Patterns of Personality Rigidity and Some of Their Determinants
Abstract
The hypothesis that forms the basis for the measurement procedures utilized in this study is that there are persistent personality rigidity trends which are relatively independent of intelligence. Sixty subjects participated in the project. They comprised three distinct groups: twenty normals, twenty conversion hysterics, and twenty paranoid schizophrenics. To hold the sex factor constant only women subjects were used. The tasks finally included in the rigidity battery were selected to represent a scatter of situations ranging from those in which the subject deals only with very simple stimuli and a limited number of alternatives, to those in which the subject deals with very complex stimuli and multiple alternatives. The findings described below are based on a study of sixty women of average intelligence—twenty normal subjects, twenty conversion hysterics, and twenty paranoid schizophrenics. However, this kind of differentiation is only on a rough group basis and not of sufficient clarity to permit the use of such measures as individual diagnostic tools in the conventional sense of the present diagnostic system of classification.