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This thesis examines the use of computer-mediated communication for lie-detection and interpersonal deceit. The literature within the fields of lie-detection and mediated communication are reviewed and it is proposed that there is a lack of knowledge surrounding how people use CMC to deceive one another. Qualitative research was carried out in order to address this shortcoming, exploring the self-reported experiences of chat room users who have been exposed to online deceit. Reports were provided that describe the misrepresentation of age, gender, vocation, affection, and appearance. The importance of stereotypes in driving suspicions is also emphasised within the reports. It is suggested that this key characteristic has more dominance in CMC than it would do face-to-face because of the occlusion of the traditional nonstrategic clues to deceit. Evidence for an alternative set of nonstrategic leakage clues was examined further by conducting a variant of the Guilty-Knowledge test within the context of a CMC based crime. It was found that participants exhibited a response time inhibition effect when presented with 'guilty knowledge' and that this effect was detectable through a standard two-button mouse. The use of such nonstrategic cues to deceit was explored further in a study that examined how CMC might be used to add additional control to a Statement Validity Assessment truth-validation test. It was found that the content analysis technique used by SVA was unable in its present form to correctly distinguish between truthful and fabricated statements of participants interviewed using a CMC chat program. In addition, it was found that the deletion-behaviours of participants fabricating a story within CMC provided no quantitative or qualitative evidence that they were lying.

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This thesis examines the construction and action of food evaluations in mealtime conversation. It takes a social constructionist approach to eating, arguing that `talking food' is inseparable from, and thus constructive of, the practices around food and drink consumption. This challenges current psychological thinking on eating, which is typically based on a cognitive-experimental model of attitudes and intentions to eat. I argue that this does not adequately take into account the social nature of food and the way in which food and eating is embedded in everyday interaction. The thesis examines instances of family mealtimes, as a way of looking at food in interaction. Data is taken from the tape-recorded conversations during these interactions. Conversation analytic and discursive psychological approaches were used to analyse the data corpus, with a focus on participants' usage of food and drink evaluations. These evaluations were examined as part of the situated activities of the meal such as offering or requesting food, and justifying eating habits. The analysis looks at different types of food evaluations: those that are associatedw ith the food and those associated with the person evaluating the food. These types are seen to be specific to either items or categories of food, and are rhetorically designed to counter challenges. Finally, the analysis considers how embodied eating sensations such as `gustatory pleasure' are constructed through evaluative expressions. It is argued that food and drink evaluations cannot be treated as separate mental or physical states (such as food attitudes or preferences) as they are bound up with the structure of interaction at the micro-level of speaker turn organisation. Instead, food evaluations can be regarded as part of, and as constructing, the practice of eating as well as contributing to our notions of food sensations and individual taste. The analysis and approach taken in this thesis therefore suggest that we need to reconceptualise eating and consumption in terms of discursive activities in interaction.

This thesis demonstrates the popularity of mobile telephony within a population of undergraduate students, and provides explanations regarding the adoption, use and meaning of mobile phones therein. Research has been conducted at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne amongst 1030 18-24 year old, full-time, UK-resident 'traditional entry' students, using social science methods. Due to a lack of existing research on this type of population, the thesis also includes ethnographic data from the everyday lives of the individuals concerned. This data in turn supports the main findings of the research. Although some theorists conceptualise the mobile phone as `impacting' on social life, this research adopts a `social shaping' approach from work in social studies of technology, and is also informed by social anthropology. This theoretical basis helps formulate the argument that changes engendered by the mobile phone must be viewed in association with other recent changes within the University and its population. Correspondingly, the thesis suggests that the mobile phone is now integral to what Haselgrove (1994) terms the 'student experience', precisely because of the nature of this experience for the contemporary undergraduate population. The thesis therefore provides an explanation of the adoption rates, use patterns and meanings associated with mobile phones within the undergraduate population at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, in conjunction with a study of their behaviours and attitudes. It concludes that the use and meaning of mobile phones in student lives is directly linked to the specific circumstances of the population studied.

A survey of some relevant researches showed that aesthetic appreciation has generally Been studied either in terms of individual psychology or in relation to a standard determined by so-called 'art experts'˙ Neither of these approaches gave due consideration to the social aspect of aesthetic experience. It was concluded that in order to explore this aspect, the problem of literary preferences could profitably be studied in a social psychological context. The hypothesis which the present investigation proposed to test was that literary appreciation and preference, though highly individual in their nature, are influenced by two important social factors, namely, social background and political opinion, both being related to social values and attitudes˙ An experiment was devised for this purpose, consisting of sixteen poems (most of which were selected by four groups of people, two with contrasting social backgrounds and the other two with contrasting political outlooks), a preference scale on which the poems were to be rated, and a questionnaire regarding the raters' social background and political opinion˙ The raters were also to give their comments on each poem. Ratings and comments were obtained from a total number of 212 subjects, out of whom 164 completed the political opinion tests included in the questionnaire˙ The subjects were classified into three social groups according to the types of their occupations and each group was again divided into political sub-groups on the basis of the subjects' political affiliations. Analysis of variance was applied to the ratings of the sixteen poems taken together as well as separately in order to see if the three social groups differed significantly in their preferences. To study the relation between political opinion and literary preferences, correlation coefficients between political opinion scores and the ratings of each poem were calculated and their statistical significance determined˙ The mean ratings of different social groups and political sub-groups for the sixteen poems were compared and contrasted and were represented graphically˙ To Interpret the differences among social groups as well as political sub-groups within them, a qualitative analysis of the comments was made with special reference to the social attitudes and literary values of the subjects in different groups on the one hand, and the theme and the style of each poem on the other. The results of the experiment suggest that social background and political opinion, which involve certain attitudes and values on the part of the subjects, influence their preferences for certain types of poems, mainly in relation to the ideas, attitudes and sentiments expressed in them.

The thesis is in 2 parts. Part 1 contains a description of the relationships which a sample of young male probationers had at home, at work, within their peer-group and with their girlfriends or wives. The material conditions in which they lived are summarised, and brief data were collected concerning their mental and physical health. Attention is drawn to the fact that difficulties in one sector tended to be statistically associated with difficulties in another; moreover the presence of environmental stresses indicated a greater likelihood of reconviction within 12 months of the probation order being made. After the order had been in existence for 2 months, it was found that the quality of the probation officer's casework relationship was statistically associated with the client's parental relations, father-son and mother-son relationships, the probationer's contemporary associations, the level of support he enjoyed at work, and his personality characteristics. Furthermore a moderate or bad casework relationship was linked with a higher reconviction-rate. Thus the probation officers were best able to make a good relationship with those who appeared to need least help. An attempt to devise a Stress Score was only moderately successful, and Part 2 describes a method of assessing the environment which was intended to improve on it. It isolates 3 areas of the environment: support at home, work/school and crime contamination - which, it is suggested, together make up a social system likely to partially determine the probationer's criminal behaviour. The instrument was validated on a second sample (including juveniles); and statistical analyses were carried out to relate the environmental assessment to personality factors and to 3 different criteria of success on probation. The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of the methodological and theoretical issues arising out of the research instrument.

The research was intended to explore people's attitudes to the social transaction of giving and receiving help in situations of practical and material need, to assess their willingness to give and to accept help in defined situations, and to record the circumstances which they considered to be important in deciding whether to give and to accept help. The survey was conducted in a village in Norwegian Lapland where interesting developments in this field were said to be taking place. A class of students at the local Youth School was invited to respond in writing to a series of need situations presented as a tape-recorded projection test. The same test, illustrated with a film-strip, was used as the basis of intensive tape-recorded interviews with selected individual adult villagers. The results of the tests indicated that the subjects tested were not such rare givers nor such cheerful receivers as popular tradition held the Lapps to be. A great variety of circumstances influenced them in their decisions. Sympathy, and a strong sense of obligation to help in some situations, were the main reasons for giving. Decisions to accept or reject help were considerably influenced by the urgency of the need, by the benefits which would result from accepting, and "by the wish and obligation to be independent and self-sufficient. There were wide individual variations in willingness to give and accept help, and in the influence of the circumstances of the test situations on the decisions made. Instead of the expected inverse correlation between giving and accepting, various combinations of willingness to give and to accept were observed which reflected the different personalities and attitudes. It was found that none of the current theories on giving and receiving was sufficient to account for all the attitudes revealed, though each was relevant upon occasion.

This thesis addresses the problem of using qualitative descriptions produced from naturalistic field studies to inform the design of interactive technologies. Specifically, it describes the use of a conceptual framework conceived to bridge the divide between naturalistic field studies and design. The presented framework is based on activity theory and its foundations in cultural historical psychology. The thesis begins with an overview of the trend amongst researchers and practitioners to use naturalistic studies in the human-computer interaction and computer-supported collaborative work design fields. It focuses on the use of such studies in mobile device design. In doing so, it outlines the problems faced in drawing on the naturalistic descriptions produced from fieldwork studies to inform design. From a review of existing design approaches, activity theory is shown to offer several characteristics that may be useful in modelling naturalistic descriptions for the purposes of design. The thesis describes the theoretical underpinnings of activity theory and its relationship to design. This is followed by a closer inspection of the activity theory framework. It is revealed that the framework lacks a systematic means to incorporate naturalistic descriptions. An expanded conception of the framework is thus described that draws on some elements of ethnomethodology to orient naturalistic descriptions so that they are commensurate to activity theory's nomenclature. As a proof of principle, the application of the expanded framework is undertaken using the results from an empirical investigation of teenagers and their use of mobile telephones. Two interpretations of the fieldwork data are presented; one indicates that teenagers use their mobile phones to participate in the social practices of exchange and the second views the use of phones as contributing to localised forms of subversion. Both interpretations are modelled using the framework and subsequently used to outline a number of design implications. To conclude, the thesis summarises the overall success of the expanded activity theory framework. It is suggested the framework has sufficient means to model naturalistic descriptions but in practical terms it is likely to be overly demanding. It is argued that the need to adhere to the overarching theoretical framework is impractical in workaday design. An alternative toolbox approach is proposed that is able to draw upon some of the methods made available in activity theory. An argument is also put forward to draw on more general forms of sociological inquiry for the purposes of design.

Television has long been recognised by Malaysian state officials to be a vital tool in the promotion of a collective sense of national identity amongst the country's citizens. The aims of this thesis are as follows. Firstly, to clarify through current debates what national identity is, both generally and in the context of Malaysia. Secondly, to explore and analyse key aspects of the ways young adult Malaysians use and respond to television. Thirdly, to examine the perceptions of these young adults about the way television represents Malaysian national identity. Fourthly, to investigate the extent to which ethnicity influences their perceptions of the representation of national identity on television. The methodologies used in this study involved, firstly, undertaking a critical review of the literature with regard to the relationship of national identity and television, both internationally and with reference to Malaysia. Secondly, a short exploratory survey was used to establish background information on the young adults' viewing habits. Thirdly, focus group sessions were used to collect in-depth data on how young adults from different ethnic backgrounds related to television images of national identity. This thesis concludes that ethnicity played a decisive role in shaping these young people's perceptions of national identity through television. Thus whilst the NCP and subsequent government policies have sought to utilise television in the promotion of national identity, this research suggests that such efforts may have only partly succeeded in producing images that have a positive resonance with young adults in Malaysia.