William Sheldon's Theory of Body Type and Temperament, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

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William Sheldon's theory of Body Type and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator William Sheldon's theory of Body Type and Temperament, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, commonly known as the MBTI, are two theories whose main goal is to give an answer for the way that humans behave. It is known that nowadays we live in a world where the variety of people is extensive and we are responsible for the way we look, although we can't control our appearance entirely. We decide what we are about to eat and how it will affect our bodies and our personality. Notwithstanding, is there a clear link between our physical appearance and the way we act? Is our mind the only responsible for human behavior? The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the differences between the MBTI and Sheldon's theory and, besides this, to try to answer these typical questions. To begin with, William Sheldon, by means of a comprehensive analysis of 4,000 photographs of college-age men in front, back and side views came to the conclusion that there are three fundamental elements of human physical form and that their mixture results in seven possible body types or somatotypes. He called these three elemens endomorphy, mesomorphy and ectomorphy, which were centered on the digestive system, the muscles and the brain and nervous system, respectively. Moreover, not satisfied with that, he wanted to check whether there are a connection between the body of a person and its personality and, in the same way that the MBTI does a self-assesment questionnaire to determine the degree of each psychological function in people personalities, he did several interviews to hundreds of people to find the features that define the link between people's body type and the way they behave. He found three types: endotonia, mesotonia and ectotonia; focused on comfort and food, love of action and
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