Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Why Try to Read Others?

At Humintell, we certainly talk a lot about reading other people’s emotions, but why is this such a big deal?

One obvious answer is that it is just really fascinating psychology, but there are also relevant and practical reasons to improve your ability to read microexpressions and other nonverbal cues. Not only are they particularly useful during law enforcement interrogations or cross-cultural interactions, but the ability to read others is useful in almost any interpersonal setting.

But first, what exactly is a microexpression? As Humintell’s Director, Dr. David Matsumoto, explains, “Microexpressions are unconscious, extremely quick, sometimes full-face expressions of an emotion. And sometimes they’re partial and very subtle expressions of emotion.”

Often, these microexpressions signify one of the seven basic emotions, but the majority of people either does not see any expression change or cannot understand the brief facial tick they see. Part of this is due to the incredibly brief nature of microexpressions, which can pass over a face as quickly as one-fifteenth of a second.

This means, Dr. Matsumoto points out, that freeze frame shots of individuals exhibiting microexpressions are not particularly subtle, but instead “if you take a freeze frame on it on a video, you’ll see that a lot of times there’s a big facial expression that is very clear about what the person’s mental state is.”

Reading other people’s emotions is not limited to microexpressions, however, as gestures and other types of nonverbal behavior are also telling signs of subtle or hidden emotional states. Dr. Matsumoto divides gestures into “speech illustrators” and “emblems.” The former, speech illustrators, are everyday animated gestures that many people use to emphasize or complement their speech.

Speech illustrators tend to be used by people from every culture, but they do differ in specifics. Emblems, on the other hand, are culturally specific gestures that refer to specific phrases, like a thumbs up.

The ability to read microexpressions is incredibly helpful in law enforcement or national security-related settings, where an interviewee may actively be concealing information. Nonverbal behavior analysis can help us “understand other people’s true feelings, their thoughts, their motivations, their personalities or their intentions.”

Yet, as Dr. Matsumoto points out, the application of emotional detection is “very clear for anybody whose job it is to be able to get that kind of additional insight.” It is not limited to law enforcement professionals but can be helpful to psychotherapists, sales professionals, lawyers, doctors, etc.

Similarly, as the cultural dependency of different gestures alluded to, the ability to understand nonverbal behavior can help us understand exactly what a person is trying to say. Knowing specific gestures can help, but also given the universality of basic emotional expressions, happiness, anger, or fear all present themselves similarly across the world.

Stay tuned with Humintell for more information on the importance of reading other people’s emotions, but in the meantime, check out our training packages here and here.

Nonverbal Cues in the 21st Century

The more impersonal communication gets, the more we remember the need for personal contact.

While technology has many great features, it can often distill communication down to text messages, emails, or instant messages. These really can help manage spread out workforces or enable people to work from home, but they also prevent us from reading each other’s nonverbal behavior. This does more than just prevent effective communication and can even prevent the development of trusting and empathetic relationships.

A 2012 study found that when comparing impersonal communication with face to face interaction, there were measurably different neurological responses in the brain. Moreover, the study authors concluded that the neurological effects unique to face to face dialogue may be crucial to successful interactions.

These neurological findings fit closely with the first hand experiences of a variety of entrepreneurs. For instance, Max Brown, the founder of Silicon Beach Trust emphasized the trust building aspects of in-person interaction: “Overall the biggest value of face time is that it’s really the only legitimate way to build trust with someone.”

This notion of trust proved crucial to other testimonials. Anna Barber, the managing director for Techstars, stressed the need for trust to mediate possible interpersonal conflicts. Barber contended that without trust “you won’t have a basic mutual empathy and understanding to fall back on when you hit the inevitable bumps that arise.”

Barber also emphasized that creative problem solving is much better employed while in the same room than when relying on phone calls or emails.

With such a wealth of benefits for in-person communication, it is a little concerning to see a tendency towards less personal methods of cooperation. However, the notion that all young people eschew conversation in favor of texting doesn’t seem to be correct.

Perhaps surprisingly, a 2016 survey found that 55 percent of millennials actually do prefer in person communication! That said, this is not a particularly overwhelming majority.

Followers of this blog will have already made the connection between in-person communication and either nonverbal behavior or microexpressions. We have found repeatedly that both are critical in really understanding a person, either by recognizing their underlying emotional states or by telling more effectively if they are lying to us.

While we cannot help you emphasize in-person communication, check out our past blog here about the power of reading into the sound of a voice, or just get better at handling the face to face conversations that are so important.

The Contagious Smile

Many of us often feel that smiling can be irresistibly contagious, but is this actually true?

In fact, a recent study published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences adds to a growing body of evidence that indicates that other people’s expressions really can have a tangible impact on our mood. The study authors, Dr. Paula Niedenthal and Adrienne Wood, found that we instinctively mimic other people’s faces, triggering the associated expressions.

This serves as a way for people to learn to empathize and to better read others by literally trying on their facial expressions. Amazingly this process can happen in only a few hundred milliseconds.

As Dr. Niedenthal said, “You reflect on your emotional feelings and then you generate some sort of recognition judgment, and the most important thing that results is that you take the appropriate action–you approach the person or you avoid the person.”

While they did not report exactly how this works in our brain, their results are reminiscent of previous research on the use of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are brain cells that are triggered, when we see other people’s actions. This can include facial expressions and many neurologists see mirror neurons as the key to explaining how we experience empathy.

However, the authors mentioned that this critical skill is not accessible to everyone, including those who have social disorders or challenges presenting facial expressions. Dr. Niedenthal pointed out that “There are some symptoms in autism where lack of facial mimicry may in part be due to suppression of eye contact.”

This is an exciting connection, given recent research that has shown that an autistic individual often struggles to empathize due to the inability to recognize faces and emotions. If an autistic individual has trouble even recognizing another person’s facial expression, it is that much more difficult to mimic it and thus empathize.

Similarly, Humintell has previously worked to draw attention to those who live with Moebius Syndrome. Those with this condition experience a form of facial paralysis that makes it impossible to display facial expressions. This causes challenges relating interpersonally as the lack of expression makes emotional communication challenging.

Presumably, from Dr. Niedenthal and Dr. Wood’s research, this also prevents effective facial mimicry for both the person with Moebius Syndrome and their interlocutor.

Thankfully, as we have discussed, reading facial expressions is not merely an innate ability on which we cannot improve. Instead, we can learn to better recognize people’s expressions and emotions.

That is exactly what Humintell is here for! If you want to better learn this skill, check out our workshops and training programs.