This study was designed to determine the effect of touch on the interpersonal attraction between therapist and patient. Four instruments were used to measure the effect, those measurements included "Client's Personal Reaction Questionnaire," "Attitudes Toward Psychotherapy and Psychotherapists Scale," actual physical distance and actual timed verbal measure. The general nature of the research hypotheses stated that the touch technique would increase the interpersonal attraction of the patients toward the therapist as indicated by the four measures. The results of the study led to the conclusion that touch during a single interview session effects statistically significant change in interpersonal attraction when measured by actual physical distance. However change in interpersonal attraction was not found when measured by the "Client's Personal Reaction Questionnaire," "Attitudes Toward Psychotherapy and Psychotherapists Scale" and an actual timed verbal measure. Implications of the study, based on observations of the experimenter, were that touch is successful in helping hospitalized neuropsychiatric patients increase their interpersonal attraction and that this attraction cannot always be measured by global questionnaires and specific amounts of verbalization. A similar study should be replicated with subjects other than neuropsychiatric patients, such as hospitalized medical patients, college students and children.

This thesis describes a series of empirical studies about perceptions of trustworthiness and trusting behaviour. My first three studies investigate how perceptions of trustworthiness are related to both general preferences for sexually dimorphic face characteristics and individual differences in these preferences. My first study (Chapter 2) provided evidence against a simplistic 'halo-effect' view of the relationship between attractiveness and trustworthiness. The next two studies (Chapters 3 and 4) clarified the role of perceptions of trustworthiness in individual differences in women’s preferences for sexually dimorphic cues in men’s faces; while perceptions of trustworthiness did not explain condition-dependent individual differences (Chapter 3), they were implicated in temporal context-dependent preferences, such as when women assessed men’s attractiveness for long-term relationships (Chapter 4). My next two studies examined perceptions of trustworthiness in different contexts. The first of these studies demonstrated that different individuals are more likely to be trusted according to the type of information that they are conveying (Chapter 5); men are more likely to be trusted when delivering male-stereotyped information and women are more likely to be trusted when delivering female-stereotyped information. The last of my studies (Chapter 6) demonstrated how own appearance affects trusting behaviour in an economic game; the extent to which participants trusted game partners who could see them more than game partners who could not see them was positively related to their other-rated attractiveness. Collectively, the findings reported in this thesis demonstrate the relationship between perceptions of attractiveness and perceptions of trustworthiness, highlighting the complexity and sophistication of the perception of these fundamental social characteristics.

The study examined children's evaluations and attributions in response to ingratiating acts directed at different targets in the presence or absence of an ulterior motive. According to an attributional analysis of ingratiation (Jones & McGillis, 1976; Jones & Wortman, 1973), attributions of enduring behavioral dispositions to ingratiators and evaluation of these ingratiators should vary as a function of presence or absence of ulterior motives and as a function of target status, because very high status targets are likely to control desirable benefits even when these are not made explicit. Ingratiators with ulterior motives and those who ingratiate high status targets should be evaluated less positively, and they should be seen as less likely to repeat their "nice" acts in other situations or to other targets. These "idealized predictions rest on the assumption of differential perception and evaluation of ingratiators ' motives under different circumstances. Children's ability to use motives in making moral evaluations of others has long been a subject of debate. However, few researchers have asked children about the dispositional implications of their moral evaluations. The present study was thus intended to examine children's evaluations and attributions in response to a morally relevant behavior (ingratiation) somewhat different from the behaviors most studies have investigated. It was expected that age-related changes in evaluation of strategic behaviors and changes in patterns of attribution would reflect a shift away from reliance on adult rules in judging acts and a corresponding increase in reliance on peer group norms. Male and female first, third, and fifth graders and an adult control group heard four stories about children who opinion conformed or did favors . The target of the acts was either a disliked (low, status) peer, a well-liked (high status) peer, or an adult (the ingratiator's teacher). Each act either occurred with no explicit ulterior motive, or it occurred after the ingratiator learned that the target controlled a benefit that the ingratiator very much desired, so that an ulterior motive was prominent. Subjects used rating scales to evaluate the ingratiators , to estimate the probability that they would repeat their acts, and to rate the effectiveness of the ingratiation. Subjects' were also asked for free response explanations of the ingratiators' behaviors, and they explained what they would do if they wanted to get a desirable benefit from one of the story targets. Favor doing was regarded far more positively than opinion conforming, and evaluation of ingratiation declined steadily with age. First graders tended to see all ingratiation as quite positive, likely to generalize, and likely to be effective. First graders were able to explain strategic favor-doing, but they had difficulty with opinion conformity. Among the other groups , motive became increasingly important with age as a determinant of both evaluations and predicted repetition of the act. Motive effects were not always in the expected direction, however. Ulterior motive opinion conformity to an adult was evaluated more positively than no ulterior motive opinion conformity, indicating that ingratiation of this target was less deplorable if the ingratiator was strongly tempted. Third graders in particular showed signs of regarding opinion conformity to an adult in a fairly favorable light. They thought an adult would be relatively likely to pick an opinion conformer to receive a desirable benefit, where- as the other age groups saw favor-doing as much more effective with an adult target. I^en asked how they themselves would try to influence a target, younger subjects of ten mentioned providing physical benefits while adults were more likely to suggest a straightforward request. The patterns of main effects seen on the measures pertaining to predictions of future behavior appeared to strongly resemble the one predicted by an attributional analysis of ingratiation. Children seemed more sensitive than adults to the power of the very high status adult target to elicit ingratiating acts . Patterns of attribution among third graders sometimes appeared more adult-like than those appearing among fifth graders . This paradoxical finding and third graders' relatively favorable responses to adult oriented opinion conformers are discussed in terms of third graders’ greater tendency to judge behavior in line with adult rules, while fifth graders may be more sensitive to peer groups norms. / This thesis was digitized as part of a project begun in 2014 to increase the number of Duke psychology theses available online. The digitization project was spearheaded by Ciara Healy.

Facial appearance has a strong effect on leadership selection. Ratings of perceived leadership ability from facial images have a pronounced influence on leadership selection in politics, from low-level municipal elections to the federal elections of the most powerful countries in the world. Furthermore, ratings of leadership ability from facial images of business leaders correlate with leadership performance as measured by profits earned. Two elements of facial appearance that have reliable effects of perceived leadership ability are perceived dominance and attractiveness. These cues have been predictive of leadership choices, both experimentally and in the real-world. Chapters 1 and 2 review research on face components that affect perceived dominance and attractiveness. Chapter 3 discusses how perceived dominance and attractiveness influence perception of leadership ability. Two characteristics that affect both perceived dominance and attractiveness are height and weight. Chapters 4-9 present empirical studies on two recently-discovered facial parameters: perceived height (how tall someone appears from their face) and facial adiposity (a reliable proxy of body mass index that influences perceived weight). Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate that these facial parameters alter facial attractiveness. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 examine how perceived height and facial adiposity influence perceived leadership ability. Chapter 9 examines how perceived height alters leadership perception in war and peace contexts. Chapter 10 summarises the empirical research reported in the thesis and draws conclusions from the findings. Chapter 10 also lists proposals for future research that could further enhance our knowledge of how facial cues to perceived body size influence democratic leadership selection.

One hundred and fifty undergraduate students at a Southwestern university rated the attractiveness of the face, body and full, face and body of 5 male and 5 female stimuli. The subjects also rated the full, face and body stimuli on 6 social and relationship variables. These ratings were used to determine the relative influence of facial attractiveness versus body attractiveness on overall assessments of attractiveness and social and relationship variables. Both facial and body attractiveness were predictive of all the overall assessments, but face was a more powerful predictor. A second analysis related perceived similarity of attractiveness and liking. Perceived similarity of attractiveness was not a significant factor in how much the subjects indicated they liked the stimuli.

Attention might be advantageously located to attractive faces. To clarify such an advantage in attentional process, the present study investigated the effects of facial attractiveness on two attentional processes, i.e., attention capture and attention adhesion. Attention adhesion refers to the difficulty to switch attention away, whereas attention capture refers to the process of initial orienting of attention. Both top-down (driven by participants’ task knowledge) and bottom-up (driven by the properties inherent in the stimuli) attention capture effects were considered. Given the evolutionary implications of facial attractiveness, I also examined the influence of priming the fundamental needs, i.e., self-protection and mating goals, on the facial attractiveness effect. To address these issues, five experiments were conducted by using visual search and modified cue paradigms. / In Experiments 1a-1c, participants were required to search for the attractive face among a set of unattractive faces, and to search for the unattractive face among a set of attractive faces. In Experiment 1b, before performing the visual search task, participants were primed by watching/seeing scary and romantic movies/pictures to activate their self-protection and mating goals, respectively. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to search for the face among the distractors of neutral or threatening animal pictures and other non-face pictures, whereas in Experiment 3, participants were asked to search for the neutral or threatening animal among the distractors of face and non-face pictures. In Experiments 4 and 5, the modified cue paradigms were used. Participants’ task was to indicate the location of a target dot after two cues were simultaneously presented at the left and right sides of the screen. Faces and non-face pictures were used as the cues. In Experiment 5, participants were required to not only respond to the target dot location but also remember the face-cue when a face was presented as one of the two cues. In Experiments 2-5, the threatening animals, as opposed to the neutral animals, were expected to prime participants with the self-protection goal. The effect of facial attractiveness on top-down attention capture was examined in Experiments 1, 2 and 5, whereas its effect on bottom-up attention capture was tested in Experiments 3 and 4. The effect of facial attractiveness on attention adhesion was assessed in Experiments 1, 3, 4 and 5. / Overall results showed that attention could be captured by the attractive face in a top-down manner when both attractive and unattractive faces were simultaneously presented (Experiment 1), but not in a bottom-up manner (Experiments 3 or 4) or when participants searched for the face among the non-face objects (Experiment 2). After attention was allocated to a face, facial attractiveness can further increase attention adhesion (Experiment 5). There was no significant modulation of the priming of self-protection or mating goals on the effect of facial attractiveness. The findings suggested that attention was not automatically drawn to attractive face. This process needs to be accompanied with fast intentional disengagement of attention from unattractive faces. / 本研究主要探討面孔吸引力對注意捕獲（attention capture）和注意粘附（attention adhesion）的影響。注意捕獲是指人們的注意被某個目標所吸引；注意粘附是指注意難以從所注意的目標上轉移開去。注意捕獲有兩種過程：自上而下和自下而上。自上而下的注意捕獲指與任務相關的知識所引導的注意捕獲；自下而上的注意捕獲則是指刺激的特徵所引導的注意捕獲。本研究對注意粘附和兩種注意捕獲都進行了討論。除此之外，由於吸引力的進化意義，本研究還探討了進化基本需求（自我保護和擇偶）對以上注意過程的影響。 / 實驗一、二、三採用視覺搜索範式。在實驗一中，參與者被要求在低吸引力/高吸引力的面孔背景中搜索高吸引力/低吸引力的面孔。在實驗一（b）中，在視覺搜索任務之前，參與者被要求觀看恐懼/浪漫的視頻和圖片以激活自我保護和擇偶的動機。在實驗二中，參與者被要求在其他非面孔的圖片背景中搜索面孔，而在實驗三中，參與者被要求搜索動物，面孔和其他非面孔圖片作為干擾項出現。實驗四、五採用改良線索範式。被試的任務是對在同時呈現的左右兩線索圖片後出現的目標點做反應。線索為面孔和非面孔圖片。在實驗五中，被試被額外要求記住面孔線索。在實驗二、三、四、五中，危險動物圖片被用來激活被試的自我保護動機。實驗一、二、五測量了面孔吸引力對自上而下的注意捕獲的影響；實驗三、四測量了面孔吸引力對自下而上的注意捕獲的影響；同時，在實驗一、三、四、五中，也可以分析面孔吸引力對注意粘附的影響。 / 實驗結果顯示，當高低吸引力的面孔同時呈現時，面孔吸引力能引發自上而下的注意捕獲（實驗一）；但不能引發自下而上的注意捕獲（實驗三、四），而且當參與者在非面孔圖片中搜索面孔時，面孔吸引力也不能引發自上而下的注意捕獲（實驗二、五）。同時，面孔吸引力也會引發注意粘附（實驗一）。但是，本研究沒有發現進化基本需求對這些注意機制的影響。研究結果說明，高吸引力的面孔捕獲人們的注意需要伴隨著有意地將注意從低吸引力的面孔上快速轉離。 / Pu, Xiaoping. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-94). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 01, November, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.

Perceptions of intelligence are strongly related to attractiveness and have a significant impact on first impressions. The introductory chapters (1 - 3) provide an overview of the literature on attractiveness, halo effects, and intelligence, while the experimental chapters (4 - 6) explore perceptions of cues to intelligence beyond attractiveness, individual differences in the susceptibility to the halo, and the accuracy of perceptions of competence. Chapter 4 investigated the malleable facial cues of eyelid-openness and mouth curvature and their influence on perceived intelligence. Attractiveness partially mediated intelligence impression, but effects of eyelid-openness and subtle smiling enhanced intelligence ratings independent of attractiveness. These effects were observed and replicated in between individual (cross-sectional) studies of natural images of adult faces, child faces, through digital manipulation of individual cues in the same faces, and in a within individual sleep-restricted sample. Chapter 5 investigated the relationship between perceived intelligence and attractiveness by exploring whether a raters' own intelligence may be related to a stronger endorsement of the perceived intelligence-attractiveness halo. The correlation between ratings of the perceived intelligence and attractiveness was found to be stronger for participants who scored higher on an intelligence test than participants with lower intelligence test scores. Chapter 6 investigated the limiting effects of attractiveness on perceptions of competence. When statistically controlling for the attractiveness halo, academic performance could be predicted from judgments of conscientiousness but not from ratings of intelligence. Thus this thesis demonstrates that malleable facial cues can influence perceptions of intelligence independent of attractiveness, identifies an individual difference that influences endorsement of the intelligence-attractiveness halo, and shows the limiting effects of the attractiveness halo on potentially accurate perceptions of academic performance. Collectively these findings provide evidence of the powerful influence of attractiveness on perceptions of intelligence; such work is necessary if we are to mitigate such bias.

Past studies of cohesiveness-performance effects thriving from 1950¡¦s were mainly experimental studies and the results of whether group cohesiveness contributed to performance were always disputable. Researchers believed that the construct of cohesiveness was multidimensional; and the components of cohesiveness were therefore scrutinized to see its influence upon performance. Results varied from only task commitment contributed to performance (Mullen & Copper, 1994) to all three components bear significant influence to performance (Beal et al., 2003). Not only was the cohesiveness-performance relation discussed, but were cohesiveness components to performance criteria and work patterns as a moderator to cohesiveness-performance relation examined in Taiwanese work groups. Consequently, the purposes of this study are to (a) have empirical study for cohesiveness-performance effect in real groups, (b) reexamine the influences of the three components of cohesiveness to cohesiveness-performance effect in work groups, (c) know which cohesiveness component brings about each kind of members performance, and (d) figure out how each type of workflows relates to cohesiveness- performance effect. This study represented work groups¡¦ cohesiveness- performance relation. Furthermore, cohesion components to performance criteria were reexamined for better understanding of which component can substantially benefit to which kind of performance. As a result, interpersonal attraction led to group members¡¦ behaviors performance, and task commitment brought about group efficiency. Last, this study helped to realize the fact that work groups were cohesive disregarding how much interdependence the job required.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

While our understanding of what makes a face attractive has been greatly furthered in recent decades, the stimuli used in much of the foregoing research (static images with neutral expressions) bear little resemblance to the faces with which we nonnally interact. In our social interactions, we frequently evaluate faces that move and are expressive, and thus, it is important to evaluate whether motion and expression influence ratings of attractiveness; this was the central aim of the experiments in this dissertation. Using static and dynamic stimuli with neutral or positive expression, the effects of motion and expression were also tested in combination with other factors known to be relevant to attractiveness judgements: personality attributions, sex-typicality and cultural influence. In general, the results from this set of experiments show that judgements of moving, expressive stimuli do differ, sometimes radically, from judgements made of more traditional types of stimuli. Motion and positive expression were both found to increase ratings of attractiveness reliably in most experiments, as well as across cultures, and in some instances, showed strong sex-specific effects. Intriguing sex differences were also found in personality trait ratings of the stimuli, particularly for male faces; while criteria for female faces remained relatively constant across all conditions, trait ratings associated with attractiveness for male faces were dependent on particular combinations of motion and expression. Finally, in line with previous research, cross-cultural experiments showed general agreement between Japanese and Caucasian raters, but also suggested slight, culture-specific differences in preferences for expression and motion. IV This set of experiments has integrated the factors of motion, expression, sextypicality, personality and cultural influence together in order to bring a greater degree of ecological validity into attractiveness studies. These findings offer major implications for researchers studying attractiveness, particularly that of males, and suggest that motion and expression are important dimensions that should be considered in future research while simultaneously placing a caution on the interpretation of findings made with static stimuli. Suggestions are also made for further research in light of the present findings.