History of the 4 Temperaments: From Hippocrates to Modern Psychology

From ancient Greek physicians to medieval scholars, from Enlightenment philosophers to 20th-century psychologists, the four temperaments have been reinterpreted for every era. And they are still going.

In this guide, we will trace the full arc — from Hippocrates to the modern day — showing how four simple categories of human behavior have endured for over 2,500 years.

Timeline at a Glance

Ancient Greece: Where It All Began

Empedocles and the Four Elements (c. 490–430 BC)

Before there were temperaments, there were elements. The Greek philosopher Empedocles proposed that all matter was made up of four fundamental elements: earth, water, air, and fire. This idea of four basic building blocks of nature became the philosophical foundation for everything that followed.

Hippocrates and the Four Humors (c. 460���370 BC)

Hippocrates — often called the "father of medicine" — took Empedocles idea and applied it to the human body. He proposed that health and personality were governed by the balance of four bodily fluids, called humors:

When the humors were in balance, a person was healthy. When one dominated, it shaped both physical health and personality. This humoral theory was a unified model of body and mind — something modern medicine has only recently begun to re-explore through psychoneuroimmunology.

Galen and the Four Temperaments (c. 129–216 AD)

The Roman physician Galen took Hippocrates humoral theory and formalized the connection between humor dominance and personality type. He gave us the names we still use today: Sanguine (blood-dominant),Choleric (yellow bile-dominant), Melancholic (black bile-dominant), andPhlegmatic (phlegm-dominant).

The Medieval Period: Preservation and Expansion

Islamic Golden Age (8th–14th centuries)

When much of European learning was lost during the early medieval period, Islamic scholars preserved and expanded Greek medical knowledge. Physicians like Avicenna (The Canon of Medicine, c. 1025) refined humoral theory and integrated it with their own observations. Avicenna work was used as a medical textbook in both Islamic and European universities for centuries.

The Enlightenment: Temperament Meets Philosophy

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

Kant made a pivotal distinction in his Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View (1798): he separatedphysical temperament (bodily constitution) from psychological temperament (personality patterns). For the first time, temperament was framed as a pattern of feeling and activity rather than a consequence of fluid imbalances.

The Birth of Modern Psychology

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920)

Wundt — widely regarded as the father of experimental psychology — completed Kant work by fully separating temperament from body fluids. He placed the four temperaments on two independent, measurable axes:

• Emotionality: How strongly and quickly do you react emotionally? (Strong vs. Weak)
• Changeability: How quickly do your emotions and interests shift? (Changeable vs. Stable)

This created a clean 2×2 matrix that anticipated the Big Five and every two-axis personality model that followed.

The 20th Century: Temperament Goes Mainstream

Hans Eysenck (1916–1997)

British psychologist Eysenck explicitly connected the four temperaments to his own dimensional model of personality in Dimensions of Personality (1947). He mapped them onto two factors: Extraversionand Neuroticism. The four quadrants of Eysenck model correspond directly to the four temperaments — and his work heavily influenced the Big Five (OCEAN) model that dominates academic psychology today.

David Keirsey (1921–2013)

In Please Understand Me (1978), Keirsey bridged the ancient and the modern by mapping the four temperaments onto the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types. His framework brought temperament theory into corporate training, career counseling, and educational settings — contexts where it continues to thrive today.

Today: The Temperaments in Modern Life

The four temperaments are alive and well in the 21st century, though they often go by different names:

• DISC (the dominant workplace behavioral assessment) maps almost 1:1 to the four temperaments
• Personality quizzes on social media frequently use temperament-based frameworks
• Coaching and therapy increasingly use temperament as a tool for self-understanding
• Education continues to apply temperament principles, especially in Waldorf and Montessori-influenced schools
• Neuroscience is exploring whether the temperaments map onto neurotransmitter profiles

What is Next?

Now that you know the full history, explore the temperaments in practice. Take our quiz to discover your type, or dive deeper into each temperament profile.