Editorial: Integrative perspectives on the person-context interplay through the lens of temperament

Temperament is accorded a prominent role in psychology as the biologically-based mechanism by which individuals contribute to their own learning and development, distinct from, but related to, higher-order personality traits involving specific thoughts, values, and conceptions of self, others, and the world (e.g., Henderson and Wachs, 2007). Certain dispositional traits confer vulnerability to adverse outcomes, in part by influencing the “goodness-of-fit” between the individual and the surroundings. The role of temperament in the “fit” is complex, involving multiple interrelated layers in the person-context dynamic. Cascade models of development posit that early appearing risk factors are magnified over time because processes that shape children's functioning in one domain progressively influence functioning in other domains (Masten and Cicchetti, 2010). Accordingly, temperamental tendencies that increase risk for maladaptive transactions with the surroundings not only undermine goodness-of-fit in the moment, but may also disrupt longer term wellbeing. Temperament plays a role in shaping both overt transactions with the environment and the self-organizing processes of learning from experience, which eventuate in understandings that inform subsequent transactions (e.g., Verron and Teglasi, 2018).

In addressing various aspects of the person-context interplay, the studies in this Research Topic contribute to its overall aim of promoting integrative perspectives on goodness-of-fit as involving three layers of transaction between person and context. The person-in-context layer involves moment-to-moment transactions between the individual and the surroundings. Person-as-context encompasses self-organizing processes within the individual, including the interplay of multiple temperamental traits and the cognitive/affective processes that jointly shape what is learned. The assumptions and understandings gained from prior self-organizing processes function as pre-conceptions that influence current responses, referring to person-of-prior-context.