Body build and behavior in emotionally disturbed Dutch children

Some physique-behavior relations were determined in 75 boys and 51 girls, aged 6 to 14, in a residential treatment center in Holland. Each child's behavior was rated by four group workers on a checklist yielding eight summary scores. Physique was judged from nude photographs for manifest endomorphy, mesomorphy, and ectomorphy. While a number of moderate-sized relations appeared in zero-order and multiple correlations, canonical analysis showed two significant, independent sets of relations between physique and behavior in the boys, one in the girls. Among the boys, one set related mesomorphy and energy level, the other related primarily ectomorphy with unsocialness, excitability, and cooperativeness. Among the girls, these same behaviors were compressed in a single set, primarily relating energy level but also unsocialness, excitability, and cooperativeness positively with mesomorphy and negatively with endomorphy and ectomorphy. Compared with findings on the same instrument in a sample of normal American preschoolers, many individual associations were similar, despite differences in culture and language, age, intelligence, social status, adjustment, and residential setting of the S's.