Phrenology (from Greek: φρήν, phrēn, "mind"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is a defunct topic of study, once considered a science, in which the personality traits of a person were determined by "reading" bumps and fissures in the skull. Developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall in 1796, the discipline was very popular in the 19th century. In 1843, François Magendie referred to phrenology as "a pseudo-science of the present day." Phrenological thinking was, however, influential in 19th-century psychiatry and modern neuroscience.

Phrenology is based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules (see modularity of mind). Phrenologists believed that the mind has a set of different mental faculties, with each particular faculty represented in a different area of the brain. These areas were said to be proportional to a person's propensities, and the importance of the given mental faculty.

It was believed that the cranial bone conformed in order to accommodate the different sizes of these particular areas of the brain in different individuals, so that a person's capacity for a given personality trait could be determined simply by measuring the area of the skull that overlies the corresponding area of the brain. As a type of theory of personality, phrenology can be considered to be an advance over the old medical theory of the four humours. However, it does not have any predictive power and is therefore dismissed as quackery by modern scientific discourse.

Phrenology, which focuses on personality and character, should be distinguished from craniometry, which is the study of skull size, weight and shape, and physiognomy, the study of facial features. However, researchers of these disciplines have claimed the ability to predict personality traits or intelligence (in fields such as anthropology/ethnology), and are alleged to have sometimes comprised a sort of scientific racism.

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