Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Analyzing Drew Peterson’s Facial Expressions

A former police sergeant Drew Peterson is being charged with the murder of his third wife Kathleen Savio and is a suspect in the mysterious disappearance of his fourth wife Stacy Peterson.

Peterson’s third wife’s death was originally classified as an accidental drowning (2004) but after his fourth wife Stacy vanished from their home in October 2011, investigators reopened the case and in light of new evidence and re-examining her body Peterson is being charged with Kathleen’s murder.

The Huff Post Chicago reports that The Illinois Supreme Court ordered an appellate court to reconsider if hearsay evidence, which is being disputed should be allowed.

The hearsay evidence purportedly illustrates that Peterson had a financial and emotional motive to kill Savio, according to ABC Chicago.

Watch the video below from Larry King Live:

What do you think his body language in conjunction with his words is communicating?

Do you see any Hot Spots (where Peterson’s nonverbal behavior contradicts what he is saying)?

The Complexity of the Human Face and Emotions

Guy laughing and Squinting - The Complexity of the Human Face - HumintellHumans learn at a very young age to distinguish faces.  In fact, studies have shown that an infant will pay closer attention (i.e. stare longer) at a face than any other object, no matter how colorful.

The human face plays an important role when answering the question what is it that makes humans different from all other animals?

Many scientists remark that humans have the most expressive face on the planet.

ABC News reports that this probably played a role in the previously accepted idea that we are the most emotional complex animals simply because scientists could not see such expressive emotions in other species.

The article goes on to point out that no other species has evolved the intricate web of facial nerves that we humans have or have the eloquence of the movement of 52 separate facial muscles.

So, the complexity of the human face is unique and allows for diverse and complex emotional facial expressions.  But are we the only species that have such deep emotional responses to our environments?

Scientist Jaak Panksepp, set out to answer that question in his lab at Washington State University. His species of choice, no surprise, rats.

This field of study is relatively new and is coined “Affective Neuroscience”, which traces the pathways of feelings and moods, conscious and unconscious, in brains, nerves and behavior in many species, including us.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What he and his colleagues found was that when tickled, rats emit a high pitched giggling.  They would  also follow the hand that “tickled” them around seeming to want more further suggesting that the act of being “tickled” was enjoyable.  They do seem to be responding emotionally to stimuli in their environments.

However, unlike the seven universal facial expressions of emotion, we cannot expect our facial expressions to be universal across species.  Therefore, what we might interpret on a chimpanzee as joy could in fact be an expression of fear.

In a connection to a recent blog, posted on the 26th of this month, this article went on to report that the famous and brilliant Jane Goodall also suffered from Prosopagnosia, a difficulty in face recognition.

Read the entire article to find out more information on the human face and one reason why men have evolved to have big bushy beards while women have remained, for the most part, free of facial hair.