Inaug.-diss.--Leipzig. / Lebenslauf.

This thesis explores the cosmology of physiognomy - a method of telling fortune by inspecting the body and the material world - and its social reception in China in the Ming period. This is accomplished through the analysis of extant manuals as well as stories of fortune-tellers' practices. I focus on the Ming dynasty, because of their richness of historical evidence and the distinctive features of physiognomy developed in these periods, but also take materials about the Song inherited in the Ming in my analysis. The manuals and the anecdotal evidence on its social practices and practitioners show that during the Song and Ming period Chinese physiognomy became more systematic. Chinese Physiognomists also inspected the material world beyond the human body, and used the human body as a paradigm for the inspections in which the whole material world is seen as 'homological' to the body. One of the most representative examples of using this body paradigm to examine material objects is the physiognomy of written characters. In the manuals that deals specifically with the human body, the body is seen as a bridge between society and the cosmos. In this cosmology the human body represents the 'totality' of human existence and social life. Because social life is expressed on the body, someone's fortune can be predicted by examining the body. Different numerological as well as cosmological systems after the Song were subsumed into physiognomy and the body and the cosmos came to be linked in the manuals in a more sophisticated way than before. However, fortune is not seen as totally fixed. Moral cultivation can alter the body and thereby change someone's fortune. The body is seen in physiognomy as both physical and moral. As a technique, physiognomy is not only systematically theorized in the manuals but also highly socialized. Physiognomy was practiced by very diverse groups of people across various religious and social communities including Buddhist monks, Daoist priests, local literati, and so on. Although a popular technique, which was also linked to many different kinds of medical and religious traditions, physiognomy was still contested, and people with different social backgrounds and personal experiences held different views on it.

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.

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.

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.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-183).

Originally presented as author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Groningen, 2006. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [293]-319) and indexes.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 431-452). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, November, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-180)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, November, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-180)