The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) is an inventory for personality traits devised by Cloninger et al.[1] It is closely related to and an outgrowth of the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ), and it has also been related to the dimensions of personality in Zuckerman's alternative five and Eysenck's models[2] and those of the five factor model.[3]
TCI operates with seven dimensions of personality traits: four so-called temperaments[4]
and three so-called characters
Each of these traits has a varying number of subscales. The dimensions are determined from a 240-item questionnaire.
The TCI is based on a psychobiological model that attempts to explain the underlying causes of individual differences in personality traits.[5]
Originally developed in English, TCI has been translated to other languages, e.g., Swedish,[6] Japanese, Dutch, German, Polish, Korean,[7] Finnish, Chinese and French. There is also a revised version TCI-R. Whereas the original TCI had statements for which the subject should indicate true or false, the TCI-R has a five-point rating for each statement. The two versions hold 189 of the 240 statements in common. The revised version has been translated into Spanish,[8] French,[9] Czech,[10] and Italian.[11]
The number of subscales on the different top level traits differ between TCI and TCI-R. The subscales of the TCI-R are:
TCI has been used for investigating the neurobiological foundation for personality, together with other research modalities, e.g., with molecular neuroimaging,[12] structural neuroimaging[13] and genetics.
| Temperament | Neurotransmitter system |
|---|---|
| Novelty seeking | Low dopaminergic activity |
| Harm avoidance | High serotonergic activity |
| Reward dependence | Low noradrenergic activity |
Cloninger suggested that the three original temperaments from TPQ, novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and reward dependence, was correlated with low basal dopaminergic activity, high serotonergic activity, and low basal noradrenergic activity, respectively.[14]
Many studies have used TCI for examining whether genetic variants in individual genes have an association with personality traits. Studies suggest that novelty seeking is associated with dopaminergic pathways.[15] Dopamine transporter DAT1 and dopamine receptor DRD4 are associated with novelty seeking.[citation needed] Parkinson's patients, who are intrinsically low in dopamine, are found to have low novelty seeking scores.[citation needed] Gene variants that have been investigated are, e.g., 5-HTTLPR in the serotonin transporter gene and gene variants in XBP1.[16]
Cloninger argued that the Five Factor model does not assess domains of personality relevant to personality disorders such as autonomy, moral values, and aspects of maturity and self-actualization considered in humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Cloninger argued that these domains are captured by self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence respectively.[5] He also argued that personality factors defined as independent by factor analysis, such as neuroticism and introversion, may actually share underlying etiological factors.
Research has found that all of the TCI dimensions are each related substantially to at least one of the dimensions in the Five Factor Model,[3] Eysenck's model, Zuckerman's alternative five:
Cloninger has argued that "psychological well-being" depends on the development of facets of the three character dimensions, such as autonomy and life purpose from self-directedness, positive relations with others from cooperativeness, and personal growth and self-actualization from self-transcendence. He has also argued that the temperament dimensions are associated with subjective well-being and to some extent with physical health.[17] A study examining relationships between character dimensions and aspects of health and happiness found that self-directedness was strongly associated with happiness, satisfaction with life, general health, and perceived social support. Cooperativeness was associated most strongly with perceived social support and only weakly with the other well-being measures. Self-transcendence was associated with positive emotions when taking the other character traits into account, but was largely unrelated to negative emotions or the other well-being measures.[17]