Person Perception as a Function of Orality and Anality

Summary

The psychoanalytic theory of preoedipal fixation predicts that person perception is affected by basic characterological variables. Specifically, perceptual accuracy of nurturing figures is expected to be a function of orality, while a tendency to perceive authority as very different from oneself is hypothesized to be a function of anality. Thirty-one men and 24 women were given person perception scales, and their fixation scores were determined by Rorschach content analysis. The oral hypothesis was confirmed for women only, while the anal was confirmed for men only.