Anglo-Saxon law

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_law 

The initial page of Rochester Cathedral Library, MS A.3.5, the Textus Roffensis, which contains the only surviving copy of Æthelberht's laws.

Anglo-Saxon law (Old English ǣ, later lagu "law"; dōm "decree, judgment") is a body of written rules and customs that were in place during the Anglo-Saxon period in England, before the Norman conquest. This body of law, along with early Medieval Scandinavian law and Germanic law, descended from a family of ancient Germanic custom and legal thought. However, Anglo-Saxon law codes are distinct from other early Germanic legal statements—known as the leges barbarorum, in part because they were written in Old English instead of in Latin. The laws of the Anglo-Saxons were the second in medieval Western Europe after those of the Irish to be expressed in a language other than Latin.

History

The native inhabitants of England were Celtic Britons. The unwritten Celtic law was learned and preserved by the Druids, who in addition to their religious role also acted as judges. After the Roman conquest of Britain in the first century, Roman law was operative at least concerning Roman citizens. But the Roman legal system disappeared after the Romans left the island in the 5th century.

In the 5th and 6th century, the Anglo-Saxons migrated from Germany and established several Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. These had their own legal traditions based in Germanic law that "owed little if anything" to Celtic or Roman influences. Following the Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons, written law codes or "dooms" were produced. The Christian clergy brought with them the art of letters, writing, and literacy.

The first written Anglo-Saxon laws were issued around 600 by Æthelberht of Kent. Writing in the eighth century, the Venerable Bede comments that Æthelberht created his law code "after the examples of the Romans" (Latin: iuxta exempla Romanorum). This likely refers to Romanised peoples such as the Franks, whose Salic law was codified under Clovis I. As a newly Christian king, Æthelberht's creation of his own law code symbolised his belonging to the Roman and Christian traditions. The actual legislation, however, was not influenced by Roman law. Rather, it converted older customs into written legislation, and, reflecting the role of the bishops in drafting it, protected the church. The first seven clauses deal solely with compensation for the church.

In the 9th century, the Danelaw was conquered by Danes and governed under Scandinavian law. The word law itself derives from the Old Norse word laga. Starting with Alfred the Great (r. 871–899), the kings of Wessex united the other Anglo-Saxon peoples against their common Danish enemy. In the process, they created a single Kingdom of England. This unification process was completed under Æthelstan (r. 924–939). The Norman Conquest of 1066 ended the Anglo-Saxon monarchy. But Anglo-Saxon law and institutions survived and formed the foundation for the common law.

Sources

There were two main sources of Anglo-Saxon law: folk-right (customary law) and royal legislation.

Folk-right

Most laws in Anglo-Saxon England derived from folk-right (Old English: folcright) or unwritten custom. The chief centres for the formulation and application of folk-right were the shire court and hundred courts. As there were no judges in this period, folk-right was administered by the suitors of the court (those required to attend). The reeves employed by the king were responsible for ensuring that folk-right was followed.

The older law of real property, of succession, of contracts, the customary tariffs of fines, were mainly regulated by folk-right. Customary law differed between local cultures. There were different folk-rights of West and East Saxons, of East Angles, of Kentish men, Mercians, Northumbrians, Danes, Welshmen, and these main folk-right divisions remained even when tribal kingdoms disappeared and the people were concentrated in one kingdom.

Folk-right could be broken or modified by special law or special grant, and the fountain of such privileges was the royal power. Alterations and exceptions were, as a matter of fact, suggested by the interested parties themselves, and chiefly by the Church. Thus a privileged land-tenure was created—bookland; the rules as to the succession of kinsmen were set at nought by concession of testamentary power and confirmations of grants and wills; special exemptions from the jurisdiction of the hundreds and special privileges as to levying fines were conferred. In process of time the rights originating in royal grants of privilege overbalanced, as it were, folk-right in many respects, and became themselves the starting-point of a new legal system—the feudal one.

Royal law codes

In addition to folk-right, kings could decree new law in order to clarify the older laws. Royal law codes were written to address specific situations and were intended to be read by people who were already familiar with the law. Anglo-Saxon kings issued regulations about the sale of cattle in the presence of witnesses, enactments about the pursuit of thieves, and the calling in of warrantors to justify sales of chattels. Personal surety groups appear as a complement of and substitute for more collective responsibility. The hlaford and his hiredmen are an institution not only of private patronage, but also of supervision for the sake of laying hands on malefactors and suspected persons.

The first law code was the Law of Æthelberht (c. 602), which put into writing the unwritten legal customs of Kent. This was followed by two later Kentish law codes, the Law of Hlothhere and Eadric (c. 673 – c. 685) and the Law of Wihtred (695). Outside of Kent, Ine of Wessex issued a law code between 688 and 694. Offa of Mercia (r. 757–796) produced a law code that has not survived. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, produced a law code c. 890 known as the Doom Book. The prologue of Alfred's code states that the Bible and penitentials were studied as part of creating his code. In addition, older law codes were studied, including the laws of Æthelberht, Ine, and Offa. This may have been the first attempt to create a limited set of uniform laws across England, and it set a precedent for future English kings.

The House of Wessex became rulers of all England in the 10th century, and their laws were applied throughout the kingdom. Significant 10th-century law codes were promulgated by Edward the Elder, Æthelstan, Edmund I, Edgar, and Æthelred the Unready. But regional variations in laws and customs survived as well. The Domesday Book of 1086 noted that distinct laws existed for Wessex, Mercia, and the Danelaw.

The law codes of Cnut (r. 1016–1035) were the last to be promulgated in the Anglo-Saxon period and are primarily a collection of earlier laws. They became the main source for old English law after the Norman Conquest. For political reasons, these laws were attributed to Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–1066), and "under the guise of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris they achieved an almost mystical authority which inspired Magna Carta in 1215 and were for centuries embedded in the coronation oath." The Leges Edwardi Confessoris is the best known of the custumals, compilations of Anglo-Saxon customs written after the Conquest to explain Anglo-Saxon laws to the new Norman rulers.

Features

Kinship

One of the foundations of Anglo-Saxon law was the extended family or kindred (Old English: mægþ). Membership in a kindred provided the individual with protection and security.

In the case of homicide, the victim's family was responsible for avenging him or her through a blood feud. The law set criteria for legitimate blood feuds. A family did not have the right to retaliate if a member was killed while stealing property, committing capital crimes, or resisting capture. A person was exempt from retaliation if he killed while:

• Fighting for his lord
• Protecting his family from attack
• Defending his wife, daughter, sister, or mother from attempted rape (the murder had to take place during the attack)

Kings and the church promoted financial compensation (Old English: bote) for death or injury as an alternative to blood feuds. In the case of death, the victim's family was owed the weregild ("man price"). A person's weregild was greater or lesser depending on social status.

Cnut's code allowed secular clergy to demand or pay compensation in a feud. However, monks were prohibited because they had abandoned their "kin-law when [they bowed] to [monastic] rule-law".

Social class

Further information: Slavery in Britain

A man had to own at least five hides of land to be considered a thegn (nobleman). Ealdormen (and later earls) were the highest-ranking nobles. High-ranking churchmen such as archbishops, bishops, and abbots also formed part of the aristocracy.

There were various categories of freemen:

• Geneats performed riding service (carried messages, transported strangers to the village, cared for horses, and acted as the lord's bodyguard)
• Ceorls held one to two hides of land
• Geburs held a virgate of land
• Cotsetlan (cottage dwellers) held five acres
• Homeless laborers were paid in food and clothing

Thegns enjoyed greater rights and privileges than did ordinary freemen. The weregild of a ceorl was 200 shillings while that of a thegn was 1200. In court, a thegn's oath was equal to the oath of six ceorls.

Slavery was widespread in Anglo-Saxon England. The price of a slave (Old English: þēow) or thrall (Old Norse: þræll) was one pound or eight oxen. If a slave was killed, his murderer only had to pay the purchase price because slaves had no wergild. Because slaves had no property, they could not pay fines as a punishment for crime. Instead, slaves received corporal punishments such as flogging, mutilation, or death.

Slavery was an inherited status. The slave population included the conquered Britons and their descendants. Some people were enslaved as war captives or as punishment for crimes (such as theft). Others became slaves due to unpaid debts. While owners had extensive power over their slaves, their power was not absolute. Slaves could be manumitted; however, only 2nd or 3rd-generation descendants of freed slaves received all the privileges of a freeman.

Slavery may have declined in the late eleventh century as it was considered a pious act for Christians to free their slaves on their deathbed. The church condemned the sale of slaves outside the country, and the internal trade declined in the twelfth century. It may have been more economic to settle slaves on land than to feed and house them, and the change to serfdom was probably an evolutionary change in status rather a clear distinction between the two.

Land law

Further information: History of English land law

The king granted bookland (so-called because it was granted by charter) to the church or lords in outright ownership. Food rent and other services owed to the king (except for the trinoda necessitas) were transferred to the new lord. Land granted temporarily in exchange for specific services was called loanland.

Lords granted peasants land in return for rent and labor. It was also common for free peasants who owned their land to submit to a lord for protection through a process called commendation. Peasants who commended their land owed their lord labor service. Theoretically, a commended peasant could transfer his land to a new lord whenever he liked. In reality, this was not permitted. By 1066, manorialism was entrenched in England.

Many parts of England (including Kent, East Anglia, and Dorset) practiced forms of partible inheritance in which land was equally divided among heirs. In Kent, this took the form of gavelkind.

Peace and protection

Main articles: Mund (law) and Frith

Every house had a peace (Old English: mund). Intruders and other violators of the peace had to pay a fine called a mundbyrd. A man's status determined the amount of the mundbyrd. The laws of Æthelberht set the mundbyrd for the king at 50 shillings, the eorl (noble) at 12s., and the ceorl (freeman) at 6s. In Alfred the Great's time, the king's mundbyrd was £5. Individuals received protection through kinship ties or by entering the service of a lord.

Mund is the origin of the king's peace. Initially, the king's mund was limited to the royal residence. As royal power and responsibilities grew, the king's peace was applied to other areas: shire courts, hundred courts, highways, rivers, bridges, churches, monasteries, markets, and towns. Theoretically, the king was present at these places. King's imposed fines called wites as punishments for breaches of the king's peace.

The king could grant individuals a personal peace (or grith). For example, the king's peace protected his counselors when traveling to and from meetings of the witan. Foreign traders and others not protected by lordship or kinship ties were under the king's protection.

Punishments

Anglo-Saxon law mandated that a person pay compensation when injuring another person. The injured body part determined the amount of compensation. According to Æthelberht's law, pulling someone's hair cost 50 sceattas, a severed foot cost 50 shillings, and "damaging the kindling limb" (the reproductive organs) cost 300 shillings.

In the case of murder, the victim's kindred could forego a blood feud in return for payment of a wergild. In addition to paying the king a wite (fine), the killer also owed compensation to the victim's lord. Some crimes could not be satisfied by financial compensation. These botless crimes were punished with death or forfeiture of property. They included:

• secret murder, such as by poison or witchcraft
• treachery to one's lord
• arson
• house-breaking
• open theft

Hanging by the gallows and beheading were common forms of execution. Murder by witchcraft was punished by drowning. According to the laws of Æthelstan, thieves over 15 years of age who stole more than 12 pence were to be executed (men by stoning, women by burning, and free women could be pushed off a cliff or drowned).

In Cnut's code, a first criminal offence usually merited compensation to victims and fines to the king. Later offenses saw progressively severe forms of bodily mutilation. Cnut also introduced outlawry, a punishment only the king could remove.

Anglo-Saxon law assumed that a man's wife and children were his accomplices in any crime. If a man could not return or pay for stolen property, he and his family could be enslaved.

Religion and the church

The creation of written law codes coincided with Christianisation, and the Anglo-Saxon church received special privileges and protections in the earliest codes. The Law of Æthelberht demanded compensation for offenses against church property:

• 12-fold compensation for church property
• 11-fold for a bishop's property
• 9-fold for a priest's property
• 6-fold for a deacon's property
• 3-fold for a cleric's property

In the late 7th century, the laws of Kent and Wessex supported the church in various ways. Failure to receive baptism was punished with a financial penalty, and the oath of a communicant was worth more than a non-communicant in legal proceedings. Laws supported Sabbath observance and payment of church-scot (church dues). Laws also established rights to church sanctuary (see Right of asylum in Medieval England).

Courts

Main article: Government in Anglo-Saxon England

Public courts

The Anglo-Saxons developed a sophisticated system of assemblies or moots (the Old English words mot and gemot mean "meeting").

The witan was the king's court. With the advice of his ealdormen, the king gave final judgment in person. He heard cases involving royal property, treason, and appeals from lower courts.

Scutchamer Knob, visible for miles around, was the meeting place for Berkshire's shire court

By the tenth century, England was divided into shires. The shire court met twice a year around Easter and Michaelmas. It had jurisdiction over criminal, civil, and ecclesiastical cases. However, most of its work concerned land disputes. The sheriff or sometimes the ealdorman (later earl) and the bishop presided, but there was no judge in the modern sense (royal judges would not sit in shire courts until the reign of Henry I). The local aristocracy controlled the court. The suitors of the court (bishops, earls, and thegns) declared the law and decided what proof of innocence or guilt to accept (such as ordeal or compurgation). The shire court handled administrative business, such as arrangements for collecting geld.

Each shire was divided into smaller units called hundreds. The hundred court met monthly. It handled routine judicial business, civil as well as criminal. It had jurisdiction over land ownership, tort, and ecclesiastical cases (such as disputes over tithes and marriages). People could appeal their cases to the shire court or the king. The sheriff presided two or three times a year, and a subordinate reeve presided at other times. Any landowning freeman could attend the hundred court. However, thegns controlled the court. As suitors to the court, the thegns (or their bailiffs) were responsible for declaring the law, deciding what form of proof to accept, and assisting with the court's administrative functions.

Hundreds were further divided into tithings, which were the responsibilities of tithingmen. Tithings were the basis of a system of self-policing called frankpledge. Every man belonged to a tithing and swore to report crimes committed by those in his tithing on pain of amercement.

Boroughs were separate from the hundreds and had their own courts (variously termed burghmoot, portmanmoot, or husting). These met three times a year. While initially a regular court, the borough court developed into a special court for the law merchant.

Jurisdiction

By the 10th century, certain offenses were considered "pleas of the king". There were two kinds of king's pleas: cases in which the king was a party and cases involving severe crimes reserved to the king's jurisdiction. These cases could only be tried in the presence of the king or royal officials in the shire court or a public hundred court. The laws of Cnut defined king's pleas as:

• violation of the royal protection (mund)
• murder
• treason
• arson
• attacks on houses
• persistent robbery
• counterfeiting
• assault
• harbouring fugitives
• neglect of military service
• fighting
• rape

Private courts

In the Anglo-Saxon period, the king created private courts in two ways.:

1. The king could grant the church (either the bishop of a diocese or the abbot of a religious house) the right to administer a hundred. The hundred's reeve would then answer to the bishop or abbot. The same cases would be tried as before, but the profits of justice would now go to the church.
2. The king granted by writ or charter special rights to a landowner termed sake and soke. This was the right to hold a court with jurisdiction over his own lands, including infangthief (the power to punish thieves).

The king had the power to revoke these special rights if they were abused.

Trial procedure

Anglo-Saxon England had no professional police. The victim of a crime could raise the hue and cry, "obliging every able-bodied man to do all in his power (pro toto posse suo) to chase and catch the suspect." Once caught, the criminal was taken to court. Suspected criminals could also be brought to court through presentment of crimes as part of the system of frankpledge (see above).Those who fled justice were declared outlaws.

As there were no juries, cases were judged by the suitors of the court. Cases involving land disputes were often decided on the basis of charters and the knowledge of local residents. In cases that lacked evidence or witnesses, courts turned to compurgation and trial by ordeal to determine guilt.

Trial by oath

Main article: Compurgation

In the Christian society of Anglo-Saxon England, a false oath was a grave offense against God and could endanger one's immortal soul. In compurgation or trial by oath, a defendant swore oaths to prove his innocence without cross-examination. A defendant was expected to bring oath-helpers (Latin: juratores), neighbors willing to swear to his good character or "oathworthiness". The number of oaths needed depended on the seriousness of the accusation and the person's social status. If the law required oaths valued at 1200 shillings, then a thegn would not need any oath-helpers because his wergild equaled 1200 shillings. However, a ceorl (200 shilling wergild) would need oath-helpers.

A plaintiff initiated legal proceedings by making an accusation (criminal appeal) and summoning the defendant to court. The defendant had to appear in court at the scheduled time or provide an essoin (excuse) for not attending. Once in court, the plaintiff swore the accusation was true (a false accusation was punished with fines). The plaintiff had to provide evidence for the accusation or an adequate number of oath-helpers. If the evidence were strong, no oaths would be required.

Next, the defendant was allowed to deny the accusation under oath and present any required oath-helpers. In Anglo-Saxon law, "denial is always stronger than accusation". The defendant was acquitted if he produced the necessary number of oaths. If a defendant's community believed him to be guilty or generally untrustworthy, he would be unable to gather oath-helpers and would lose his case.

Trial by ordeal

When a defendant failed to establish his innocence by oath in criminal cases (such as murder, arson, forgery, theft and witchcraft), he might still redeem himself through trial by ordeal. Trial by ordeal was an appeal to God to reveal perjury, and its divine nature meant it was regulated by the church. The ordeal had to be overseen by a priest at a place designated by the bishop. The most common forms in England were ordeal by hot iron and ordeal by water. Before a defendant was put through the ordeal, the plaintiff had to establish a prima facie case under oath. The plaintiff was assisted by his own supporters or "suit", who might act as witnesses for the plaintiff.

Influences

The oldest Anglo-Saxon law codes, especially from Kent and Wessex, reveal a close affinity to Germanic law. For example, one finds a division of social ranks reminiscent of the threefold gradation of Lower Germany (edelings, frilings, lazzen—eorls, ceorls, laets).

In subsequent history, there is a good deal of resemblance between the capitularies' legislation of Charlemagne and his successors on one hand, the acts of Alfred, Edward the Elder, Æthelstan and Edgar on the other, a resemblance called forth less by direct borrowing of Frankish institutions than by the similarity of political problems and condition. Frankish law becomes a powerful modifying element in English legal history after the Conquest, when it was introduced wholesale in royal and in feudal courts.

The Scandinavian invasions brought in many northern legal customs, especially in the area known as the Danelaw. The Domesday survey of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Norfolk, etc., shows remarkable deviations in local organization and justice (lagmen, sokes), and great peculiarities as to status (socmen, freemen), while from laws and a few charters we can perceive some influence on criminal law (nidings-vaerk), special usages as to fines (lahslit), the keeping of peace, attestation and sureties of acts (faestermen), etc. But, on the whole, the introduction of Danish and Norse elements, apart from local cases, was more important owing to the conflicts and compromises it called forth and its social results than on account of any distinct trail of Scandinavian views in English law. The Scandinavian newcomers coalesced easily and quickly with the native population.

The direct influence of Roman law was not great during the Saxon period: there is neither the transmission of important legal doctrines, chiefly through the medium of Visigothic codes, nor the continuous stream of Roman tradition in local usage. But indirectly Roman law did exert a by no means insignificant influence through the medium of the Church, which, for all its apparent insular character, was still permeated with Roman ideas and forms of culture. The Old English "books" are derived in a roundabout way from Roman models, and the tribal law of real property was deeply modified by the introduction of individualistic notions as to ownership, donations, wills, rights of women, etc. Yet in this respect also the Norman Conquest increased the store of Roman conceptions by breaking the national isolation of the English Church and opening the way for closer intercourse with France and Italy.

Language and dialect

See also: Legal English

The English dialect in which the Anglo-Saxon laws have been handed down is in most cases a common speech derived from the West Saxon dialect. Wessex formed the core of the unified Kingdom of England, and the royal court at Winchester became the main literary centre. Traces of the Kentish dialect can be detected the Textus Roffensis, a manuscript containing the earliest Kentish laws. Northumbrian dialectical peculiarities are also noticeable in some codes, while Danish words occur as technical terms in some documents. With the Norman Conquest, Latin took the place of English as the language of legislation, though many technical terms from English for which Latin did not have an equivalent expression were retained.

Face (sociological concept)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)

Face is a class of behaviors and customs, associated with the morality, honor, and authority of an individual (or group of individuals), and its image in social groups.

Face refers to a sociological concept in general linked to the dignity and prestige that a person has in terms of their social relationships. This idea with different nuances is observed in many societies and cultures such as Chinese, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, Malaysian, Laotian, Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Thai, Russian and other Slavic cultures.

Face has particularly complex dynamics and meanings within the context of Chinese culture, and its usage in the English language is borrowed from Chinese.

Definitions

Although Chinese writer Lin Yutang claimed "face cannot be translated or defined", these definitions have been created:

• Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes.
• Face is the respectability and/or deference which a person can claim for themself or from others.
• Face is a quality that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction.
• Face is a sense of worth that comes from knowing one's status and reflecting concern with the congruence between one's performance or appearance and one's real worth.
• "Face" means "sociodynamic valuation", a lexical hyponym of words meaning "prestige; dignity; honor; respect; status".

By culture

Chinese

In China, in particular, the concepts of mianzi, lian and yan play an extremely important role in the fabric of society.

In Chinese culture, "face" refers to two distinct concepts, although linked in Chinese social relations. One is mianzi (面子), and the other is lian (臉), which are used regularly in everyday language although not so much in formal writing.

Two influential Chinese authors explained face. The Chinese writer Lu Xun referred to the American missionary Arthur Henderson Smith's interpretation.

The term "face" keeps cropping up in our conversation, and it seems such a simple expression that I doubt whether many people give it much thought. Recently, however, we have heard this word on the lips of foreigners too, who seem to be studying it. They find it extremely hard to understand, but believe that "face" is the key to the Chinese spirit and that grasping it will be like grabbing a queue twenty-four years ago [when wearing a queue was compulsory] – everything else will follow.

Lin Yutang considered the psychology of "face":

Interesting as the Chinese physiological face is, the psychological face makes a still more fascinating study. It is not a face that can be washed or shaved, but a face that can be "granted" and "lost" and "fought for" and "presented as a gift". Here we arrive at the most curious point of Chinese social psychology. Abstract and intangible, it is yet the most delicate standard by which Chinese social intercourse is regulated.

The concept of face has a significant role in Chinese diplomacy.

Miàn (面) "face; personal esteem; countenance; surface; side" occurs in words like:

• miànzi (面子) "face; side; reputation; self-respect; prestige, honor; social standing."^{[citation needed]} It is similar to the concept of "keeping up with appearances".
• miànmù (面目; 'face and eyes') "face; appearance; respect; social standing; prestige; honor (only used in ancient Chinese prose. Now it only means appearance)"
• miànpí (面皮; 'face skin') "facial skin; complexion; feelings; sensitivity; sense of shame"
• tǐmiàn (體面; 'body face') "face; good looking; honor; dignity; prestige"
• qíngmian (情面; 'feelings face') "face; prestige; favor; kindness; partiality"

Hsien-chin Hu says “face”

can be borrowed, struggled for, added to, padded, — all terms indicating a gradual increase in volume. It is built up through initial high position, wealth, power, ability, through cleverly establishing social ties to a number of prominent people, as well as through avoidance of acts that would cause unfavorable comment.

Liǎn (臉) "face; countenance; respect; reputation; prestige" is seen in several face words:

• liǎnshàng (臉上; 'face on/above') "one's face; honor; respect"
• liǎnmiàn (臉面; 'face face') "face; self-respect; prestige; influence"
• liǎnpí (臉皮; 'face skin') "face; sensitivity; compassion"

Hu contrasts méiyǒu liǎn (沒有臉; 'without face') "audacious; wanton; shameless" as "the most severe condemnation that can be made of a person" and bùyào liǎn (不要臉; 'don't want face') "shameless; selfishly inconsiderate" as "a serious accusation meaning that ego does not care what society thinks of his character, that he is ready to obtain benefits for himself in defiance of moral standards".

Yán (顏) "face; prestige; reputation; honor" occurs in the common expression diū yán 丟顏 and the words:

• yánhòu (顏厚; 'face thick') or hòuyán 厚顏 "thick-skinned; brazen; shameless; impudent"
• yánmiàn (顏面; 'face face') "face; honor; prestige"

English

The English semantic field for "face" words meaning "prestige; honor" is smaller than the corresponding Chinese field. English face meaning "prestige; honor, respect, dignity, status, reputation, social acceptance, or good name. The lose verb in lose face means "fail to maintain", while the save in save face means "avoid loss/damage". The country begins to feel that Government consented to arrangements by which China has lost face; the officials have long been conscious that they are becoming ridiculous in the eyes of the people, seeing that where a foreigner is concerned they can neither enforce a Chinese right, nor redress a Chinese grievance, even on Chinese soil.

Several American newspapers from 1874 listed the concept in a column of "Chinese Proverbs" or "Facts & Fancies" stating "The Chinese, be it observed, are great sticklers for propriety and respectability, and are very much afraid of what they term "losing face"." Loss of face occurs in The Times (August 3, 1929): "Each wishes to concede only what can be conceded without loss of 'face'".

Save face was coined from lose face applying the semantic opposition between lose and save (Chinese: 保面子; pinyin: bǎo miànzi; lit. 'guard/save face'; when successful, it's called 保住面子; bǎozhu miànzi; 'saved/guarded face').

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines Save 8 as: "To keep, protect or guard (a thing) from damage, loss, or destruction", and elaborates,

8f. to save one's face: to avoid being disgraced or humiliated. Similarly, to save (another's) face. Hence save-face adj. = face-saving ... Originally used by the English community in China, with reference to the continual devices among the Chinese to avoid incurring or inflicting disgrace. The exact phrase appears not to occur in Chinese, but ‘to lose face’ (diu lien), and ‘for the sake of his face’, are common.

Among the English words of Chinese origin, lose face is an uncommon verb phrase and a unique semantic loan translation. Most Anglo-Chinese borrowings are nouns, with a few exceptions such as to kowtow, to Shanghai, to brainwash, and lose face. English face, meaning "prestige" or "honor", is the only case of a Chinese semantic loan. Semantic loans extend an indigenous word's meaning in conformity with a foreign model (e.g., the French realiser, lit. 'achieve' or 'create' or 'construct', used in the sense of English realize). The vast majority of English words from Chinese are ordinary loanwords with regular phonemic adaptation (e.g., chop suey < Cantonese tsap-sui 雜碎 lit. 'miscellaneous pieces'). A few are calques where a borrowing is blended with native elements (e.g., chopsticks < Pidgin chop "quick, fast" < Cantonese kap 急 lit. 'quick' + stick). Face meaning "prestige" is technically a loan synonym, owing to semantic overlap between the native English meaning "outward semblance; effrontery" and the borrowed Chinese meaning "prestige; dignity".

When face acquired its Chinese sense of "prestige; honor", it filled a lexical gap in the English lexicon. Chan and Kwok write,

The Chinese has supplied a specific "name" for a "thing" embodying qualities not expressed or possibly not fully expressed, by a number of terms in English. The aptness of the figurative extension has probably also played a part.

Carr concludes,

The nearest English synonyms of the apt figurative face are prestige, honor, respect, dignity, status, reputation, social acceptance, or good name. explains how "face" is a more basic meaning than "status", "dignity", or "honor". "Prestige" appears to be semantically closest to "face", however a person can be said to have face but not prestige, or vice versa. Prestige is not necessary; one can easily live without it, but hardly without "face".

Japanese

In Japan, the concept of face is known as mentsu (面子), which is defined as “the public image people want to present within a given social framework”. More specifically, mentsu can only be established when in social situations where others are present. It is associated with the fulfillment of one’s social role(s) as expected by others. There are two main types of face in Japanese culture:

• Menboku (面目) refers to “aspects of the self approved of or respectability given by others”. This encompasses the fulfillment of one’s duty in social settings.
• Taimen (体面)refers to the projected self or ostentation, which involves “the duty to clear one’s reputation of insult or imputation of failure”.

The need for positive self-regard Is culturally variant and Japanese motivations for positive self-regard differ from those of other cultures in that it is primarily self-critically focused. From a young age, children are encouraged by parents to become socially shared images of the ideal person through the phrase “rashii” (らしい；similar to). In this way, social roles influence how Japanese identify themselves but also establish the desirable image Japanese people wish to present in front of others. “Japanese competition characterized by yokonarabi (横並び), emphasizing not on surpassing others, but on not falling behind others”. The continual effort to improve oneself as summarized by the saying gambarimasu (頑張ります)can be viewed as an expression to secure the esteem of others, illustrating high motivations to maintain public face in Japanese culture.

In contrast to the Chinese notion of mianzi which emphasizes one’s power, the Japanese notion of mentsu places emphasis on social roles. A comparative study of Japanese and Chinese student’s perceptions of face revealed that Japanese students tend to be more concerned about face in situations relating to social status and appropriate treatment of others based on social status, while Chinese students tend to be more concerned in situations concerning evaluations of competence or performance.

The integration of face in Japanese culture is evident in the language and cultural norms. According to Matsumoto 1988, “To attend to each other’s face in Japanese culture is to recognize each other’s social position and to convey such a recognition through the proper linguistic means, including formulaic expressions, honorifics, verbs of giving and receiving, and other “relation-acknowledging devices”. The Japanese cultural norms of honne (本音; inner feelings) and tatemae (建前; presented stance), a commonly understood model of communication whereby individuals put up a polite “front” that hides their real beliefs, emphasize the importance placed on carrying out social responsibility in Japanese society.

In the politeness-orientated Japanese society, simple sentences in English would have many variations in Japanese where the speaker must make linguistic choices based on their interpersonal relationship with the listener. Common greetings in Japanese such as yoroshiku onegaishimasu (よろしくお願いします; I make a request and I hope things go well) highlight the debt-sensitive culture in Japan. By emphasizing the speaker’s debt to giving credit to the listener, one implies the debt will be repaid, this is rooted in the Japanese concept of face. In addition, phrases such as sumimasen (すみません), originally an expression for apology but encompasses feelings of both gratitude and apology, are used across a variety of contexts, highlighting the use of language to maintain and reinforce smooth face-to-face interactions within Japanese society.

A study investigating the conditions that led to feelings of face-loss in Japanese participants revealed that the presence of others and engagement in activities related to social roles led to a stronger face-loss experience.  When examining mentsu in Japan, it was revealed that people generally regard experiences of losing one’s own face as unpleasant. Experiences of face-saving and face-loss can influence one’s mood and self-esteem. Moreover, people’s moods can be influenced by whether the face of those close to them are saved. Findings also reveal that caring for others through saving face can have a positive impact on one’s interpersonal relationships with others.

Russian

Russian Orthodox concept of face (лик, лицо, личина) is different from the Chinese concept of face in regards to different emphasis on sacricety and individualism, and in regards to different understanding of the opposites. However, both Russian and Chinese concepts of "face" are close to each other in their focus on person being, first and foremost, part of larger community. In contrast to co-existence of personal individualism with their simultaneous participation in community affairs within Western culture, individuality is much more toned-down in both Russian and Chinese cultures in favour of communality; both Russian and Chinese cultures are lacking in stark Western dichotomy of "internal" vs. "external", and also lacking in Western focus on legal frameworks being foundation for individualism; and instead of it, in both Russian and Chinese cultures ritualism in public relations is much more highly regarded than in Western culture, where in the West ritualism is thought of to be mostly dull and empty of content.

The importance of the concept of face in Russia may be seen imprinted into amassment of proverbs and sayings, where the word лицо is used as a reference to one's character or reputation, for instance упасть в грязь лицом (lit. 'to fall face down into mud') meaning "to lose reputation", двуличие (lit. 'two-facedness' or 'the absence of a well-defined face') denoting a negative trait, потерять лицо, similarly to упасть в грязь лицом, but stronger, meaning to "lose reputation or social standing", and личина meaning both "face" and at the same time "the essence", when being used to describe a person, showing that there is high expectation of "inner self" and "outer self" of a person being in high accord with each other, looking from the framework of Russian culture.

South Slavic

Among South Slavs, especially in Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian, the word obraz (образ) is used as a traditional expression for honor and the sociological concept of face. Medieval Slavic documents have shown that the word has been used with various meanings, such as form, image, character, person, symbol, face, figure, statue, idol, guise and mask. The languages also have a derived adjective bezobrazan (безобразан lit. 'without face'), used to associate shame to a person.

Arabic

In Arabic, the expression hafiẓa māʼ al-wajh (حفظ ماء الوجه, lit. 'save the face's water', is used to mean save face. The entire Arab culture of social and family behavior is based around Islamic concepts of dignity, or "face". For Shia Islam, face is based on the social and family ranking system found in the Treatise of Rights, Al-Risalah al-Huquq, Shia Islam's primary source for social behaviors.

Persian

In Persian, expressions like "Aab ro rizi" (آبروريزی, lit. 'losing the face's water'), is used to mean save face and "Dou roi" (دورويی, lit. 'two-facedness'), "Ro seyahi" (nq, lit. 'Black-facedness') meaning "ashamed and embarrassed" and "Ro sepidi" (روسپيدی, lit. 'white-facedness') meaning "proud" (opposite of Ro seyahi) are used. In Iranian culture the meaning of linguistic face is much closer to the meaning of character. So Persian speakers use some strategies in saving the face or character of each other while they communicate.

Thai

The Thai word for face is naa (หน้า, lit. 'face'). There are basically two main ways of expressing loss of face: One, sia naa (เสียหน้า), translates literally as 'lose face.' Another term, khai naa (ขายหน้า) means 'sale of face'. The actual connotation of khai naa is that the person who lost face did so through fault of self or through the thoughtless action of another. As in China and other regions where loss of face is important, the Thai version involves sociodynamic status.

Khmer (Cambodia)

The Khmer word for face is muk (មុខ, lit. 'face'). Bat muk (បាត់មុខ) translates literally as 'lose face'. Tuk muk (ទុកមុខ) translates literally as 'save face' or 'preserve face'. This concept is understood and treated much the same in Cambodia as elsewhere in Asia.

Korean

The concept of "face" or chemyeon (Korean: 체면 Hanja: 體面, Korean: [/t͡ɕʰe̞mjʌ̹n/]) is extremely important in Korean culture.

Academic interpretations

Sociology

"Face" is central to sociology and sociolinguistics. Martin C. Yang analyzed eight sociological factors in losing or gaining face: the kinds of equality between the people involved, their ages, personal sensibilities, inequality in social status, social relationship, consciousness of personal prestige, presence of a witness, and the particular social value/sanction involved.

The sociologist Erving Goffman introduced the concept of "face" into social theory with his 1955 article "On Face-work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements of Social Interaction" and 1967 book Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. According to Goffman's dramaturgical perspective, face is a mask that changes depending on the audience and the variety of social interaction. People strive to maintain the face they have created in social situations. They are emotionally attached to their faces, so they feel good when their faces are maintained; loss of face results in emotional pain, so in social interactions people cooperate by using politeness strategies to maintain each other's faces.

Face is sociologically universal. People "are human", Joseph Agassi and I. C. Jarvie believe, "because they have face to care for – without it they lose human dignity." Hu elaborates:

The point is that face is distinctively human. Anyone who does not wish to declare his social bankruptcy must show a regard for face: he must claim for himself, and must extend to others, some degree of compliance, respect, and deference in order to maintain a minimum level of effective social functioning. While it is true that the conceptualization of what constitutes face and the rules governing face behavior vary considerably across cultures, the concern for face is invariant. Defined at a high level of generality, the concept of face is a universal.

The sociological concept of face has recently been reanalyzed through consideration of the Chinese concepts of face (mianzi and lian) which permits deeper understanding of the various dimensions of experience of face, including moral and social evaluation, and its emotional mechanisms.

Face saving in collective action

The value of "saving face" has been seen in application of a Confucian form of protest and collective action. Evidence of face saving has been seen in a labor strike by Chinese railroad worker in 1867 in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, where Chinese workers protested peacefully and negotiated for an outcome in a way that demonstrated face-saving behavior.

Marketing

According to Hu, mianzi stands for "the kind of prestige that is emphasized...a reputation achieved through getting on in life, through success and ostentation", while face is "the respect of a group for a man with a good moral reputation: the man who will fulfill his obligations regardless of the hardships involved, who under all circumstances shows himself a decent human being". The concept seems to relate to two different meanings, from one side Chinese consumers try to increase or maintain their reputation (mianzi) in front of socially and culturally significant others (e.g. friends); on the other hand, they try to defend or save face.

Mianzi is not only important to improve the consumer's reputation in front of significant others, but rather it is also associated with feelings of dignity, honor, and pride. In consumer behaviour literature, mianzi has been used to explain Chinese consumer purchasing behaviour and brand choice and considered it as a quality owned by some brands. Some consumers tend to favour some brands (and their products and services) because of their capacity to enable them to gain mianzi, which does not mean simply increase their reputation but also to show achievements and communicate these achievements to others in order to be more accepted in social circles, especially upper class circles. Chinese consumers tend to believe that if they buy some brands it is easier to be accepted in the social circles of powerful and wealthy people. Connections are particularly important in Chinese culture as people use social connections to achieve their goals.

However, mianzi has also an emotional facet. Consumers feel proud, special, honoured, even more valuable as individuals if they can afford to buy brands that can enhance their mianzi. Therefore, some branded products and services, especially those that require conspicuous consumption (e.g. smartphones, bags, shoes), are chosen because they foster feelings of pride and vanity in the owner.

A brand that enables an individual to achieve such goals in life, in branding literature, it is labelled as 'brand mianzi', which is the capacity of a brand to provide emotions and self-enhancement to its owner.

Scholars have proved that brand mianzi affects consumer purchase intentions and brand equity.

In summary, mianzi is a cultural concept that relates to the social, emotional and psychological dimension of consumption and has an impact on consumers’ perception of their self and purchase decisions. Purchase and consumption of brands (but also other activities, like choosing a specific university), in Chinese culture, are profoundly affected by mianzi and different brands can be more or less apt to enhance or maintain mianzi, while others can cause a loss of face.

Politeness theory

Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson (1987) expanded Goffman's theory of face in their politeness theory, which differentiated between positive and negative face (p. 61).

• Positive face is "the positive consistent self-image or 'personality' (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants"
• Negative face is "the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction—i.e., to freedom of action and freedom from imposition"

In human interactions, people are often forced to threaten either an addressee's positive and/or negative face, and so there are various politeness strategies to mitigate those face-threatening acts.

However, researchers disagree on the universality of Politeness Theory, arguing it fails to consider the cultural origins of the face and behaviors in non-western cultures where interactions focus on group identity rather than individuality.

For instance, the Chinese origins of “face” was not considered by Brown and Levinson. Concerning the concept of negative face, obtaining mianzi in Chinese culture results in the recognition of one’s claim to respect from the community, not freedom of action . Japanese researcher claims the concept of negative face is alien to Japanese culture, and mistakenly assume the basic unit of society is the individual which is incongruent with the importance placed on interpersonal relationships in Japanese culture. In the case of Japan, individuals obtain face to maintain one’s position in relation to other members of the same community.

These differences suggest the concept of face according to the Politeness Theory is centered around the ideal individual autonomy. However, the concept of face in Eastern cultures such as the Chinese and Japanese orientate towards social identity.

Communication theory

Tae-Seop Lim and John Waite Bowers (1991) claim that face is the public image that a person claims for himself. Within this claim there are three dimensions. "Autonomy face" describes a desire to appear independent, in control, and responsible. "Fellowship face" describes a desire to seem cooperative, accepted, and loved. "Competence face" describes a desire to appear intelligent, accomplished, and capable. Oetzel et al. (2000) defined "facework" as "the communicative strategies one uses to enact self-face and to uphold, support, or challenge another person's face". In terms of interpersonal communication, Facework refers to an individual's identity in a social world and how that identity is created, reinforced, diminished, and maintained in communicative interactions.

Facework

Facework represents the transition from the real self of the individual to the image he or she represents to society for communicative or leadership purposes. This concept is all about presentation of the dignified image which soon will become as an authority for other individuals. Facework is a skill of constantly maintaining the face in order to deserve the respect and honor from it. For instance, Individualistic cultures like United States, Canada, and Germany are standing for the position of protecting the self-face of the individual while collectivist cultures such as China, South Korea, and Japan support the idea of maintaining the other-face for self-dignity and self-respect

There are also exist other facework strategies not always basing on the culture strategies like face-negotiating, face-constituting, face-compensating, face-honoring, face-saving, face-threatening, face-building, face-protecting, face-depreciating, face-giving, face-restoring, and face-neutral.

Intercultural communication

Face is central to intercultural communication or cross-cultural communication. Bert Brown explains the importance of both personal and national face in international negotiations:

Among the most troublesome kinds of problems that arise in negotiation are the intangible issues related to loss of face. In some instances, protecting against loss of face becomes so central an issue that it swamps the importance of the tangible issues at stake and generates intense conflicts that can impede progress toward agreement and increase substantially the costs of conflict resolution.

In terms of Edward T. Hall's dichotomy between high context cultures focused upon in-groups and low context cultures focused upon individuals, face-saving is generally viewed as more important in high context cultures such as China or Japan than in low-context ones such as the United States or Germany.

Face-negotiation theory

Stella Ting-Toomey developed Face Negotiation Theory to explain cultural differences in communication and conflict resolution. Ting-Toomey defines face as:

[...] the interaction between the degree of threats or considerations one party offers to another party, and the degree of claim for a sense of self-respect (or demand for respect toward one's national image or cultural group) put forth by the other party in a given situation.

Psychology

The psychology of "face" is another field of research. Wolfram Eberhard, who analyzed Chinese "guilt" and "sin" in terms of literary psychology, debunked the persistent myth that "face" is peculiar to the Chinese rather than a force in every human society. Eberhard noted

It is mainly in the writings of foreigners that we find the stress upon shame in Chinese society; it is they who stated that the Chinese were typically afraid of "losing their face". It is they who reported many cases of suicide because of loss of face, or of suicide in order to punish another person after one's death as a ghost, or to cause through suicide endless difficulties or even punishment to the other person. But in the Chinese literature used here, including also the short stories, I did not once find the phrase "losing face"; and there was no clear case of suicide because of shame alone.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong social psychologist Michael Harris Bond observed that in Hong Kong,

Given the importance of having face and of being related to those who do, there is a plethora of relationship politics in Chinese culture. Name dropping, eagerness to associate with the rich and famous, the use of external status symbols, sensitivity to insult, lavish gift-giving, the use of titles, the sedulous avoidance of criticism, all abound, and require considerable readjustment for someone used to organizing social life by impersonal rules, frankness, and greater equality.

Political science

"Face" has further applications in political science. For instance, Susan Pharr stressed the importance of "losing face" in Japanese comparative politics.

Semantics

Linguists have analyzed the semantics of "face". Huang used prototype semantics to differentiate lian and mianzi. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By emphasizes "the face for the person" metonymy. Keith Allan (1986) extended "face" into theoretical semantics. He postulated it to be an essential element of all language interchanges, and claimed: "A satisfactory theory of linguistic meaning cannot ignore questions of face presentation, nor other politeness phenomena that maintain the co-operative nature of language interchange."

Self-image

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-image

A cartoon representation of one's self-image

Self-image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to an objective investigation by others (height, weight, hair color, etc.), but also items that have been learned by persons about themselves, either from personal experiences or by internalizing the judgments of others. In some formulations, it is a component of self-concept.

Self-image may consist of six types:

1. Self-image resulting from how an individual sees oneself.
2. Self-image resulting from how others see the individual.
3. Self-image resulting from how the individual perceives the individual seeing oneself.
4. Self-image resulting from how the individual perceives how others see the individual.
5. Self-image resulting from how others perceive how the individual sees oneself.
6. Self-image resulting from how others perceive how others see the individual.

These six types may or may not be an accurate representation of the person. All, some, or none of them may be true.

A more technical term for self-image that is commonly used by social and cognitive psychologists is self-schema. Like any schema, self-schemas store information and influence the way we think and remember. For example, research indicates that information which refers to the self is preferentially encoded and recalled in memory tests, a phenomenon known as "self-referential encoding". Self-schemas are also considered the traits people use to define themselves, they draw information about the self into a coherent scheme.

Poor self-image

Poor self-image may be the result of accumulated criticisms that the person collected as a child which have led to damaging their own view of themselves. Children in particular are vulnerable to accepting negative judgments from authority figures because they have yet to develop competency in evaluating such comments. Also, adolescents are highly targeted to suffer from poor body-image issues. Individuals who already exhibit a low sense of self-worth may be vulnerable to develop social disorders.

Negative self-images can arise from a variety of factors. A prominent factor, however, is personality type. Perfectionists, high achievers and those with "type A" personalities seem to be prone to having negative self-images. This is because such people constantly set the standard for success high above a reasonable, attainable level. Thus, they are constantly disappointed in this "failure."

Another factor that contributes to a negative self-image is the beauty values of the society in which a person lives. In the American society, a popular beauty ideal is a slimness. Oftentimes, girls believe that they do not measure up to society's "thin" standards, which leads to their having a negative self-image.

Maintenance

When people are in the position of evaluating others, self-image maintenance processes can lead to a more negative evaluation depending on the self-image of the evaluator. That is to say stereotyping and prejudice may be the way individuals maintain their self-image. When individuals evaluate a member of a stereotyped group, they are less likely to evaluate that person negatively if their self-images had been bolstered through a self-affirmation procedure, and they are more likely to evaluate that person stereotypically if their self-images have been threatened by negative feedback. Individuals may restore their self-esteem by derogating the member of a stereotyped group.

Fein and Spencer (1997) conducted a study on Self-image Maintenance and Discriminatory Behavior. This study showed evidence that increased prejudice can result from a person's need to redeem a threatened positive perception of the self. The aim of the study was to test whether a particular threat to the self would instigate increased stereotyping and lead to actual discriminatory behavior or tendencies towards a member of a "negatively" stereotyped group. The study began when Fein and Spencer gave participants an ostensible test of intelligence. Some of them received negative feedback, and others, positive and supportive feedback. In the second half of the experiment, the participants were asked to evaluate another person who either belonged to a negatively stereotyped group, or one who did not. The results of the experiment showed that the participants who had previously received unfavorable comments on their test, evaluated the target of the negatively stereotyped group in a more antagonistic or opposing way, than the participants who were given excellent reports on their intelligence test. They suggested that the negative feedback on the test threatened the participants' self-image and they evaluated the target in a more negative manner, all in efforts to restore their own self-esteem.

A present study extends the studies of Fein and Spencer in which the principal behavior examined was avoidance behavior. In the study, Macrae et al. (2004) found that participants that had a salient negative stereotype of "skinheads" attached, physically placed themselves further from a skinhead target compared to those in which the stereotype was not as apparent. Therefore, greater salience of a negative stereotype led participants to show more stereotype-consistent behavior towards the target.

Residual

Residual self-image is the concept that individuals tend to think of themselves as projecting a certain physical appearance, or certain position of social entitlement, or lack thereof. The term was used at least as early as 1968, but was popularized in fiction by the Matrix series, where persons who existed in a digitally created world would subconsciously maintain the physical appearance that they had become accustomed to projecting.

Victimisation

Victims of abuse and manipulation often get trapped into a self-image of victimisation. The psychological profile of victimisation includes a pervasive sense of helplessness, passivity, loss of control, pessimism, negative thinking, strong feelings of self-guilt, shame, self-blame and depression. This way of thinking can lead to hopelessness and despair.

Children's disparity

Self-image disparity was found to be positively related to chronological age (CA) and intelligence. Two factors thought to increase concomitantly with maturity were capacity for guilt and ability for cognitive differentiation. However, males had larger self-image disparities than females, Caucasians had larger disparities and higher ideal self-images than African Americans, and socioeconomic status (SES) affected self-images differentially for the 2nd and 5th graders.

Strengtheners

A child's self-awareness of who they are differentiates into three categories around the age of five: their social self, academic persona, and physical attributes. Several ways to strengthen a child's self-image include communication, reassurance, support of hobbies, and finding good role models.

Evolved awareness in mirror

In the earliest stages of development, infants are not aware that images in mirrors are themselves. Research was done on 88 children between 3 and 24 months. Their behaviors were observed before a mirror. The results indicated that children's awareness of self-image followed three major age-related sequences:

• From about 6 through 12 months of age, the first prolonged and repeated reaction of an infant to their mirror image is that of a sociable “playmate”.
• In the second year of life, wariness and withdrawal appeared; self-admiring and embarrassed behavior accompanied those avoidance behaviors starting at 14 months, and was shown by 75% of the subjects after 20 months of age.
• During the last part of the second year of life, from 20 to 24 months of age, 65% of the subjects demonstrated recognition of their mirror images.

Physical activity

Regular practice of endurance exercise was related to a more favourable body-image. There was a strong association between participation in sports and the type of personality that tends to be resistant to drug and alcohol addiction. Physical exercise was further significantly related to scores for physical and psychological well-being. Adolescents who engaged regularly in physical activity were characterised by lower anxiety-depression scores, and displayed much less social behavioural inhibition than their less active counterparts…

It is likely that discussion of recreational or exercise involvement may provide a useful point of entry for facilitating dialogue among adolescents about concerns relating to body image and self-esteem. In terms of psychotherapeutic applications, physical activity has many additional rewards for adolescents. It is probable that by promoting physical fitness, increased physical performance, lessening body mass and promoting a more favourable body shape and structure, exercise will provide more positive social feedback and recognition from peer groups, and this will subsequently lead to improvement in an individual's self-image.

Automatic activation of stereotypes and threat

Does self-image threatening feedback make perceivers more likely to activate stereotypes when confronted by members of a minority group? Participants in Study 1 saw an Asian American or European American woman for several minutes, and participants in Studies 2 and 3 were exposed to drawings of an African American or European American male face for fractions of a second. These experiments found no evidence of automatic stereotype activation when perceivers were cognitively busy and when they had not received negative feedback. When perceivers had received negative feedback, however, evidence of stereotype activation emerged even when perceivers were cognitively busy.

Women's sexual behavior

A magazine survey that included items about body image, self-image, and sexual behaviors was completed by 3,627 women. The study found that overall self-image and body image are significant predictors of sexual activity. Women who were more satisfied with body image reported more sexual activity, orgasm, and initiating sex, greater comfort undressing in front of their partner, having sex with the lights on, trying new sexual behaviors (e.g. anal sex), and pleasing their partner sexually than those dissatisfied. Positive body image was inversely related to self-consciousness and importance of physical attractiveness, and directly related to relationships with others and overall satisfaction.

Men's sexual behavior

An article published in the journal, Psychology of Men & Masculinity, analyzed how (perceived) penile size affected body satisfaction in males. Based on the responses received from 110 heterosexual individuals (67 men; 43 women) to questions on the matter, the article concluded:

Men showed significant dissatisfaction with penile size, despite perceiving themselves to be of average size. Importantly, there were significant relationships between penile dissatisfaction and comfort with others seeing their penis, and with likelihood of seeking medical advice with regard to penile and/or sexual function. Given the negative consequences of low body satisfaction and the importance of early intervention in sexually related illnesses (e.g., testicular cancer), it is imperative that attention be paid to male body dissatisfaction.

Inbreeding depression

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding_depression

Inbreeding depression in Delphinium nelsonii. A. Overall fitness of progeny cohorts and the B. progeny lifespan were all lower when progeny were the result of crosses with pollen taken close to a receptor plant.

Inbreeding depression is the reduced biological fitness that has the potential to result from inbreeding (the breeding of related individuals). The loss of genetic diversity that is seen due to inbreeding, results from small population size. Biological fitness refers to an organism's ability to survive and perpetuate its genetic material. Inbreeding depression is often the result of a population bottleneck. In general, the higher the genetic variation or gene pool within a breeding population, the less likely it is to suffer from inbreeding depression, though inbreeding and outbreeding depression can simultaneously occur.

Inbreeding depression seems to be present in most groups of organisms, but varies across mating systems. Hermaphroditic species often exhibit lower degrees of inbreeding depression than outcrossing species, as repeated generations of selfing is thought to purge deleterious alleles from populations. For example, the outcrossing nematode (roundworm) Caenorhabditis remanei has been demonstrated to suffer severely from inbreeding depression, unlike its hermaphroditic relative C. elegans, which experiences outbreeding depression.

Mechanisms

Example of inbreeding depression

Inbreeding (i.e., breeding between closely related individuals) results in more recessive traits manifesting themselves, as the genomes of pair-mates are more similar. Recessive traits can only occur in an offspring if present in both parents' genomes. The more genetically similar the parents are, the more often recessive traits appear in their offspring. This normally has a positive effect, as most genes are undergoing purifying selection (the homozygous state is favored). However, for very closely related individuals, there is an increased likelihood of homozygous deleterious genes in the offspring which can result in unfit individuals.^[4] For the alleles that confer an advantage in the heterozygous and/or homozygous-dominant state, the fitness of the homozygous-recessive state may even be zero (meaning sterile or unviable offspring).

An example of inbreeding depression is shown to the right. In this case, a is the recessive allele which has negative effects. In order for the a phenotype to become active, the gene must end up as homozygous aa because in the geneotype Aa, the A takes dominance over the a and the a does not have any effect. Some recessive genes result in detrimental phenotypes by causing the organism to be less fit to its natural environment.

Another mechanism responsible for inbreeding depression is the fitness advantage of heterozygosity, which is known as overdominance. This can lead to reduced fitness of a population with many homozygous genotypes, even if they are not deleterious or recessive. Here, even the dominant alleles result in reduced fitness if present homozygously (see also hybrid vigour).

Overdominance is rare in nature. For practical applications, e.g. in livestock breeding, the former is thought to be more significant – it may yield completely unviable offspring (meaning outright failure of a pedigree), while the latter can only result in relatively reduced fitness.

Natural selection

Natural selection cannot effectively remove all deleterious recessive genes from a population for several reasons. First, deleterious genes arise constantly through de novo mutation within a population. Second, most offspring will have some deleterious traits, so few will be more fit for survival than the others. Different deleterious traits are extremely unlikely to equally affect reproduction – an especially disadvantageous recessive trait expressed in a homozygous recessive individual is likely to eliminate itself, naturally limiting the expression of its phenotype. Third, recessive deleterious alleles will be "masked" by heterozygosity, and so in a dominant-recessive trait, heterozygotes will not be selected against.

When recessive deleterious alleles occur in the heterozygous state, where their potentially deleterious expression is masked by the corresponding wild-type allele, this masking phenomenon is referred to as complementation (see complementation (genetics)).

In general, sexual reproduction in eukaryotes has two fundamental aspects: genetic recombination during meiosis, and outcrossing. It has been proposed that these two aspects have two natural selective advantages respectively. A proposed adaptive advantage of meiosis is that it facilitates recombinational repair of DNA damages that are otherwise difficult to repair (see DNA repair as the adaptive advantage of meiosis). A proposed adaptive advantage of outcrossing is complementation, which is the masking of deleterious recessive alleles (see hybrid vigor or heterosis). The selective advantage of complementation may largely account for avoidance of inbreeding (see kin recognition), though it is unlikely that animals avoid inbreeding.

Management

Hybridization as a conservation effort is appropriate if the population has lost "substantial genetic variation through genetic drift and the detrimental effects of inbreeding depression are apparent" and a similar population should be used. Different populations of the same species have different deleterious traits, and therefore their cross breeding is less likely to result in homozygosity at most loci in the offspring. This is known as outbreeding enhancement, which can be performed in extreme cases of severe inbreeding by conservation managers and zoo captive breeders to prevent inbreeding depression.

However, intermixing two different populations can give rise to unfit polygenic traits in outbreeding depression (i.e. yielding offspring which lack the genetic adaptations to specific environmental conditions). These, then, will have a lowered fitness than pure-bred individuals of a particular subspecies that has adapted to its local environment.

In humans

Inbreeding may have both detrimental and beneficial effects. The biological effects of inbreeding depression in humans can on occasion be confounded by socioeconomic and cultural influences on reproductive behavior. Studies in human populations have shown that age at marriage, duration of marriage, illiteracy, contraceptive use, and reproductive compensation are the major determinants of apparent fertility, even amongst populations with a high proportion of consanguinous unions. However, several small effects on increased mortality, longer inter-birth intervals and reduced overall productivity have been noted in certain isolated populations, though other studies show increased fitness of offspring and no effect on lifespan past the 2nd cousin level.

Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the effects of inbreeding depression, through numerous experiments on plants. Darwin's wife, Emma, was his first cousin, and he was concerned about the impact of inbreeding on his ten children, three of whom died at age ten or younger; three others had childless long-term marriages.

Humans do not seek to completely minimize inbreeding, but rather to maintain an optimal amount of inbreeding vs. outbreeding. Close inbreeding reduces fitness through inbreeding depression, but some inbreeding brings benefits. Indeed, inbreeding "increases the speed of selection of beneficial recessive and co-dominant alleles, e.g. those that protect against diseases."

In wolves

A small isolated highly inbred population of gray wolves in Isle Royale National Park, Michigan, USA, was considered in 2019 to be at imminent risk of extinction. This gray wolf population had been experiencing severe inbreeding depression primarily due to the homozygous expression of strongly deleterious recessive mutations. Defects arising from severe inbreeding among the wolves included reduced survival and reproduction, malformed vertebrae, syndactyly, probable cataracts, an unusual “rope tail” and anomalous fur phenotypes. A separate small inbred population of gray wolves in Scandinavia was also found to suffer from inbreeding depression due to the homozygous expression of deleterious recessive mutations.

Factors reducing inbreeding depression

Whilst inbreeding depression has been found to occur in almost all sufficiently studied species, some taxa, most notably some angiosperms, appear to suffer lower fitness costs than others in inbred populations. Three mechanisms appear to be responsible for this: purging, differences in ploidy, and selection for heterozygosity. It must be cautioned that some studies failing to show an absence of inbreeding depression in certain species can arise from small sample sizes or where the supposedly outbred control group is already suffering inbreeding depression, which frequently occurs in populations that have undergone a recent bottleneck, such as those of the naked mole rat.

Purging selection

Purging selection occurs where the phenotypes of deleterious recessive alleles are exposed through inbreeding, and thus can be selected against. This can lead to such detrimental mutations being removed from the population, and has been demonstrated to occur rapidly where the recessive alleles have a lethal effect. The efficiency of purging will depend on the relationship between the magnitude of the deleterious effect that is unmasked in the homozygotes and the importance of genetic drift, so that purging is weaker for non-lethal than for recessive lethal alleles. For very small populations, drift has a strong influence, which can cause the fixation of sublethal alleles under weak selection. The fixation of a single allele for a specific gene can also reduce fitness where heterozygote advantage was previously present (i.e., where heterozygous individuals have higher fitness than homozygotes of either allele), although this phenomenon seems to make a usually small contribution to inbreeding depression. Although naturally occurring, purging can be important for population survival, deliberately attempting to purge deleterious mutations from a population is not generally recommended as a technique to improve the fitness of captive bred animals. In plants, genetic load can be assessed through a test analogous to an inbreeding depression test called an Autogamy depression test.

Polyploidy

Many angiosperms (flowering plants) can self-fertilise for several generations and suffer little from inbreeding depression. This is very useful for species which disperse widely and can therefore find themselves growing in a novel environment with no conspecifics present. Polyploidy (having more than two paired sets of each chromosome), which is prevalent in angiosperms, ferns and a select few animal taxa, accounts for this. By having several copies of a chromosome, as opposed to two, homozygosity is less likely to occur in inbred offspring. This means that recessive deleterious alleles are not expressed as frequently as with many copies of a chromosome; it is more likely that at least one will contain a functional allele.

Selection for heterozygosity

Selection for heterozygosity is rare, as lost loci undergo purifying selection for homozygous loci. Inbreeding depression has also been found to occur more gradually than predicted in some wild populations, such as in the highly inbred population of Scandinavian wolves. This appears to be due to a selection pressure for more heterozygous individuals, which generally are in better condition and so are more likely to become one of the few animals to breed and produce offspring.