Is Body Type Related to Personality?

Body Weight and Personality

By: THEODORE MILLON and

      Seth Grossman

      Carrie Millon

      Sarah Meagher

      Rowena Ramnath

     

A long tradition of clinical speculation compares body characteristics with psychopathology.

Kretschmer (1925), for example, categorized individuals according to body build. The asthenic, one of four body types he proposed, was characterized by fragility, poor muscularity, and a frail bone structure. The greater an individual’s resemblance to the asthenic prototype, according to Kretschmer, the greater the chance of developing schizophrenia.

Because body types are rather global variables, contemporary researchers have begun to focus on more specific measures. Low birthweight, for example, has been associated with the development of mental disorders later in life (Kopp & Kaler, 1989).

Following up on this theme, Hebebrand et al. (1997) examined the relationship between the body mass index (an empirically derived statistic that correlates highly with body weight) and the schizoid personality and Asperger’s disorder, a syndrome similar to autism, in a sample of male adolescents diagnosed with one of the two disorders. The body mass index of all patients was significantly below normal.

What mediates the relationship between body weight and the schizoid personality is unclear. Clinical records indicate abnormal eating behavior by some patients, including fussiness about food, preference for unusual foods, habits of eating alone or only when at home, and hypochondriacal fears related to food. One patient commented that he had always been a “poor eater” (Hebebrand et al., 1997). Many schizoids seem to withdraw not only from the social world but also from themselves; they may be relatively insensitive to feelings of hunger. However, schizoids also derive little pleasure from anything. Accordingly, they may simply be anhedonic for eating; they don’t enjoy it, so they don’t eat much.

Another area of research in psychopathology links exposure to traumatic environmental events to the development of later characteristics. Hoek et al. (1996) studied the relationship between schizoid personality and prenatal exposure to famine, created by the Nazi blockade of western Holland during the winter of 1944 to 1945. Their findings show that the children of pregnant women affected during the first trimester of gestation were at significantly greater risk of developing a schizoid personality. These results were similar to those obtained in a previous study (Susser et al., 1996) that looked at the relationship between prenatal exposure to famine and schizophrenia. Perhaps both disorders, then, can be seen as existing on a continuum of prenatal damage, though this is only speculation.

References

Personality Disorders in Modern Life, second edition, 2000, 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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