The Humintell Blog, Author at Social Engineering Blogs

The Humintell Blog June 29, 2013

Facial Cues that Do & Don’t Indicate Lying

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Courtesy of StockVault

4GWAR, the nations counter terrorism, homeland security and new technologies blog recently did an article on Humintell’s Director, Dr. David Matsumoto and his speech at a Human Geography Conference outside of Washington D.C.

The article’s focus was on the “geography” of the human and that role in deception detection. Human geography is a multi-discipline study of not only the physical nature of the earth but the people who live on it and how they relate among themselves and with others along political, economic, cultural, linguistic, geographic lines.

Dr. Matsumoto pointed out in this conference as well as many times before that there are literally hundreds of studies that indicate the average individual (and sometimes even the improperly trained expert) can only detect real deception about 50% of the time.

“Bottom line: we’re no better [at it] than flipping a coin,” Matsumoto said. One good way to delve into a more in depth conversation with a witness or suspect is to ask the same types of questions in varying ways (referring to the event in question) and closely watch their facial expressions, more specifically their microexpressions.

This is very tricky and can take, even the expert, years to become proficient in such techniques. However, these microexpressions are only indicators that there could be more to the story than is being revealed not that there is concrete evidence of deception.

For instance, if your interrogating someone and say, “Were you at the victims house the night of the murder?” and they display a microexpression of fear followed by disgust, then there is probably more to the story then they are verbally revealing and that, that particular line of questioning should be explored more.

“There is no such thing as a Pinocchio response,” Matsumoto, founder and director of the Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory at San Francisco State, stated, “There’s no set of behaviors that reliably differentiate between who’s telling the truth and who isn’t.“

Typical Deception Myths to Avoid:

1. Liars avoid eye contact.

2. Deceivers look up and to the left or the right when they are telling a lie.

3. Liars scratch their nose often.

In a similar article on deception and new technologies, Biometric Update.com reveals the new wave in understanding a person’s emotional state.

Emotient, which specializes in facial expression analysis, and iMotions, an eye-tracking and biometric software platform company, have announced that Procter and Gamble, The United States Air Force and Yale University are its first customers for a newly integrated platform that combines facial expressions recognition and analysis, eye-tracking, EEG and GSR technologies.

This new technology is being designed for a variety of fields such as gaming, scientific, academic and marketing research.

Add to the deception myths or just point out what you think is most important in deception detection!

The Humintell Blog June 23, 2013

Conscious Laughter

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Photo @Stockvault.net

How does YOUR brain register laughter ?

It’s important to note, not all laughter is perceived as good. There is mocking laughter, ticklish laughter, which can be good or bad and joyful laughter. So, how do we know which is which without a visual context?

Researchers recently delved into this question and came to find that the complex processes of the brain can and do in fact delineate between different types of laughter.

The Times: Health & Family reported on research led by Dirk Wildgruber, professor of neuropsychiatry at Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen in Germany, which explored what these different expressions of hilarity looked like in the brain.

Wildgruber and colleagues had participants listen to laugh tracks while concurrently scanning their brain. The laugh tracks were generated by professional actors, who were given three specific scenarios — being tickled, feeling joy and taunting someone — and asked to produce the appropriate laugh for those situations.

Participants were asked to categorize this laughter as joyful, mocking or tickling.

An interesting fact is that the researchers did not find any distinction in terms of blood flow to specific brain regions — which is how scientists generally measure whether an area of the brain is activated — between joyous and taunting laughter.

However they did see changes in the strength of the connections between regions. When participants listened to taunting laughter, for example, the data showed a stronger connection between auditory areas and those involved in analyzing other people’s intentions, which is known technically as “mentalizing.” But during joyous laughter, the visual areas were more highly connected with the mentalizing regions. “

It might be worth noting that the participants were able to correctly identify the laughs in the majority of cases, though they were slightly less accurate at correctly labeling tickling.

“The stronger connection between the ‘voice area’ and the ‘mentalizing area’ during perception of taunting laughter might indicate that the social consequences of this signal are primarily inferred from the acoustic signal,” says Wildgruber

For more information read the entire article

The Humintell Blog June 21, 2013

Gestures and Culture

stockvault-the-eight-wonder100380 Gestures are one of the first things to come to mind that can cause a major cultural faux pas. People from every culture have been guilty of unintentionally offending people from other cultures through the use of inappropriate gestures.

Huffington Post reports on the dos and don’t in cultural gesturing.

For instance in America we tend to use the OK sign to communicate that everything is going well.

In many countries such as Brazil, Germany and Russia, the OK sign is offensive. In Japan it means “money” and is commonly used in France to mean “zero“.

Another example of gesture confusion across cultures, that the article points out, is the “V” hand symbol used most often in America to represent “peace“. Popularized during the 1960′s but first used by Winston Churchill in England around WWII, this seemingly benign symbol can mean so much more. In Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and a few other countries, it can mean “up yours“ if it is made with the palm is facing inward.

The thumbs-up gesture is commonly used in America as well as other cultures to signify a job well done. However, in Australia, Greece, or the Middle East — especially if it is thrust up as a typical hitchhiking gesture would be — it means essentially “Up yours!” or “Sit on this!”

Body Language conveys roughly 90% of what we communicate to the people around us. It is vital especially for good relations that we are aware of how and what we communicate to people from different cultures.

Humintell understands the importance of proper communication across cultures, which is why we have developed IntelliCulture – Humintell’s cross-cultural adaptation training tool. IntelliCulture helps you understand what culture is, which groups have culture and which do not as well as how to think critically when encountered with a difficult cultural situation.

Have a better understanding of the definition of culture and where it comes from
Understand which groups have culture and which ones don’t
Understand what culture is made of and how it influences behavior
How to overcome cultural differences
How to control your emotions when dealing with people from other cultures
Think critically when encountered with a difficult cultural situation
Improve interactions among people of different cultures

– See more at: http://www.humintell.com/improving-your-global-skills/#sthash.5dMqMONU.dpuf

Do You Know Any Cultural Gestures that Weren’t Mentioned?
Share them with the Humintell Community!