Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Empathy Emptiness

Do you have emotional empathy for other people?

This seems like a no-brainer but research is now suggesting that people who have had severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) have a loss of emotional empathy , which is the ability to recognize and understand the emotions of other people.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales, conducted a study to investigate whether physiological responses to emotions are connected to emotional empathy.

PsychCentral reported that the team used electromyography and skin conductance to analyze two groups of adults, one with severe TBI and a healthy control group, focusing on the participant’s facial muscle and sweat glands while they viewed happy and angry facial expressions.

“The results of this study were the first to reveal that reduced emotional responsiveness observed after severe TBI is linked to changes in empathy in this population…,” said study author and doctoral candidate Arielle DeSousa.

What are your thoughts on Emotional Empathy or the lack thereof?

Emotional Masks

Who’s the best at hiding their emotions?  Well, take a look at the video below, which delineates the most popular society at masking their emotions.  It is not Brits as one might suggest.

Dr.  David Matsumoto, microexpression expert, comments on why this might be so prevalent in Japanese society.

He suggests that because it is such a populated country, people need to cooperate with one another to live amicably.

Instead of seeing anger or sadness, Japanese people neutralize those emotions to live harmoniously.  This can be seen in the Japanese martial arts as well, where control over one’s emotions and actions as well as having an acute observation of their opponent is crucial for victory.

This is tantamount to America’s poker players who try to mask their emotions at all costs and benefit from being able to read their opponents emotions/body language.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Antisocial Disorder

When people think of psychopaths they think one in a million, perhaps that’s just me.

It turns out that the infrequencies of psychopaths in the world is just a myth.  According to, the Sign of the Times: Psychopathy website this disorder is more prevalent than one might have thought or perhaps wants to believe.

The mounting cases in the media of people who have committed horrific crimes points to the leading polls that psychopathy, if you will, is a prevalent threat to the world.

According to this website, psychopaths make up 4% of the world population and who knows what percent of alien populations elsewhere (ha ha?).  They purport that the prevalence rate for anorexia is a 3.43% and it is nearly deemed an epidemic.  It’s interesting because that figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality aka psychopaths.

To put this in perspective, high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only 1% [of the population].  This is a quarter the rate of antisocial personality disorder.  Also, the CDC rates colon cancer as “alarmingly high” (in the U.S.) with one in 40 people per 100,000 having the disease and this is 100 times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.

It seems obvious that the severity of psychopaths has a huge scale range.  The question is, is even the smallest remnants of antisocial disorder dangerous?

The article alludes to the possible dangers of such behaviors:

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs.  Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.

What are your thoughts on the issue?  Keep in mind some of the recent news stories such as the Anthony case?

The article goes on to affirm that, most of us would not link ethnic genocide to something as small as guiltlessly lying to one’s boss about a coworker.  It suggests that not only are these relatable but that the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us emotionally when we make a choice we view as immoral , unethical or selfish.

In the video below, expert Dr. Jeffrey Hancock from Cornell University discusses the disorder and how to detect deception when dealing with a psychopath.  Courtesy of Fox 25 News Station.

Detecting deception: Psychopaths among us: MyFoxBOSTON.com