Temperament has been related to gain and intake in beef cattle; more temperamental animals often have decreased gain and intake. Intake effects may be partially mediated through social interactions in that some temperament measures may directly relate to social dominance behavior. To examine the relationships between temperament, growth, and social dominance behavior, 32 crossbred steers were used is a 56-d RCBD experiment with a 2 × 2 factorial treatment structure. Temperament treatments (assigned on d −7) were chute exit velocity (EV; slow vs. fast) and objective chute score (OCS; low vs. high), a novel temperament measure, the CV of weights collected at 5 Hz for 10 s while an animal’s head was restrained in a chute. Electronic ear tags with accelerometers were used to continuously measure animal activity. Social dominance behaviors were quantified using video records of 2-h intervals directly following feeding for d 1–13. Dominance was calculated as average dominance index and David’s score. Jugular blood samples were collected to analyze antibody response to leptospirosis vaccines. There were no EV by OCS interactions (P ≥ 0.23) for average daily gain (ADG) or antibody titers. High OCS steers had higher ADG than low OCS steers (P < 0.01) and slow EV steers had higher ADG than fast EV steers (P = 0.02). Slow EV animals had an increased antibody response compared with fast EV animals (P = 0.05). Ranking in the dominance hierarchy was influenced by an EV x OCS interaction (P ≤ 0.02), but there was not a linear relationship between dominance ranking and ADG. Low OCS steers tended to have higher daily activity counts than high OCS steers (P = 0.11), and fast EV steers had higher (P = 0.08) activity counts than slow EV steers. EV and OCS were independently related to differences in ADG. Although dominance ranking was significantly related to these 2 independent temperament measures, it was not linearly related to ADG. Alternatively, differences in accelerometer-based activity counts among temperament groups did correspond with trends in growth responses.