 28. Self‑Regulation and Personality  613
health risk behaviors, including unsafe sex, 
dangerous driving, violence, and alcohol de -
pendence. Young adults who were classified 
as undercontrolled at age 3 were more than 
twice as likely as other individuals in the co -
hort to be involved in one or more health risk 
behaviors (Caspi et al., 1997). Moreover, 
when personality assessed at age 18 was 
controlled, the effect became nonsignificant, 
suggesting a developmental path that runs 
from childhood temperament to adolescent 
personality to adult behavior. Children for 
whom the temperamental foundation of self- 
regulation is weak are more likely to become 
dispositionally poor at self-  regulation and 
engage in problem behaviors that ordinarily 
are managed through self-  regulation. This 
pattern is evident in the findings of other 
prominent studies of self-  regulation-  relevant 
characteristics of temperament (e.g., Robins, 
John, Caspi, Moffitt, & Stouthamer-  Loeber, 
1996) and their relevance for a range of con -
sequential outcomes during adolescence and 
young adulthood (e.g., Allemand, Job, & 
Mroczek, 2019; Moffitt et al., 2011).
Complementing and corroborating find -
ings from longitudinal research such as the 
Dunedin Study are the results of intervention 
studies that target deficits rooted in tempera -
ment. Two such interventions that have pro -
duced findings that underscore the relevance 
of temperament for later self-  regulation are 
Head Start and the Perry Preschool Pro -
gram. Based on economic analyses, Heck -
man (2006) has argued persuasively that 
the benefits of such programs are impor -
tant but missed by evaluations that focus on 
cognitive abilities as reflected in measures 
of intelligence and academic achievement. 
Rather, the effects of these programs are 
evident in skills governed by temperament in 
early childhood but increasingly shaped by 
experience with aging. These “soft skills,” 
which allow for personal and social pro -
ductivity, include attentiveness, persistence, 
and impulse control. Evaluations comparing 
treated and control groups more than three 
decades after intervention indicate impres -
sive long-term effects on important life out -
comes: higher rates of high school gradua -
tion, higher salaries, higher rates of home 
ownership, lower rates of receipt of welfare 
assistance as adults, fewer out-of-  wedlock 
births, and fewer arrests (Schweinhart et al., 2005). Consistent with our argument that 
these skills rooted in temperament serve as 
the foundation from which self-  regulatory 
skills develop, the return on investment is 
maximized when the intervention is provid -
ed in preschool or earlier.
Although not a canonical facet of tem -
perament, the critical ability to delay grati -
fication  emerges during early childhood. 
The ability to forego an immediate goal 
or reward in favor of a later, larger goal 
or reward requires executive control abili -
ties, such as inhibition of impulsive or pre -
potent behavior, so delay of gratification 
can be seen as one aspect of effortful con -
trol (Tobin & Graziano, 2010). Variabil -
ity in early delay ability as indexed by the 
“marshmallow test” (Mischel, Ebbsen, & 
Zeiss, 1972) is associated with an array of 
outcomes indicative of good self-  regulation 
later in life, including better social compe -
tence in adolescence (Mischel, Shoda, & 
Peake, 1988), higher standardized achieve -
ment test (SAT) scores (Shoda, Mischel, & 
Peake, 1990), fewer instances of substance 
use (Romer, Duckworth, Sznitman, & Park, 
2010), and lower rates of obesity in both 
adolescence (Seeyave et al., 2009) and adult -
hood (Schlam, Wilson, Shoda, Mischel, & 
Ayduk, 2013).
The interconnection of self-  regulation 
and personality is evident in contemporary 
models of temperament that encompass el -
emental features of self-  regulation while 
foreshadowing core aspects of personality. 
In the next section, we shift the focus to 
adolescence and later, reviewing models of 
personality that highlight the connections to 
self- regulation that originate with tempera -
ment.
The Big Five
The dominant comprehensive models of 
personality are the Big Five trait taxonomy 
(John, Chapter 2, this volume) and the con -
ceptually similar five-  factor model (Costa 
& McCrae, 1992). The focal domains are 
fundamental, higher-  order dimensions that 
encompass in an organized manner the 
broad array of specific personality descrip -
tors (John, Chapter 2, this volume). The do -
mains are agreeableness, conscientiousness, 
emotional stability/neuroticism, surgency/