Psychoanalytic theory suggests that people with oral characteristics should be dependent on others and should develop skills in predicting the responses of others. Using previously unacquainted students, the experimenters found that males who reported many oral images were better than low-oral males at predicting male personality test responses. Orality was unrelated to accurate perception by males of females or to accuracy of females' interpersonal perception. To corroborate this finding, Peace Corps trainees, previously well acquainted, were studied. Results were identical: Orality was significantly related to accurate interpersonal perception for males predicting males but only in that case. An independent assessment of fitness for Peace Corps work was positively related to both oral imagery and accurate interpersonal perception.The personality characteristics of accurate judges. These results were explained on the perceivers of others are not well understood. Because of the methodological problems involved in obtaining measures of accuracy of perceiving others (Cronbach, 1955;Shrauger & Altrocchi, 1964), the question has not been widely investigated. It is known that an important influence in shaping perceptions of others is "the manner in which the perceiver structures his interpersonal world fDornbusch, Hastorf, Richardson, Muzzy, & Vreeland, 1965, p. 440]." Psychoanalytic typology provides one model for the way in which perceivers structure their perceptual world. Gordon (1966Gordon ( , 1967, using a task that avoided many of the pitfalls described by Cronbach and Shrauger and Altrocchi had graduate students in clinical psychology evaluate a sample projective protocol. She found that judges scoring low on a penciland-paper test of anality showed more confidence in their ratings, saw the test subject as having fewer healthy aspects, and reported him to be less likable than did high-anal

A study focused on insensitivity of adults to children was presented and discussed. The responses of 100 male and 100 female college undergraduates to hypothetical parent-child problem situations indicated a general lack of communication concerning the child's and their own feelings. However, when the problems involved adult needs being aroused and thwarted, theSs' responses were both more insensitive and destructive than when the confrontation centered around only the child's aroused needs. In the latter case theSs did focus their communications more on the child's feelings and how he or she could express them. The results have implications for understanding effective adult behavior and reciprocal adult-child influences on the development of child-behavior dysfunctions.