Attention might be advantageously located to attractive faces. To clarify such an advantage in attentional process, the present study investigated the effects of facial attractiveness on two attentional processes, i.e., attention capture and attention adhesion. Attention adhesion refers to the difficulty to switch attention away, whereas attention capture refers to the process of initial orienting of attention. Both top-down (driven by participants’ task knowledge) and bottom-up (driven by the properties inherent in the stimuli) attention capture effects were considered. Given the evolutionary implications of facial attractiveness, I also examined the influence of priming the fundamental needs, i.e., self-protection and mating goals, on the facial attractiveness effect. To address these issues, five experiments were conducted by using visual search and modified cue paradigms. / In Experiments 1a-1c, participants were required to search for the attractive face among a set of unattractive faces, and to search for the unattractive face among a set of attractive faces. In Experiment 1b, before performing the visual search task, participants were primed by watching/seeing scary and romantic movies/pictures to activate their self-protection and mating goals, respectively. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to search for the face among the distractors of neutral or threatening animal pictures and other non-face pictures, whereas in Experiment 3, participants were asked to search for the neutral or threatening animal among the distractors of face and non-face pictures. In Experiments 4 and 5, the modified cue paradigms were used. Participants’ task was to indicate the location of a target dot after two cues were simultaneously presented at the left and right sides of the screen. Faces and non-face pictures were used as the cues. In Experiment 5, participants were required to not only respond to the target dot location but also remember the face-cue when a face was presented as one of the two cues. In Experiments 2-5, the threatening animals, as opposed to the neutral animals, were expected to prime participants with the self-protection goal. The effect of facial attractiveness on top-down attention capture was examined in Experiments 1, 2 and 5, whereas its effect on bottom-up attention capture was tested in Experiments 3 and 4. The effect of facial attractiveness on attention adhesion was assessed in Experiments 1, 3, 4 and 5. / Overall results showed that attention could be captured by the attractive face in a top-down manner when both attractive and unattractive faces were simultaneously presented (Experiment 1), but not in a bottom-up manner (Experiments 3 or 4) or when participants searched for the face among the non-face objects (Experiment 2). After attention was allocated to a face, facial attractiveness can further increase attention adhesion (Experiment 5). There was no significant modulation of the priming of self-protection or mating goals on the effect of facial attractiveness. The findings suggested that attention was not automatically drawn to attractive face. This process needs to be accompanied with fast intentional disengagement of attention from unattractive faces. / 本研究主要探討面孔吸引力對注意捕獲（attention capture）和注意粘附（attention adhesion）的影響。注意捕獲是指人們的注意被某個目標所吸引；注意粘附是指注意難以從所注意的目標上轉移開去。注意捕獲有兩種過程：自上而下和自下而上。自上而下的注意捕獲指與任務相關的知識所引導的注意捕獲；自下而上的注意捕獲則是指刺激的特徵所引導的注意捕獲。本研究對注意粘附和兩種注意捕獲都進行了討論。除此之外，由於吸引力的進化意義，本研究還探討了進化基本需求（自我保護和擇偶）對以上注意過程的影響。 / 實驗一、二、三採用視覺搜索範式。在實驗一中，參與者被要求在低吸引力/高吸引力的面孔背景中搜索高吸引力/低吸引力的面孔。在實驗一（b）中，在視覺搜索任務之前，參與者被要求觀看恐懼/浪漫的視頻和圖片以激活自我保護和擇偶的動機。在實驗二中，參與者被要求在其他非面孔的圖片背景中搜索面孔，而在實驗三中，參與者被要求搜索動物，面孔和其他非面孔圖片作為干擾項出現。實驗四、五採用改良線索範式。被試的任務是對在同時呈現的左右兩線索圖片後出現的目標點做反應。線索為面孔和非面孔圖片。在實驗五中，被試被額外要求記住面孔線索。在實驗二、三、四、五中，危險動物圖片被用來激活被試的自我保護動機。實驗一、二、五測量了面孔吸引力對自上而下的注意捕獲的影響；實驗三、四測量了面孔吸引力對自下而上的注意捕獲的影響；同時，在實驗一、三、四、五中，也可以分析面孔吸引力對注意粘附的影響。 / 實驗結果顯示，當高低吸引力的面孔同時呈現時，面孔吸引力能引發自上而下的注意捕獲（實驗一）；但不能引發自下而上的注意捕獲（實驗三、四），而且當參與者在非面孔圖片中搜索面孔時，面孔吸引力也不能引發自上而下的注意捕獲（實驗二、五）。同時，面孔吸引力也會引發注意粘附（實驗一）。但是，本研究沒有發現進化基本需求對這些注意機制的影響。研究結果說明，高吸引力的面孔捕獲人們的注意需要伴隨著有意地將注意從低吸引力的面孔上快速轉離。 / Pu, Xiaoping. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-94). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 01, November, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.