Studies In Expressive Movement (Paperback)

STUDIES IN EXPRESSIVE MOVEMENT BY GORDON W. ALLPORT, Pn. D. ASSISTANT PROFBSSOK OF PSYCHOLOGY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY AND PHILIP E. VERNON, M. A., Pn. D, FELLOW OF ST. JOHNS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY With a chapter on Matching Sketches of Personality with Script, by EDWIN POWERS, A. M. DARTMOUTH COLLEGE Nfttt THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1933 INTRODUCTION Investigations of personality may be focuspd upon any one of three different levels of phenomena. The first is the level of traits, interests, attitudes, or sentiments con sidered as composing an inner personality the second is the level of behavior and expression the third is the level of impression, the perception and interpretation of behavior by another. Since a discovery on one of these levels establishes a presumption that the phenomenon in question has some counterpart on the other levels, T problem which is elusive on one plane may often be more expediently attacked on another. This is the motive and, the plan behind the present study. Instead of approach ing the difficult problem of consistency or organization in personality through a study of inner dispositions which, of course, can only be known indirectly through tests and scales, we have chosen to refer the problem to the level of expressive movement and there to examine it in a more direct fashion. Besides being expedient, this policy of referring knotty problems of personality to the field of expression has con siderable theoretical justification. Unless we accept the epistemology of intuitionism, we are forced to regard our judgments of personality as inferential constructs based upon our sensory perception of expression and to as sume that it is only through our perceptionsof the physical bodies, speech, or gesture of our associates that we derive any knowledge of their natures From this point of view the direct study of expression is the most natural possible approach to the study of personality. ri INTKODUCTION This statement is not intended to imply that the prob lem of expressive movement is coextensive with the prob lem of personality. There are innumerable questions con cerning the dispositions that lie behind movement and the effect of this movement upon observers. It would be misleading, for example, to claim that whatever con sistency we may find in expression must have an exact counterpart in the latent dispositions of personality or in the perceptions or impressions of others. Kohler 89 pp. 261 ff, and Ichheiser 76, 77 have shown that the problem qf the interrelation of these three levels is very intricate although each in itself shows a certain struc tured quality, the central, the motor, and the phenomenal organizations may not strictly correspond. Ichheiser be lieves, for example, that there is much greater unity in the impressions gained from a persons acts than there is among the acts themselves, and he gives reasons why the ethical dispositional self and the aesthetic expressed self may likewise be at variance. Hence, in approaching consistency from the side of ex pression, we cannot claim to cover in full the problem of organization of personality. Consistency may be, and actually has been, studied on both the other levels. Re search on the internal consistency of attitude scales and tests for traits attack the problem from the point of view of inner JJ dispositions. The experiments of Wolff and Arnheim cf. pp. 11-15 study unity from theside of impression. A synthesis of all these approaches would contribute much to an understanding of the nature of organization in personality, but in the present preliminary state of research, investigators may be excused for pre ferring to confine themselves to one level. Jhe failure of experimenters and writers, however, to recognize other levels than the one on which they work, often leads to INTRODUCTION vii restricted and inadequate definitions of personality...