Some Investigations into Dimensions of Physique and their Relationships with Rorschach Responses

Abstract

Perhaps the principal objection which has been raised against Sheldon's claims to have established the existence of clear-cut relationships between physique and temperament has been that the temperamental ratings have been made in a basically subjective manner, and by the same observers who have made the estimations of body build. In these circumstances it is almost inevitable that pre-conceived ideas on the part of the investigator as to the nature of the relationships will tend to bias his ratings in estimating temperament. We can therefore place little credence in the extremely high correlations which he reports between his physical and temperamental dimensions until they have been reproduced under conditions where the halo effect has been eliminated. Eysenk (1953) has summarised two papers in which researches have been reported which have attempted independent investigation of Sheldon's claims. Fiske (1944) found that the number of significant relationships found in a study of adolescent boys did not exceed chance expectancy. Child (1950) reports somewhat more favourable results. He used 414 Yale students, who, like Fiske's adolescents, had been somatotyped by Sheldon himself. The students rated themselves on 96 traits based on Sheldon's descriptions of his three temperamental types, and these self ratings were then correlated with their somatotype ratings. The questionnaire items which showed the highest correlations for half of the population were constituted as scales for each of Sheldon's temperamental dimensions, and correlations between these scales and the Sheldonian physical dimensions were calculated for the other half of the population. Viscerotonia and endomorphy correlated .13, somatotonia and mesomorphy .38, and cerebrotonia and ectomorphy .27. These correlations, while in the predicted direction, are very much lower than those reported by Sheldon. It is also interesting that ectomorphy and, particularly, mesomorphy, have more clear-cut relationships with their temperamental correlates than has ectomorphy.