Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Agree to Disagree: Men and Women

Do you or your man smile a lot?  Do you find it sexy?  Do you think he does?  According to fyi Living website, attractive facial expressions vary between the sexes.

Recent studies suggest that men prefer women who bear smiles while women find that quality the most unattractive in a man.

So, which expression do women like the most and which one do men find the least attractive?

Like most things between the two sexes, this research suggests that it is the exact opposite.  Women find a prideful expression on  man to be the most attractive while men find a prideful expression on a women to be the least attractive.

Why are men and women opposites when it comes  to emotion? Science’s take on this is that women find smiles to be more feminine; therefore, lacking dominance.  Prideful expressions indicate a man’s ability to be a good provider; therefore, a strong mate and the most attractive facial expression.

Men on the other hand, love the feminine smile because it reflects a nurturing attitude reminding them of comfort and their mothers.  An interesting finding from these studies is that men and women both find shame to be an attractive facial expression.  We are a convoluted species.

What do you think of these findings? Do you think they bear any weight?

For additional information on men and women and what their body language is saying, take a look at this article from the Times of India.

Eyeless Emotions

According to the Epoch Times blind people can “see” emotions.  Ongoing research has discovered that blindsighted  individuals can not only respond to emotional cues on other people’s faces but can also navigate around objects.

These individuals are dubbed “blindsighted” people because their blindness was brought on by some kind of trauma such as a stroke or a head injury.  Their eyes are actually physically functional.  It is their brain’s reception of images that doesn’t function properly.

Beatrice de Gelder, a neuroscientist at Holland’s Tilburg University says, “Blindsighted people feel they are totally blind. ”

Before this study, it was believed a person with normal eyesight synchronized their facial expressions with others through an automatic response to visual cues.  However, this assumption is now in question.

The “blindsighted” participants in the study  imitated the faces that were loaded with emotion even though they could not see them.

de Gelder commented, “…we don’t have a clear view yet about the abilities of the brain.”   The neuroscientist went on to note in an interview that cortical vision tends to overwhelm a person’s perception, but the activity of other background pathways can be detected in blindsighted people.  These mental pathways allow a person to sense emotion rather then see them.

Take a look at de Gelder’s interview in season two of Through the Wormhole, which aired on July 6, 2011 for more intriguing information on the mysteries of existence.

You Can Buy Happiness!!

Two recent studies show that acts of kindness such as doing a good deed or buying a gift as long as it’s for someone else will make you happier. Perhaps, that ‘s why Saint Nicholas AKA Santa Claus is so jolly.

The first study, which was published in the Journal of Social Psychology had participants perform acts of kindness for a mere ten days.  The Great Britain researchers formed three groups out of the 86 participants in the study.  The control group was given no instructions and at the conclusion of the ten days were not happier than before the study began.  However, the group that was instructed to perform an act of kindness each day reported a significant elevation in their happiness.

The second study, conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School and the Univeristy of British Columbia suggests that kindness has a long lasting effect on our happiness.  This study’s findings reflected that people felt happier simply by recalling a time they bought something for someone else rather than when recalling a time when they purchased something for themselves.

Another intersting fact about the second study, which was published online in the Journal of Happiness Studies, was that the price of the gift didn’t seem to have an effect on the level of happiness the person experienced.  It didn’t matter if the gift had cost $20 dollars or $100 dollars. Also, the happier the participant felt about past acts of kindness, the more likely they were to choose to continue doing for others in lieu of themselves.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is all according to the Greater Good website from the University of California, Berkeley.

With the holidays just around the corner, we all have the opportunity to test these findings.  The new mantra Give and Be Happy.

Below is a video about enjoying life