Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Repressed Emotions lead to Depression?

A new study, co-authored by Jamie Jackson, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University,  suggests that women with congenitive heart failure who repress their emotions (esp. anger) are more likely to experience symptoms of depression.

About.com reported that when researchers, who studied 35 women, factored in how much women knew about their illness, they found that the women who repressed their anger were more likely to feel depressed than those who were open to talking about their feelings.

Jackson explains, “I think the reason we’re seeing this pattern is that if you’re scared about your health condition, and you’re confronted with more and more information, that makes it more real to you.  If you’re somebody who doesn’t like to acknowledge the emotion around the situation, it may result in reacting with greater negative emotion.”

The researchers note that this information could help physicians to find ways to educate patients about their illness that would be more compatible with their coping styles.

Ask The Expert: Your Questions to Dr. Matsumoto Part 4

Back by popular demand, we’ve brought back your questions answered by Dr. Matsumoto. Our most recent question and answer series was in February 2011.

You can find questions and answers here.

We also did the question and answer series back in February of 2010. We asked you, the readers, to ask specific questions they may have to Dr. Matsumoto. We then selected your questions and had Dr. Matsumoto personally respond in a 2-part series.

You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Ask your specific question(s) to Dr. Matsumoto in the comments section above. The questions can be related to anything: microexpressions, facial expressions of emotions in general, culture, emotion, nonverbal behavior, etc.

Please no inappropriate questions! Don’t forget we monitor all questions asked on the blog and inappropriate questions will be deleted.

We’ll select certain questions we think are interesting, interview Dr. Matsumoto and post the responses within one week.

Thanks for your participation!

Studying Facial Expressions in High School

Colby Howell and Varun Ramesh, two Hamilton High school students, won paid trips to Los Angeles to compete for $4 million in prizes and scholorships at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair , for their scientific research projects.

These students were among the grand prize winners last week in the Arizona Science and Engineering Fair. The statewide competition is sponsored by the Arizona Technology Council Foundation.

According to azcentral.com, Varun focused his research on developing a computer device that could detect facial expressions and gestures of  individuals talking to someone with a visual impairment.

15 year old Varun and his research partner Shantanu Bala, a student at Barry Goldwater High, wanted to develop a “dyadic interaction assistant for tracking head gestures and facial expressions.”

In their research, they used a camera aimed at the person listening to someone speak who has a visual impairment. The listener’s facial expressions were recorded and fed back to a glove with sensors worn by the person with the impairment.  That person could almost always understand the facial expressions of the listener.

Varun stated, “It’s sort of like emoticons.”

The students are developing a new prototype for the Intel ISEF.  “We found we could get 95 percent accuracy,” Varun said, which is better than their predicted 90% accuracy.