命宮 · 印堂
Myeonggung (Life Palace, 命宮) · Glabella
The flat spot between the eyebrows, a finger or two wide, is the glabella. Traditional gwansang gave it the weighty name myeonggung (命宮), the ‘life palace’, and psychology has clocked how fast impressions form around this very area.
A big name gathers big stories. Here is where the stories came from, next to the research that keeps you from taking them at face value.
Editorial markA plate for examining the names a culture placed on the face.
Location plate
The glabella, a hand-span between the brows
On the plate, the myeonggung is the smooth plane between the two eyebrows. Anatomy calls it the glabella, the polished front of the frontal bone.
On the traditional thirteen-part midline chart the same spot appears as indang (印堂). The name uses the character for ‘seal’ (印), and the customary gloss likens it to the place where a seal is pressed; on twelve-palace charts the identical spot is labeled the life palace.
- Plate label
- 命宮 · 印堂
- Anatomical term
- glabella (between the brows)
Name and tradition
The weight of the name ‘life palace’
The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture's gwansang entry lists the twelve palaces beginning with the myeonggung, and that first position is commonly read as a sign of how much the old readers prized this spot as the center of the impression.
Classics in the Mayi Xiangfa lineage are said to have praised a bright, open myeonggung, but that is the rhetoric of an old culture, and the shape of a glabella is not used to judge anyone's future.
Psychology in contrast
Tenth-of-a-second impressions and thin slices
In a widely cited 2006 experiment, Willis and Todorov reported that people form trustworthiness impressions from about 100 milliseconds of seeing a face, and that more time barely changed the judgment. Since the gaze lands first around the eyes and glabella, impressions of this spot set especially fast.
Ambady and Rosenthal's 1992 meta-analysis gathered the ‘thin slice’ studies showing people confidently build impressions from just seconds of exposure. Fast, sure-footed conclusions are the brain's default, which is not the same as a guarantee they are right.
Texts and research
Sources for this plate
- Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, ‘Gwansang’ entry: the myeonggung (命宮) in the twelve palaces
- The indang (印堂) label on the traditional thirteen-part midline chart (Mayi lineage, as customarily transmitted)
- Willis & Todorov (2006), Psychological Science 17: 100-ms first impressions
- Ambady & Rosenthal (1992), Psychological Bulletin 111: the thin-slice meta-analysis
Terms and further reading