Sheldon’s Temperaments and Traits
While the Sheldon’s
research started from body type’s classification, that was not his ultimate
goal. He wanted to help resolve a more critical question of whether our body
type was connected with the way we acted. In short, he wanted to explore the
link between body and temperament.
Temperament
explores how people eat and sleep, laugh and snore, speak and walk. Temperament
is body type in action. Sheldon's procedure in looking for the basic components
of temperament was much like the one he used in discovering the body type
components. He interviewed in depth several hundred people and tried to find
traits which would describe the basic elements of their behavior. He found
there were three basic components which he called viscerotonia, somatotonia and
cerebrotonia, and eventually named endotonia, mesotonia and ectotonia.
Endotonia is seen in the love of
relaxation, comfort, food and people.
Mesotonia is centered on assertiveness
and a love of action.
Ectotonia focuses on privacy, restraint
and a highly developed self-awareness.
Sheldon devised a
way of numerically rating the strength of each area based on a check-list of 60
characteristics that describe the basic components. The 7-1-1 was the extreme
endotonic, the 1-7-1 the extreme mesotonic and the 1-1-7 the extreme ectotonic.
He found a strong correspondence between the endomorphic body type and the
endotonic temperament, the mesomorphic body type and the mesotonic temperament,
and the ectomorphic body type and the ectotonic temperament. Just as in our
body type we have all three elements, so, too, with our temperament. A look at
the three extremes in temperament will give us some idea of what these
components are like.
Temperament Scale Evaluation
Sheldon evaluated
and reevaluated each of the research participants through the 60 questions from
the questionnaire below to find exact temperament index of the person. You may
perform the self-test and define your own type based on the number of fitting
descriptions.
I. Viscerotonia
|
II. Somatotonia
|
III. Cerebrotonia
|
1. Relaxation
in Posture and Movement
|
1.
Assertiveness of Posture and Movement
|
1. Restraint in
Posture and Movement, Tightness
|
2. Love of
Physical Comfort
|
2. Love of
Physical Adventure
|
2.
Physiological Over-response
|
3. Slow
Reaction
|
3. The
Energetic Characteristic
|
3. Overly Fast
Reactions
|
4. Love of
Eating
|
4. Need and
Enjoyment of Exercise
|
4. Love of
Privacy
|
5.
Socialization of Eating
|
5. Love of
Dominating, Lust for Power
|
5. Mental
Overintensity, Hyperattentionality, Apprehensiveness
|
6. Pleasure in
Digestion
|
6. Love of Risk
and Chance
|
6.
Secretiveness of Feeling, Emotional Restraint
|
7. Love of
Polite Ceremony
|
7. Bold
Directness of Manner
|
7.
Self-Conscious Motility of the Eyes and Face
|
8. Sociophilia
|
8. Physical
Courage for Combat
|
8. Sociophobia
|
9.
Indiscriminate Aniability
|
9. Competitive
Aggressiveness
|
9. Inhibited
Social Address
|
10. Greed for
Affection and Approval
|
10.
Psychological Callousness
|
10. Resistance
to Habit, and Poor Routinizing
|
11. Orientation
to People
|
11.
Claustrophobia
|
11. Agoraphobia
|
12. Evenness of
Emotional Flow
|
12.
Ruthlessness, Freedom from Squeamishness
|
12.
Unpredictability of Attitude
|
13. Tolerance
|
13. The
Unrestrained Voice
|
13. Vocal
Restraint, and General Restraint of Noise
|
14. Complacency
|
14. Spartan
Indifference to Pain
|
14.
Hypersensitivity to Pain
|
15. Deep Sleep
|
15. General
Noisiness
|
15. Poor Sleep
Habits, Chronic Fatigue
|
16. The
Untempered Characteristic
|
16.
Overmaturity of Appearance
|
16. Youthful
Intentness of Manner and Appearance
|
17. Smooth,
Easy Communication of Feeling, Extraversion of Viscerotonia
|
17. Horizontal
Mental Cleavage, Extraversion of Somatotonia
|
17. Vertical
Mental Cleavage, Introversion
|
18. Relaxation
and Sociophilia under Alcohol
|
18.
Assertiveness and Aggression under Alcohol
|
18. Resistance
to Alcohol, and to Other Depressant Drugs
|
19. Need of
People When Troubled
|
19. Need of
Action When Troubled
|
19. Need of
Solitude When Troubled
|
20. Orientation
Toward Childhood and Family Relationships
|
20. Orientation
Toward Goals and Activities of Youth
|
20. Orientation
Toward the Later Periods
|
Assessment
The main idea of
the Sheldon’s research was to clarify the constitutional or biological side of
the nature and nurture question. But there is no nurture without a nature to
nurture. There is no nature that is not being continually influenced by a
particular environment. Even with Sheldon's careful evaluation of both
somatotype and temperament, most of the 200 cases he described differ in these
two classifications, and furthermore, even people of the same somatotype and
roughly the same temperament index have widely different personalities when it
comes to achievement.
Sheldon
describes, for example, 8 men of the 2-3-5 somatotype, and 'gives their
temperament indexes as 1-3-7, 2-4-4, 1-5-4, 1-4-5, 2-3-6, 3-4-4, 3-3-6, 3-3-5.
These evaluations of temperament fall in a circular range around the position
of the somatotype that well illustrates Sheldon's views on the question of
heredity and environment.
There is a
natural given represented by the somatotype, but even on the level of physiologically
conditioned behavior, that is, at Sheldon's temperament level, there is a large
variety of different paths of development that can be followed due to different
life circumstances, and an even wider range of adjustment and adaptation. For
example, one of the 2-3-5s, temperamentally a 2-4-4, and with a very high
dysplasia, is one of the most promising men at the university.
The next case,
temperamentally a 1-5-4, reverses his morphological predominance. In other
words, he appears to have drifted from his biological moorings and created a
personality at odds with his natural predispositions. He has become highly
aggressive and violently disliked. And Sheldon has doubts about how well he
will fare in the future, and classifies him "normal through effort".
Sheldon's Motives
The original work
of Sheldon was used to characterize criminals and he found that most of the
criminals were mesomorphs because violent crimes were usually committed by big
strong men. It makes sense because according to Sheldon's theory, people with a
muscular and attractive body tend to be competitive and want power and
dominance. This also proved that mesomorphic people are usually criminal in
nature.
Critics
Sheldon's work
was heavily burdened by his racist, anti-Semitic and sexist views. There is
evidence that different physiques carry cultural stereotypes. For example, one
study found that endomorphs are likely to be perceived as slow, sloppy, and
lazy. Mesomorphs, in contrast, are typically stereotyped as popular and
hardworking, whereas ectomorphs are often viewed as intelligent but fearful and
usually take part in long distance sports, such as marathon running.
Stereotypes of mesomorphs are generally much more favorable than those of
endomorphs. Stereotypes of ectomorphs are somewhat mixed. Sheldon's ideas that
body type was an indicator of temperament, moral character or potential while
popular in an atmosphere accepting of the theories of eugenics were soon widely
discredited. The principle criticism of Sheldon's constitutional theory was
that it was not a theory at all but one general assumption, continuity between
structure and behavior, and a set of descriptive concepts to measure physique and
behavior in a scaled manner. HIs methodology was also criticized.
Still, some
specialists consider the theory as a good basis for the temperament evaluation
and assessment and claim the very positive experience with somatype
investigation as the starting point for the personality exploration.
Sources and Additional Information:
