I wish first to emphasize my belief that where there is a great
natural variation in excitability and emotionality in
individuals, there is not nearly so much in races as we think,
and that social heredity is tradition and cultural level plays
the more important role in this. My friend and colleague, Dr. A.
Warren Stearns, has made a study which shows that while the
immigrant Italian is excitable and quick to anger and of
revengeful reactions, his American-born descendent has so far
controlled and changed this type of reaction that he does not
especially figure in police records, in murders or assaults. My
own studies of the second and especially the third generation Jew
show there is an almost complete approach to the "American" type
in emotional display, in what is known as poise. This third
generation Jewish-American has dropped all the mannerisms of
excitability in gesture and voice, and his adherence to good form
includes that attitude of nonchalant humor so characteristic of
the American.
1. The generally excitable, overemotional type. This type is more
common in the Latin, Hebrew and Celtic races. In some respects it
corresponds to the hypokinetic irritable, but it is not
necessarily hypokinetic. The artistic type of person, so called,
is of this group, but is, of course, talented as well. Talent
need not be present, and there are persons of no artistic ability
whatever who show a generalized, excitable-emotional temperament.
All young children show the main traits of this type, and there
is something essentially simple about all these folk, no matter
how civilized or sophisticated they get to be.
A. L., a woman of fifty, belongs to this group. She is a Jewess
and now a widow. All of her life her character and temperament
have been the same, and though her experiences have been varied
she has not in any essential altered. This last is rather
characteristic of the group, for experience has but little effect
on their emotional reactions.
A. L. cries very easily and readily, but her tears are easily
dried and her joy is grotesquely childlike. She is readily
frightened, worries without restraint and finds a melancholy
satisfaction in the worst. At the same time, her fears do not
persist and are easily dissipated by encouragement or good
fortune. She is readily angered and "raises a row" with great
facility and without restraint. For this reason her relatives and
friends become panic-stricken when she becomes angry, for they
know that she does not hesitate to make an embarrassing scene. In
the efforts to conciliate her they are apt to give her her own
way, as a result of which she is the proverbial spoiled child,
capitalizing her weakness.
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