Relative to personality and many behavioral attributes, temperament is believed to be determined to a greater extent by genetic and other biological factors. Nevertheless, personal and social experiences are involved in temperamental development. In this paper, I discuss issues related to culture, temperament, and adjustment mainly from a contextual-developmental perspective, which emphasizes the role of social evaluation processes in bridging culture and temperamental development. The review of the research findings indicates that cultural beliefs and values, particularly those related to socialization goals, are reflected in parents' and peers' attitudes toward children's temperamental characteristics, such as reactivity in challenging situations and self-control and its behavioral manifestations. Culturally guided social attitudes contribute to variations in the display of temperamental characteristics among children across societies. Moreover, culture plays a role in shaping the functional meanings or significance of temperamental characteristics in human development. Researchers need to investigate in the future cultural issues in temperamental development, especially relations between temperament and adjustment in different contexts, using a multi-level and multi-method approach.
