The Representation of the Body Self in Human Figure Drawings

Abstract

The matching of 25 frontal drawings of the female human figure with 25 frontal photographs of the college women who drew the figures was attempted by 30 male graduate psychology students and 30 women religious graduate students of art. The drawings and photos were arranged in envelopes according to a balanced lattice design, and presented to each of the judges in different envelopes in an order determined by randomized latin squares. Both groups matched the drawings with the photographs of the same Ss at significantly higher than chance expectancy (p<.01). These findings suggest that this matching technique may be of some value in testing the hypothesis of objective body self projection in human figure drawings.