| Abstract: | "Investigations of personality may be focused upon any one of three different levels of phenomena. The first is the level of traits, interests, attitudes, or sentiments considered 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, a 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 approaching 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 considerable 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 assume that it is only through our perceptions of 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. Expressive movement in this monograph refers to those aspects of movement which are distinctive enough to differentiate one individual from another. The present study goes beyond the tradition of the psychology of individual differences; it treats the question of the agreement among individual differences, with special reference to the motor field. The discovery of well-integrated and consistent expression in the motor field would establish a presumption that similar patterning is to be expected in all aspects of personality, but it is for the future to show the exact relation of expressive movement to "inner" traits and to impression"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved). |
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