Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

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.

The Voice of a Cheater

How effective are verbal cues in exposing our emotions and character?

Throughout this blog, we have dwelled extensively on deception detection but have also focused almost exclusively on nonverbal cues. However, a new study in the journal of Evolutionary Psychology, subtle verbal cues can reveal a wealth of detail about a stranger, even including past infidelity!

In an effort to see how revealing our voices were, Dr. Susan Hughes of Albright College procured a series of audio clips of different people simply counting from one to ten. Half of the speakers had elsewhere admitted to having cheated on a romantic partner in the past, while half had not.

Then, Dr. Hughes asked a series of participants to listen to various audio clips, asking them to extrapolate what they could from just the sound of the voices. These participants were given no outside details or context besides the mundane numerical recitation.

Amazingly, when asked to rank the speakers’ likelihood to cheat, the participants’ rankings matched closely with whether the speaker had a history of infidelity!

These results do have some precedent. Past research has found that verbal cues can reveal a great deal of accurate information, including the speaker’s sex, age, race, height, weight, and even social status. Perhaps most relevantly, previous studies found links between one’s voice and the emotional states beyond deception and past sexual activity.

However, despite the groundbreaking nature of Dr. Hughes’ research, there are still many unanswered questions. For example, she declined to offer a comprehensive explanation for how this is possible!

Dr. Hughes attempted to test whether the pitch of the voice had any effect on participant evaluations. She adjusted the pitch in many of the audio clips, so that the same voice was presented with a higher or lower pitch. This had very little effect, except that men tended to associate infidelity with low pitches in female voices.

This was surprising, as previous research found that pitch does impact listener judgments. Still, while pitch has some role, it “does not represent the entire picture,” as the authors wrote. Instead, “other vocal cues such as clarity of articulation may have also contributed to perceptions of infidelity.”

Perhaps this study asks more questions than it answers, but it brings the verbal aspect of deception detection into a new light.

While we wait for more information, it might be helpful to work on strengthening your ability to detect lies face to face. Similarly, you can read some previous blogs about using microexpressions to tell when you are being lied to here and here!

Income and Emotional Recognition

Would it surprise you that wealthier people are actually worse at reading emotions?

A growing body of research is beginning to show that the less well off a person is the more they have learned to read other people’s emotional expressions. While it might seem counterintuitive, this skill connected with the increased practical necessity of detecting emotions when one is of a lower economic background.

For instance, in a 2010 study, a team of researchers performed a series of experiments on emotional recognition as it related to socioeconomic status. In one experiment, participants were shown a series of portraits and asked to identify the emotions displayed. In another, they engaged in mock job interviews, trying to detect emotions during an actual interaction with another person.

The results were divided between participants with college educations and those without, as the authors saw educational level as an important indicator of economic background. In both instances, the less educated participants scored higher in emotional accuracy, with women unsurprisingly testing higher than men.

A particularly interesting takeaway is the fact that these results did not depend on an actual interaction, as emotional accuracy was also demonstrated from just an analysis of a picture and its facial expression!

One of the authors, Dr. Michael Kraus of Yale University, remarked “Other people’s thoughts, intentions, or wishes loom larger in my outcomes if I’m lower income… That’s because, if something happens to me, I need to recruit other people to help me deal with situations.”

This may also be due to wealthier individuals simply paying less attention to other people in public than those from higher socioeconomic statuses. A 2016 study examined participants as they walked down public streets, using Google Glass technology to track their eye movements.

The study authors found that those with higher incomes tended to look at other people less frequently than those with low incomes. These same results held when participants simply examined pictures of busy streets.

These results, while perhaps surprising, fit with the idea of emotional recognition as a skill rather than some sort of inherent trait. People who need to develop the skill, and have high stakes opportunities to do so, will become better at emotional recognition.

Similarly, past research shows that emotional intelligence is something that is heavily shaped by upbringing, so people raised in low-income households may be more likely to have this skill as a major part of their early education.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t develop this skill, regardless of your income. Teaching people to become better at reading emotions is exactly what Humintell does!