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Body types' influence on personality
Name: Niki T
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
I need some information about somatotypes (how different body types influence personality). If anyone has any information for me, I would greatly
appreciate it. Thank you.
Replies:
Well...you want literature or fact? It sounds a little like you're
thinking of the famous old classification of a person's body and spirit as
ectomorph, mesomorph or endomorph, which could be loosely translated as
"thin and nervy", "husky and cheerful", and "fat and sullen". This is a
little like the old medieval thesis that four "humors" controlled
personality: blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile. The dominance of
each made you, in order, sanguine (sang- being a prefix that means blood
in Latin), melancholy, phlegmatic or bilious. (I may have melancholy and
bilious mixed up.) The meanings of the words to describe people and their
behaviour have stuck, although the original theory is long gone. Robertson
Davies has his toy scientist in his novel "The Rebel Angels" expound a cute
pseudo-scientific thesis like the ecto/meso/endomorph division but more
complicated.
Now if you want fact, oy. The relationship between what you look like
and how you act and feel is pretty complicated and largely unknown. If you
mean effects that operate entirely within yourself, I don't know where to
start. If you mean effects that result from your interaction with
society, perhaps a text on social psychology like Aronson's "The Social
Animal" is a place to start.
Christopher Grayce
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Update: June 2012
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