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Evolutionary theories of attractiveness have been very successful at explaining what physical traits are attractive in the human face and why we should be attracted to them. However, the ecological validity of much of the research is limited because of the static nature of the stimuli used and the lack of consideration of the context in which attractiveness ratings or mating decisions are made.

The idea that a not-so-attractive person, is perceived as increasingly attractive the more one gets to know them, is a commonly reported experience, which is often attributed to familiarity. Features initially judged as unattractive, may later be judged as cute or unique. However, this explanation cannot account for why a person may be perceived as less attractive as one gets to know them. The first aim of the present research was to investigate whether liking for the target is the critical mediating factor in the relationship between knowing a person's non-physical characteristics, and appraisals of their facial attractiveness. This hypothesis is confirmed in Chapter 2. The second aim of this research was to explore the social-cognitive mechanisms underlying this effect. Chapter 2 found that personality infonnation, with a strong association to liking, cues expectations regarding the physical attractiveness of the target, which predict actual attractiveness ratings. Chapter 3 examined whether the effects are specific to the faces to which the personality information referred, and found that the effect carried-over to influence evaluations of a subsequently presented novel face, but that the effect was not mediated by whether the novel face physically resembled the target face, or was a friend of the target person. Chapter 4 found that affective priming, with words unrelated to personality characteristics, affects evaluations of facial attractiveness in much the same way. However, nonaffective priming does not influence ratings of attractiveness and relevant facial characteristics in the same way as affective priming does. Chapter 5 found that negative stimuli had a larger impact on affect scores and attractiveness judgements than positive stimuli. Chapter 6 presents a social-cognitive model of the effect of non-physical factors which influence how a face is processed to fonn attractiveness judgements, which brings together the different findings of the present research.

The present thesis offers a synthetic, discursive psychological investigation into social influence, as manifested in an everyday context - a livery yard in the south-west of England. Drawing on insights from Conversation Analysis, Discursive Psychology and Critical Discursive Psychology, the thesis demonstrates the limitations of traditional social psychological approaches to social influence, especially in terms of our understanding of how influence manifests itself in everyday life. The thesis argues that in order to understand social influence in practice it is important to study language in action, that is, the discursive and interactional practices through which influence is produced and through which people orient towards the possibility of influence. Also, the thesis examines how influence is mediated by other social actions including the demonstration of competence, exercise of leadership or the production of identity. The research presented in the thesis is based on the analysis of over 200 hours of audio and video data collected over eleven months of ethnographic work in a livery yard. The livery yard was chosen as the appropriate setting because social influence, in terms of giving, accepting or resisting advice, is a frequent concern both for the owners and the users of the livery yard. Also, the nature of the interactions in a livery yard, and the complexity of the social relationships between the management, staff and the customers meant that different forms of advice giving and orientations to influence could be readily observed, recorded and analysed. By examining how social influence is produced, oriented to and resisted in an everyday context, and by promoting a synthetic discursive approach to this quintessential social psychological topic, the thesis offers a timely critique of traditional research into social influence and contributes to the broader project of re-specifying social psychology in discursive, social constructionist terms.

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