"On the basis of certain postulates derived from role theory, a significant relationship between nonconformant perceptual responses and deviant social behavior is hypothesized. Three experiments were performed to test this hypothesis. The first experiment compared the distribution of responses of normals and schizophrenics to a set of schematized stick figures of humans in various postures. The normal subjects were found to have J-curve distributions as contrasted with the rectangular distributions of the schizophrenic sample. In a second experiment the number of conformant responses of a group of normal subjects was found to bear a significant relationship to their social adjustment as judged by test profiles. A third, crossvalidational, experiment indicated the stability of the relationship." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)