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Constitutional psychology is a theory developed in the 1940s by American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon, which asserts that human temperament is correlated with physical body type. Sheldon proposed a typology of physical types, based on the three germ layers of embryonic development. The three 'pure' types - Viscerotonia, Somatotonia, and Cerebrotonia (more commonly known as Endomorphy, Mesomorphy, and Ectomorphy) are conceived to exist in various degrees within each individual, so that individuals tend to display emotional states consistent with the more dominant type.

Sheldon's original theory was far-ranging, combining ontogenesis, Freudian psychology, and even physical differences between racial types. While the theory was never fully embraced by academia and had run its course in the scientific world by the late 1950's, it had and has a significant popular following, and can still be found - without the racial or Freudian overtones - in New Age and sports medicine contexts.

In his 1954 book, Atlas of Men, Sheldon categorised all possible body types according to a scale ranging from 1 to 7 for each of the three "somatotypes", where the pure "endomorph" is 7–1–1, the pure "mesomorph" 1–7–1 and the pure "ectomorph" scores 1–1–7. From type number, an individual's mental characteristics could supposedly be predicted.

Sheldon's theory dominated the mainstream in the 1940s and 1950s. Nowadays, only about half of textbooks treat his theory as credible:

"Half the textbooks in [ his ] area fail to take [ him ] seriously," remarked one academician in a 1992 paper on Sheldon's legacy.

—Rosenbaum, Ron ♦ The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal The New York Times, 15 January 1995

The three types

Sheldon came to the conclusion that an individual's somatotype determines not the quantity but the quality of the individual's emotional energy:

The phenomenon of emotionality as such seems to be a variable nearly independent of what we have called the primary components of temperament. Differences lie in the manner of expressing emotion, and perhaps also in the kind or quality of emotion. Since this last variable refers really to a quality of consciousness itself, we have no way of comparing it in different individuals, except by inference drawn from outward behavior. Cerebrotonic people seem to feel emotion more intensely, or more acutely, than do either viscerotonic or somatotonic people. Their sensory responses in general seem to be sharper and more discriminative. If this is actually the case, then in one sense they have more emotion, or are more emotional.

—Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 82

File:Sheldonian somatotypes.png

The extreme endomorphic, mesomorphic, and ectomorphic somatotypes.

Viscerotonia	Somatotonia	Cerebrotonia
Endomorphy (sphericity^[1])	Mesomorphy (squareness^[2])	Ectomorphy (linearity^[3])
Mongoloids^[4]^[5]	Nordics^[6]	Jews
Psychosomatic infantility^[7]	Psychosomatic adolescence^[8]	Psychosomatic maturity
Nonresistance and addiction to alcohol and other relaxants		Resistance and aversion to alcohol and other relaxants^[9]
The high disgregation of emotions results in a low sensitivity^[10] and an Epimethean resistance to macrostate changes or, in plain language, to revolutionary, qualitative changes.		The low disgregation of emotions results in a high sensitivity^[10] and a Promethean propensity to macrostate changes or, in plain language, to revolutionary, qualitative changes.
In contrast to the concentrated emotional energy of the cerebrotonic, the emotional energy of the viscerotonic is rarefied and exerts a negative pressure—suction (the oral-erotic Freudian stage).^[11] This emotional suction accounts for the attractiveness (cuteness) and amiability^[12] of viscerotonic individuals, such as aquatic mammals,^[13] children, women, and the Mongoloids (see Cuteness in Japanese culture)		Since the emotional energy of the cerebrotonic is pent up like the energy of a volcano,^[14] it exerts a positive pressure (repulsion) and finds vent in "volcanic eruptions"—ejaculations (the genital Freudian stage). This emotional repulsion accounts for the unatractiveness (uncuteness) of the cerebrotonic (cf. the repulsive appearance of Hephaestus, the god of volcanoes)

Viscerotonia

There is the strong suggestion of a certain flabbiness ot lack of intensity in the mental and moral outlook. It is a personality without fire, and it gives off no sparks. There is a dull, vegetable-like quality, as if the fires of life burned slowly, without concentration of heat. The personality suggests lack of purpose beyond the elementary biological purposes. The relaxed protrusion of the lips (V-1) often brings to mind the picture of infantilism. There is relatively poor circulation in the hands and feet, which tend to be cold, weak, flabby and atonic.

—Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 43

Due to their spiritual vacuity (suction), viscerotonics are prone to "sucking up to each other" or "agglutinating" into a single totalitarian aggregate:

Viscerotonic people are extremely agglutinative. They tend to club together and to seek their satisfactions by supporting the group against the variant individual, or against individuality. They are Epimethean, as contrasted with Promethean. This tendency is perhaps a natural outcome of the combination of strong biological appetite and individual muscular weakness. Cerebrotonic people, lovers of solitude, represent an exactly antithetical tendency, and when they have a fairly strong supporting somatotonia they tend to become individualists, and haters of viscerotonic propriety. Along this cleavage line, many of the generalized hostilities seen in human life appear to take their origin.

—Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 36

Miscellaneous

Correlations of the order of about +.80 between the two levels of personality (morphological and temperamental) indicate that temperament may be much more closely related to the physical constitution than has usually been supposed.

—Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 11

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.^[15] Stereotypes of mesomorphs are generally much more favorable than those of endomorphs. Stereotypes of ectomorphs are somewhat mixed.

The three body type descriptions could be modulated by body composition, which can be altered by specific diets and training techniques. In a famine, a person who was once considered an endomorph may begin to instead resemble an ectomorph, while an athletic mesomorph may begin to look more like an endomorph as he ages and loses muscle mass. However, some aspects of the somatotype cannot be changed: muscle and adipose mass may change but the bone structure is a fixed characteristic.

Modern assessments

Sheldon's theory was acclaimed by Abraham Maslow, Aldous Huxley, and Robert S de Ropp.^[16] Some^[who?] find the idea of somatotypes reminiscent of eugenics and racial hygiene; they went against the fashionable emphasis on nurture, presenting a ready-made paradigm that had strong resonances with mystical thought.

Sheldon's photographs of naked Ivy League undergraduates, numbered in the thousands, were taken under the umbrella of a pre-existing program ostensibly evaluating student posture. The photos were in fact collected by Sheldon to provide data for his ideas about somatotypes, although as "part of a facade or cover-up" the students and schools were told that the photos were taken to evaluate posture.^[16]

References

^ Endomorph Britannica
^ Mesomorph Britannica
^ Ectomorph Britannica
^ Encyclopaedia Britannica University of Chicago, 1951, p. 900 ♦ "Among the Mongoloid majority, obesity is relatively rare, but the bone-fat index (proportion of osseous to adipose tissues) is high"
^ Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, pp. 255, 256 ♦ "As another alternative, it is possible to rationalize a general orientational schema for life on essentially viscerotonic grounds. Buddhism has done so, and Buddha is rarely pictured as less than 5 in the first component, both morphologically and motivationally. In Buddhist doctrines we find a fairly consistent exposition of viscerotonia. We find relaxation, deliberateness, love of comfort, pleasure in digestion, ceremoniousness, tolerance, complacency, love of sleep, orientation toward family, in short, viscerotonia. And for an honest rationalization of viscerotonia, read Lin Yutang's book, The Importance of Living."
^ Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 255 ♦ "But for some time now, as is especially obvious in Germany, a vigorous religious movement has been afoot which is based squarely on unsublimated somatotonia."
^ Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 47 ♦ "V-20. Orientation toward Infancy, and toward Family Relationships. There is deep love of the period of infancy and of the idea of being a child."
^ Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 67 ♦ "S-20. Orientation toward the Goals and Activities of Youth. There is a deep love of the activities of the strenuous period of youth."
^ Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 91 ♦ "C-18. Resistance to Alcohol, and to other Depressant Drugs. The effect of alcohol is essentially unpleasant. The cerebrotonic sense of strain increases, and after a short time there is a feeling of dizziness and of increased fatigue. The euphoria and sense of expansive freedom which follow moderate alcoholizing in viscerotonia and in somatotonia, are absent in cerebrotonia. Alcohol, a cerebral depressant, produces general depression when the third component is predominant. In cerebrotonia, therefore, there appears to be general physiological resistance to the depressive action of this drug, in contrast to the grateful yielding to it that is seen in viscerotonia and somatotonia. The same phenomenon is seen in the reaction of cerebrotonic people both to anaesthesia and to the hypnotic (sleep-producing) drugs commonly used to combat insomnia or restlessness. When cerebrotonia is predominant the common hypnotics in ordinary dosage have little effect except that of rendering the patient more tired the next day, as if he had been through a battle the night before. One of our own earliest clinical observations was the fact that certain patients require from two to three times as large a dosage of general anaesthetic as the normal prescription, to put them to sleep. These patients turned out to be what we have later called the cerebrotonics."
^ ^a ^b Disgregation or entropy, understood as the number of internal degrees of freedom, is a measure of insensitivity.
^ Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 35 ♦ "Persons high in the V-6 trait are great kissers, chewers and suckers. They are sometimes called 'oral-erotic' by the Freudians. They tend to carry their usually heavy, flaccid lips in a permanent sucking position, in sharp contrast with the compressed lips of cerebrotonia."
^ Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 38 "V-9. Indiscriminate Amiability. General, or promiscuous amiability. The individual is conspicuously demonstrative of good will. There is a constant, effortless emanation of amiable intent, the sincerity of which cannot be, and never is questioned. … It is as if he were continuously spraying the world with a pot of rose water."
^ Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 31 ♦ "V-1. ... The arms often show a limp relaxation like that of a seal's flipper, and the hands are likely to be soft and flaccid."
^ Cite error: The named reference Condensed emotions was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Ryckman, R. M., Robbins, M. A., Kaczor, L. M., & Gold, J. A. (1989). Male and female raters' stereotyping of male and female physiques. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 244-251.
^ ^a ^b Rosenbaum, Ron (January 15, 1995). "The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal". New York Times. Retrieved December 2, 2011.

Sources

Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Human Physique (An Introduction to Constitutional Psychology) ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1940
Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942
Sheldon, William H. ♦ Varieties of Delinquent Youth (An Introduction to Constitutional Psychiatry) ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1949
Atlas of Men (A Guide for Somatotyping the Adult Male at All Ages) ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1954
Hartl, Emil M.; Monnelly, Edward P.; Elderkin, Roland D. ♦ Physique and Delinquent Behavior (A Thirty-year Follow-up of William H. Sheldon’s Varieties of Delinquent Youth) ♦ Academic Press, 1982
Gerrig, Richard; Zimbardo, Phillip G. ♦ Psychology and Life ♦ 7th ed.

External links

Ectomorph Britannica

[1] Endomorph Britannica

[2] Mesomorph Britannica

[3] Ectomorph Britannica

[4] Encyclopaedia Britannica University of Chicago, 1951, p. 900 ♦ "Among the Mongoloid majority, obesity is relatively rare, but the bone-fat index (proportion of osseous to adipose tissues) is high"

[5] Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, pp. 255, 256 ♦ "As another alternative, it is possible to rationalize a general orientational schema for life on essentially viscerotonic grounds. Buddhism has done so, and Buddha is rarely pictured as less than 5 in the first component, both morphologically and motivationally. In Buddhist doctrines we find a fairly consistent exposition of viscerotonia. We find relaxation, deliberateness, love of comfort, pleasure in digestion, ceremoniousness, tolerance, complacency, love of sleep, orientation toward family, in short, viscerotonia. And for an honest rationalization of viscerotonia, read Lin Yutang's book, The Importance of Living."

[6] Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 255 ♦ "But for some time now, as is especially obvious in Germany, a vigorous religious movement has been afoot which is based squarely on unsublimated somatotonia."

[7] Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 47 ♦ "V-20. Orientation toward Infancy, and toward Family Relationships. There is deep love of the period of infancy and of the idea of being a child."

[8] Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 67 ♦ "S-20. Orientation toward the Goals and Activities of Youth. There is a deep love of the activities of the strenuous period of youth."

[9] Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 91 ♦ "C-18. Resistance to Alcohol, and to other Depressant Drugs. The effect of alcohol is essentially unpleasant. The cerebrotonic sense of strain increases, and after a short time there is a feeling of dizziness and of increased fatigue. The euphoria and sense of expansive freedom which follow moderate alcoholizing in viscerotonia and in somatotonia, are absent in cerebrotonia. Alcohol, a cerebral depressant, produces general depression when the third component is predominant. In cerebrotonia, therefore, there appears to be general physiological resistance to the depressive action of this drug, in contrast to the grateful yielding to it that is seen in viscerotonia and somatotonia. The same phenomenon is seen in the reaction of cerebrotonic people both to anaesthesia and to the hypnotic (sleep-producing) drugs commonly used to combat insomnia or restlessness. When cerebrotonia is predominant the common hypnotics in ordinary dosage have little effect except that of rendering the patient more tired the next day, as if he had been through a battle the night before. One of our own earliest clinical observations was the fact that certain patients require from two to three times as large a dosage of general anaesthetic as the normal prescription, to put them to sleep. These patients turned out to be what we have later called the cerebrotonics."

[Neuronal_disgregation-10] Disgregation or entropy, understood as the number of internal degrees of freedom, is a measure of insensitivity.

[11] Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 35 ♦ "Persons high in the V-6 trait are great kissers, chewers and suckers. They are sometimes called 'oral-erotic' by the Freudians. They tend to carry their usually heavy, flaccid lips in a permanent sucking position, in sharp contrast with the compressed lips of cerebrotonia."

[12] Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 38 "V-9. Indiscriminate Amiability. General, or promiscuous amiability. The individual is conspicuously demonstrative of good will. There is a constant, effortless emanation of amiable intent, the sincerity of which cannot be, and never is questioned. … It is as if he were continuously spraying the world with a pot of rose water."

[13] Sheldon, William H. ♦ The Varieties of Temperament ♦ Harper & Brothers, 1942, p. 31 ♦ "V-1. ... The arms often show a limp relaxation like that of a seal's flipper, and the hands are likely to be soft and flaccid."

[Condensed_emotions-14] Cite error: The named reference Condensed emotions was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[15] Ryckman, R. M., Robbins, M. A., Kaczor, L. M., & Gold, J. A. (1989). Male and female raters' stereotyping of male and female physiques. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 244-251.

[nyt-rosenbaum-16] Rosenbaum, Ron (January 15, 1995). "The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal". New York Times. Retrieved December 2, 2011.

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 ==Modern assessments==
-Sheldon's theories enjoyed a vogue as the "pop-psych flavor of the month" through the 1950s, influencing [[Abraham Maslow]], [[Aldous Huxley]], and [[Robert S de Ropp]].<ref name="nyt-rosenbaum">{{cite news | work = [[New York Times]] | first = Ron | last = Rosenbaum | title = The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal| date = January 15, 1995 | accessdate= December 2, 2011 | url = http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy-league-nude-posture-photo-scandal.html}}</ref> Modern scientists, however, generally dismiss his claims as outdated, if not outright [[quackery]].<ref name="nyt-sealed">{{cite news | work = [[New York Times]] | url = http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/21/us/nude-photos-are-sealed-at-smithsonian.html | date = January 21, 1995 | accessdate = December 2, 2011 | title= Nude Photos Are Sealed At Smithsonian}}</ref> Some{{who|date=November 2010}} found the idea of somatotypes reminiscent of [[eugenics]] and [[racial hygiene]]; they went against the fashionable emphasis on nurture, presenting a ready-made paradigm that had strong resonances with mystical thought.
+Sheldon's theory was acclaimed by [[Abraham Maslow]], [[Aldous Huxley]], and [[Robert S de Ropp]].<ref name="nyt-rosenbaum">{{cite news | work = [[New York Times]] | first = Ron | last = Rosenbaum | title = The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal| date = January 15, 1995 | accessdate= December 2, 2011 | url = http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/15/magazine/the-great-ivy-league-nude-posture-photo-scandal.html}}</ref> Some{{who|date=November 2010}} find the idea of somatotypes reminiscent of [[eugenics]] and [[racial hygiene]]; they went against the fashionable emphasis on nurture, presenting a ready-made paradigm that had strong resonances with mystical thought.
 Sheldon's [[Ivy League nude posture photos|photographs of naked Ivy League undergraduates]], numbered in the thousands, were taken under the umbrella of a pre-existing program ostensibly evaluating student posture. The photos were in fact collected by Sheldon to provide data for his ideas about somatotypes, although as "part of a facade or cover-up" the students and schools were told that the photos were taken to evaluate posture.<ref name="nyt-rosenbaum"/>
-The words endomorphic, mesomorphic and ectomorphic are still sometimes used to describe body types, as, for example, in association with [[weight training]] aimed at gaining muscle.
 ==See also==