In the high-order automatic control system, it is difficult to know whether the system performanceis in over damping or under, even if the characteristic equation of the system is given. In this paper, thesystem performance is defined to be in over damping when the roots of the characteristic equation are allnegative and is defined to be in under damping when the characteristic equation has more than one pairof complex roots. It is proved that the principal conditions to determine the boundary between overdamping and under damping are derived from the characteristic equation and its derivatives. Here isgiven a new method for obtaining the overdamping region in the stability chart of the system by use ofthe foregoing result.