Sheldon
Definition
William Sheldon, the American psychologist who set out continuous somatotyping in Varieties of Human Physique (1940) and reported mesomorphy overrepresented among delinquent youth in Varieties of Delinquent Youth (1949).
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...
- Kallikak Family
- The pseudonymous family Henry Goddard traced in The Kallikak Family (1912), comparing a line he called feebleminded against a respectable line from...
- 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...
- Somatotype
- William Sheldon's classification of body build, rating each person on three components (endomorphy, mesomorphy, ectomorphy) rather than sorting into a single discrete...