Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Youth Are Our Best Liars

Young people are better liars than old people?  That is exactly what Science Alert is reporting.

A New Zealand study at the University of Otago has found that older people find it harder to lie more convincingly than younger people.  What’s more is that not only do they have trouble lying but find it difficult to detect when others are lying.

The researchers believe that the latter is due to age-related decline in emotion recognition.  The ability to lie uses certain parts of the brain that are connected to memory and planning ability, which for most naturally declines with age.

An interesting fact, according to associate professor Jamin Halberstadt is that both young and older listeners found it easier to differentiate truths and lies when the speaker was an older adult.

Previous research recognized that micro-expressions play a key role in detecting lies.  Halberstadt expounds upon this, “Emotion recognition also involves auditory and body-language aspects, so the giveaway signals might additionally or instead, be heard in the voice or seen in emotions expressed through the body.  We still don’t know what exactly allows listeners to correctly detect lies, although we know that people can differentiate lies and truth at a rate above chance level – though they are far from perfect.”

English.news.cn also reported that this research could help explain why older people might be more susceptible to con artists and scams than younger people.

They also went on to state that Janice Murray a member of the research team presented the findings at the Association of Psychological Science’s convention in Washington, D.C.   The team’s findings are also being published in the US journal Psychology and Aging.

Casey Anthony’s Top Ten Lies

Those that may be following the Casey Anthony case may have differing opinions as to her guilt or innocence but one thing is clear: Casey Anthony calmly lied to police, investigators and her own family countless times.

Casey, whose daughter Caylee was found murdered in 2008, is now on trial for her daughter’s murder. The story has garnered much national attention since it broke a few years ago. If convicted, Casey could face the death penalty.

Casey’s defense has attributed her incessant lying to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her brother and father. See what Eyes for Lies thinks about the situation in her blog post.

Could Casey Anthony be a pathological liar? Its definitely possible.

Dr. Matsumoto states that pathological liars do exist.  They lie quite often and are difficult to detect because they often don’t know they’re lying or believe themselves. However, they are often confronted with contradictory facts (such as in the case of Casey Anthony).

Unfortunately, we don’t know why pathological lying occurs. In some situations, some of it may be cultural, as in some cultures it’s expected and appropriate to lie in situations that Americans don’t usually appreciate.

Take a look at this great video that ABC has compiled of “Casey Anthony’s Top Ten Lies”. Listen to Casey Anthony’s tone of voice, her speech flow and rhythm. Her persistence is both disturbing and troubling. In Casey Anthony’s case, its almost as if lying is easier for her than telling the truth.

Full text on the subject can be found here.

Crying Without Tears

What if you couldn’t cry?  Or what if you couldn’t recognize your own face when you were sad and wanted your tears to flow?

There are people who do not have the ability to cry and that can have a huge affect on their mental well-being.

Scientists think that people with Sjogren’s syndrome, who do not have the ability to shed tears also might experience difficulty in expressing  their emotions leaving them to rely on their facial expressions and words to let people know how they feel.

EurekAlert reported that a Dutch study, which assessed 300 people showed that patients with Sjogren’s syndrome were labeled clinically “alexithymic”.   This means that they have difficulty identifying and describing emotions.  These patients were compared to the control group where only 12% of the healthy controls had difficulty identifying emotions.

A very interesting fact that the study revealed was that higher levels of alexithymia were moderately correlated with worse mental well-being in both groups.