Kallikak Family
Definition
The pseudonymous family Henry Goddard traced in The Kallikak Family (1912), comparing a line he called feebleminded against a respectable line from the same ancestor to argue feeblemindedness and criminality were a single inherited trait.
Related terms
- Endocrine Gland Theory
- Max Schlapp and Edward Smith's claim, in The New Criminology (1928), that malfunctioning hormone-secreting glands disrupt emotional balance closely enough to explain...
- Jukes Family
- The New York frontier family Richard Dugdale traced across roughly 700 descendants in The Jukes (1877), reporting disproportionate crime, pauperism, and disease...
- Kretschmer
- Ernst Kretschmer, the German psychiatrist who proposed four body types (pyknic, leptosomic, athletic, dysplastic) linked to temperament in Physique and Character (1921).
- Mesomorph
- Sheldon's muscular, broad-shouldered somatotype, which he linked to the temperament trait he called somatotonia and, empirically, to higher rates of officially recorded...
- Multiple-Factor Theory
- The position, associated with William Healy, Augusta Bronner, and Cyril Burt, that delinquency has many interacting causes and must be investigated case...
- Pedigree Study
- A research method that traces a trait such as criminality or 'feeblemindedness' through several generations of one family to argue the trait...
- Sheldon
- William Sheldon, the American psychologist who set out continuous somatotyping in Varieties of Human Physique (1940) and reported mesomorphy overrepresented among delinquent...
- Somatotype
- William Sheldon's classification of body build, rating each person on three components (endomorphy, mesomorphy, ectomorphy) rather than sorting into a single discrete...