptual and motor characteristics; however, we typically think of temperament as a basic behavioral level of organization that has biological substrates.
