Increasing data support an association of cyclothymic temperament with bipolarity, but our knowledge about the relationship of affective temperaments (ATs) to depressive symptoms based on inheritance in a non-clinical population is limited. The aim of this article was to demonstrate how ATs and affective family history relate to the depressive symptoms in a general population. Subjects comprised 501 Hungarian adults who completed a background questionnaire, the TEMPS-A, the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (ZSDS) and the depression subscale of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-D). Stepwise linear regression was performed to analyse the role of ATs and affective family history (AFH(0) and AFH(1)) in the variance of ZSDS and BSI-D scores. Cyclothymic, depressive and anxious temperaments have a significant role in the explained variance of depression scores, and they are all significantly related to AFH(1). Significant differences were found between AFH(1) and AFH(0) groups in ZSDS and BSI-D scores, and these effects were eliminated if ATs were entered as covariates. The probability of having any dominant temperament was more than two-fold in group AFH(1) compared with AFH(0) (OR=2.33). Our results suggest that a crucial part of inherited factors of depression is mediated by affective temperaments.