Two behavioral traits, temperament and habituation, were measured in 130 calves from 17 full-sib families which comprise the Canadian Beef Cattle Reference Herd. Using variance components, heritability was calculated as 0.36 for temperament and 0.46 for habituation. Genotyping of 162 microsatellites at approximately 20 cM intervals allowed the detection of six quantitative trait loci (QTL) for behavior traits on cattle chromosomes 1, 5, 9, 11, 14, 15.