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How to Gather Data for Your Most Important Negotiations

Written by Kwame Christian, originally published on LinkedIn

When you think of nonverbal communication (within the context of negotiation), what comes to mind?

My first guess would be body language, but there is so much there to explore.

I was fortunate enough to have Dr. David Matsumoto, Ph.D. on Negotiate Anything this week on the episode, “Strategic Nonverbal Mastery, Elevate Your Negotiation Skills with Dr. David Matsumoto”.

David is a renowned expert in the field of microexpressions, gestures, nonverbal behavior, culture, and emotion.

He’s also an alumnus of “that school up north”, but we won’t hold that against him – because he’s brilliant!

David joined to share some incredible insights on the world of nonverbal communication, more specifically, non-verbal behavior.

You may be wondering, what’s the difference? If so, you’re not alone.

It’s common for people to conflate the two, but non-verbal communication is actually an umbrella term that includes four different ways to gather information about a person (beyond what they say).

According to David, the four domains are:

  1. The physical environment you are in when speaking to a person
  2. Their physical appearance
  3. Behavioral traces
  4. Non-verbal behavior

He defines non-verbal behavior as the dynamic actions and movements of our body.

This can be a lot of information to take in, so where do we begin?

By simply observing.

The truth is, most people think they are being observant, when in reality they are overlooking a lot of data.

We can learn plenty by simply taking the time to observe the little things about a person, right down to their posture when they enter a room or which chair they chose to sit in.

You may also be wondering about your body language.

What should you keep in mind when engaging in a difficult conversation or important negotiation?

Check out the episode to hear David’s answer – it may surprise you!

The post How to Gather Data for Your Most Important Negotiations first appeared on Humintell.

The Importance of Eyebrows in Emotion Expression

It may be easy to live your entire life without giving your eyebrows a second thought, but in reality, they’re an incredibly important social communication tool.

As reported in the Independent, “Your eyebrows reflect your inner mental and emotional landscape with amazing speed and specificity. They are involved not just in emotional expression, but also in emotion perception in social situations”.

Turns out researchers have been studying facial hair (including eyebrows) and the role they play in emotion expression. Read on to learn more about what the research says.

Why Do We Have Eyebrows?

Eyebrows are a big part of our appearance and are one of the most distinct features of your whole face. 

One of the most important roles eyebrows play is to protect your eyes from moisture such as rain or sweat. The shape of your brows themselves, along with the hair help force water away from your eyes so you can still see.

While protecting our eyes may have been their original purpose, eyebrows found themselves playing a secondary role somewhere along the line: conveying emotion.

What Are Eyebrows For?

Eyebrows are one of the most expressive features of your face and helps you communicate all kinds of messages non-verbally.

Different eyebrow positions convey different emotions like happiness, surprise or anger.

According to Discover Magazine, “A 2018 study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution investigated why early hominins’ brow ridges were so much larger and more rigid than modern humans’ ridges. They found that having more mobile eyebrows likely helped our ancestors to form relationships and ensure survival in groups. Eyebrow hair, the researchers say, simply increased the visibility of this form of communication.”

Fascinatingly, our eyebrows may be involved not just in emotional expression but in emotion perception.

Research has shown that along with the rest of your face and body, your eyebrows may spontaneously mimic the people you interact with in social situations.

Why Dogs Have Eyebrows but Wolves Don’t

puppy-dog-eyesInterestingly, using our eyebrows to communicate emotion does not seem to be a uniquely human trait.

Dogs were domesticated from wolves over 33,000 years ago and, during that time, selection processes have shaped both their anatomy and behavior.

Eyebrow movement plays a major role in human communication and dogs have a muscle in the eyebrow region that gray wolves don’t.

The fact that dogs can lift their eyebrows to communicate with humans is probably one reason many think of our dogs as children.

Eyebrows give dogs a wider range of human-like facial expressions we can identify with and they play a vital role in how dogs became “man’s best friend.”

Evolutionary psychologists believe that centuries of domestication “transformed the facial muscle anatomy of dogs specifically for facial communication with humans,” write the authors of a 2019 study published in PNAS.

For more on how dogs are born ready to read body language and are capable of communicating and interacting with humans at a very young age read our past blog post:

Puppies Read Body Language

What About Beards?

In his Descent of Man, Charles Darwin suggested a reason for why we grow beards.

He suggested that beards were an example of sexual selection and may have evolved “to charm or excite the opposite sex” — while also intimidating the competition.

Researchers tend to think the same, for example, of lion’s manes, which may signal to other lions that the mane-bearer is in good health and a formidable opponent. 

An interesting 2019 study published in Psychological Science suggests Darwin’s hypothesis is possible.

The researchers investigated whether beards enhance recognition of threatening expressions, such as anger.

The results of their study suggested that found that, “the presence of a beard increased the speed and accuracy with which participants recognized displays of anger but not happiness”.

Bonus fact: If a man never shaves his beard it can grow up to 30 feet long during his lifetime.

The post The Importance of Eyebrows in Emotion Expression first appeared on Humintell.

Can AI Tell Your Politics By Looking At Your Face?

Believe it or not, the 2024 Presidential Election is right around the corner. And according to a new study out of Denmark, AI may be able to predict your political views.

A team of researchers based in Denmark and Sweden recently conducted a study to see if “deep learning techniques,” like facial recognition technology and predictive analytics can be used on faces to predict a person’s political views.

The study was entitled “Using deep learning to predict ideology from facial photographs: expressions, beauty, and extra-facial information” and published as an open access article in March 2023.

The Methodology

Tfigure 5he researchers used a public dataset of 3,233 images of Danish political candidates who ran for local office and cropped them to only show their faces (see example image to the left).

After that, they applied advanced techniques to assess their facial expressions and a facial beauty database to determine a person’s “beauty score.”

Using these data points, the scientists predicted whether the figures pictured were left-wing or right-wing.

According to Business Insider, “The study found that the tech accurately predicted the political affiliations 61% of time.

The model predicted that conservative candidates  “appeared happier than their left-wing counterparts” because of their smiles, whereas liberal candidates were more neutral.

Women who expressed contempt — a facial expression characterized by neutral eyes and one corner of the lips lifted — were linked to more liberal politics by the model.”

In addition, the researchers found that AI correlated the political candidate’s level of attractiveness with their politics.

Women deemed attractive by their beauty scores were predicted to have conservative views, though there was not a similar correlation between mens’ level of attractiveness and right-wing leanings.

The study’s writers say the results of this study, “confirmed the threat to privacy posed by deep learning approaches.”

Attractiveness and Political Ideology

Links between attractiveness and political ideology are nothing new.

One study entitled “Effect of physical attractiveness on political beliefs” examined the relationship between attractiveness and political beliefs.

As reported in the Guardian, “The researchers took data from the 1972, 1974 and 1976 American National Studies surveys which asked people to evaluate the appearance of others and also explored participants’ political beliefs, income, race, gender, and education.

These results were compared with the Wisconsin Longitudinal study which focused on the physical characteristics of more than 10,000 high school students who were rated by others on their level of attractiveness.”

The results of that study suggested that “more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican.”

Facial Recognition Technology and Political Orientation

Facial recognitionSimilar research suggests that facial recognition technology can predict a person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy.

Published in Scientific Reports one study suggests that facial recognition technology can accurately predict someone’s political stance from their Facebook profile photo.

Michal Kosinski, an associate professor at Stanford University, applied a facial recognition algorithm to 1,085,795 faces obtain from online social media profiles.

Of this dataset, 977,777 came from dating website users in the U.S., UK, and Canada who had self-reported their political orientation.

The other 108,018 faces were from Facebook users in the U.S. who also self-reported their political orientation and additionally completed a 100-item personality test.

The algorithm compared each participant’s facial features to the average facial features of liberals and conservatives. The technology used these similarity measurements to determine the likelihood that a participant was either a conservative or a liberal.

The results showed that the algorithm was able to predict political orientation alarmingly well and with similar accuracy across countries and social media platforms.

Among U.S. Facebook users, this accuracy hit 73%. Among U.S. dating website users, accuracy was 72%. Among dating website users in the UK and Canada, accuracy reached 70% and 71%, respectively.

The post Can AI Tell Your Politics By Looking At Your Face? first appeared on Humintell.