BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie
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Other people were strong in two elements, and had less of the third. They fell<br />
in between the poles of Sheldon's diagram. Four of these combinations<br />
captured our attention. There was the hefty muscular person, the muscular thin<br />
person, and close to him, the thinner yet still muscular person, and between the<br />
ectomorph and the endomorph the person who was spread out and round<br />
without really being muscular.<br />
In the middle are mid-range physiques well endowed with all the basic<br />
elements. And somewhere in this panoramic rainbow of physiques is you. Can<br />
you find yourself?<br />
The classification of body types was not Sheldon's ultimate goal.<br />
He wanted to help resolve the age-old question: Whether our body type<br />
was connected with the way we acted (eat and sleep, laugh and snore,<br />
speak and walk)? In short, he wanted to explore the link between body and<br />
temperament, un<strong>de</strong>rstood as body type in action. Sheldon's procedure in<br />
looking for the basic components of temperament was much like the one<br />
he used in discovering the body type components. He interviewed in <strong>de</strong>pth<br />
several hundred people and tried to find traits which would <strong>de</strong>scribe the<br />
basic elements of their behavior. He found there were three basic<br />
components which he called viscerotonia, somatotonia and cerebrotonia,<br />
and named endotonia, mesotonia and ectotonia.<br />
Endotonia is seen in the love of relaxation, comfort, food and people.<br />
Mesotonia is centered on assertiveness and a love of action.<br />
Ectotonia focuses on privacy, restraint and a highly <strong>de</strong>veloped<br />
self-awareness.<br />
Sheldon <strong>de</strong>vised a way of numerically rating the strength of each<br />
area based on a check-list of 60 characteristics (see the end of this chapter<br />
34