An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields
Susan Constantine, Humintell’s Florida affiliate and body language expert recently appeared on the Marie Osmond Show in a segment on “Why Kids Lie“.
Susan has been featured on numerous TV stations and in many articles such as US News‘ article on body language and job interviews.
Below is a short video on what Susan had to say about kids and lying.
Click here to view the embedded video.
What did you notice about lying between young children and teenagers in Susan’s experiments?
Photo Courtesy of imagerymajestic
Emotions are a huge part of human nature and social communication. Many people use the common social smile in every day interactions. Although the social smile is easy for most people to flash on and off the face at will, there are factors that distinguish it from a true Duchenne Smile.
PopSci delves into the discussion that distressed emotions such as anger, fear, sadness and sometimes surprise are more difficult to fake on demand.
Why is this ?
Years of research from various sources purport that these expressions cause tension throughout the face as one part of the brain tries to control an expression caused by another part of the brain. These expressions also rely on antagonistic muscle groups, pulling parts of the face in opposing directions.
According to the PoPSci article, sadness is a good example of this. Sadness often involves both an expression of sadness and the desire to control that expression. “The tug of war over your face creates the quivering lip,” says Dr. Mark Frank, professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Buffalo.
Dr. David Matsumoto, Humintell’s director, comments on the facial muscles involved in the emotion of fear, “Fear involves more muscles in the top of the face than other emotions. We have much less neural connection to the forehead, the eyebrows and the upper eyelids than to the lower muscles in the face, so it becomes hard for us to voluntarily control them.”
Dr. Hillel Aviezer, professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem goes on to point out that facial expressions are different from reactions.
– A reaction like a knee jerk is in response to sensory stimuli and activates motor responses, bypassing the brain. In contrast, body cues and facial expressions demonstrating emotion are brain based, meaning they can be controlled to a certain extent, even if we aren’t very good at it.
He goes on to point out, “Recreating the expression without feeling the emotion can be tricky. Many people are poor posers of expressions; they simply don’t know what to move where.”
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Time, Business and Money commented on recent research regarding happiness and performance in the workplace. Who is the happiest at work? It might not be who you thought.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard business school and the author of Evolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow, says that the happiest people tend to be those facing the toughest, but most worthwhile, challenges.
In her research concerning what motivates people at highly innovative companies, Kanter found, “Money acted as a scorecard, but it did not get people up-and-at ‘em for the daily work, nor did it help people go home every day with a feeling of fulfillment.”
When people feel like their work can make a difference, they tend to be happier work such as teaching kids in inner city schools, working for solutions to homelessness, or improving health in developing countries.
However, a study by Leadership IQ found that in 42% of companies the lowest performing employees were more engaged and motivated in their work than their high performing colleagues. Many high performing employees are stressed out – they have to make up for the low performers and tend to feel undervalued often because they are.
To read more about which workers perform best read the entire article.