Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Prompted to Mimic Faces

Spontaneous Facial Mimicry

At the beginning of each block, an introduction-picture was presented, followed by 2–4 trials. (A) In the Emotion-Inference condition, the instruction “How does XXX (e.g., Hashimoto) feel?” was presented in Japanese. (B) In the Passive (control) condition, a fixation cross was presented. Reprinted from the ATR Facial Expression Image Database DB99 under a CC BY license, with permission from ATR-Promotions Inc., original copyright (2006).

Facial mimicry is known to be central to understanding the emotional states of others, but this exciting new study looks at the conditions under which we engage in such activity.

Emotional recognition is incredibly central to social interactions, and facial mimicry allows us to do so instantaneously. However, there is dispute over when we spontaneously or automatically engage in such behavior. It is this dispute which an exciting new paper in Plos One attempts to answer.

Specifically, the study authors are attempting to determine what factors make an individual engage in mimicry and what factors prevent them from doing so. This builds off of previous research finding that socio-ecological factors, like group membership and the identities of the people in question, inhibit or encourage the spontaneous mimicry necessary for emotional recognition.

While the role of such social factors is an ambitious one, the study authors sought a more manageable effort within that context. Previous research has indicated that facial mimicry occurs when there is an intention on behalf of the individual to deduce emotional states, and they sought to extend those findings in a more robust fashion, with an eye to the broader question.

Participants were recruited from the Hokkaido University student body and asked to review a selection of photographs and videos of people’s faces exhibiting various emotions. During this process, their facial muscles were analyzed to detect the presence of facial mimicry, in a similar fashion as previous studies.

However, not all participants were asked to identify the emotions displayed in the various images. Instead, half of them were simply asked to record age, gender, and other demographic features. This required emotional recognition from only half of the group.

The hypothesis was that those primed to look for emotions would also spontaneously engage in facial mimicry, while those looking at demographic factors would not.

The electromyography (EMG) scans were able to detect facial muscle movement as a reasonable indicator of facial mimicry, and it turns out that those asked to detect emotions showed markedly higher rates of muscle movement than those who were not. This provides pretty compelling evidence in support of their hypothesis.

This is definitely one of those times where many readers may be unclear exactly why any of this matters. Since facial mimicry, and thus emotional recognition, are not automatic but tied to intention, the social context begins to be seen as more important.

Differing group membership, for instance, can actively inhibit the intention to recognize emotions, leading to ignorance or devaluing of emotions. This is particularly fascinating (and troubling) given our previous blogs on the role that group membership has on violence and anger.

What it also means is that you, as an aspiring people reader, can choose to engage in facial mimicry and choose to better read people. This is something we can learn how to do, which is what Humintell tries to do, but it is also something we have to want to do.

 

Emotions in Gift Giving

What do you say when you receive a gift you are not too fond of?

In light of this holiday season, the University of Hertfordshire has conducted a study on gift giving. The focus of this study was determining whether or not gift givers could tell whether or not a recipient liked a present just by looking at their facial expressions and nonverbal behavior.

Dr. Karen Pine, a Professor of Developmental Psychology, led the study of 680 men and women in the process of giving and receiving gifts.

Three quarters of the participants were able to correctly identify whether or not a recipient of one of their gifts truly liked it. According to Dr. Pine, “People always try and say the right things, there’s a lot of social pressure to say the right things and to give the impression that we do like a present and our words tend to be quite positive, but the real feelings tend to leak out in our non-verbal behaviour.”

Eye contact, or lack thereof, is one easily spotted sign that the recipient did not like their present. They try to avoid eye contact with the giver in case the expression on their face gives away their true feelings. The expression on a displeased recipient’s face is often a ‘social smile,’ which involves only the mouth muscles. When someone is truly happy about something, they smile with both their eyes and their mouth; what is often called a Duchenne smile.

In terms of the gift itself, the recipient tends to rewrap it and put it out of sight fairly quickly if they do not like it. Contrastingly, if someone really likes a gift, they hold it up like a trophy, passing it around and showing it off. They also tend to hold on to the present for a little longer. If it’s a scarf that they really like, for example, the recipient may stroke it for awhile, or even put it on.

However, a negative nonverbal response is not necessarily indicative of someone being unappreciative of a gift. Perhaps what they have received isn’t quite what they were hoping for, but they could still be appreciative of the gesture. Isn’t that what is important?

Dr. Pine told BBC News that she believes we need “to go back to the old values about what a gift is really for; it is a token of appreciation or affection for a person.” However, by conducting this study, she is putting emphasis on reactions towards the gifted items themselves, rather than the meaning behind them.

Still, our reactions to gifted items can make a huge difference for our stress levels and enjoyment of the holiday season.

As we have reported on in past blogs, gift consumption is not necessarily the path to a happy holiday season. Instead, people tend to report greater satisfaction by engaging in family-based or spiritual traditions.

That is not to say that gifts have no role in these celebrations. In fact, many families bond over genuine and heartfelt gift giving, while many religious traditions see the exchange of gifts as integral to the celebration.

Instead, it has more to do with the thought we put into the gift. What do you think? Are you able to tell when a gift you have given is not well received?

If you are still struggling at really understanding people’s reaction, that might be a good reason to learn more about reading people. The good news is that reading people you are close to tends to be the easiest!

Christmas Rituals and Emotions

Is the holiday complete without traditional family celebrations and holiday rituals?

This is exactly what a team of Spanish and Chilean researchers attempted to evaluate in a 2011 study. Situating their research into an extensive tradition finding that ritual practices are important for personal happiness and family cohesion, Dr. Paez and his team examined what role holiday-specific traditions had on emotional well-being.

Importantly, past research found mixed results in the role of rituals and positive emotions, but there is a rich theoretical traditional that seeks to explain how rituals cultivate empathy and social cooperation. Anthropologists have seen them as critical in developing group bonds, for instance.

In studying Spanish students during the Christmas season, Dr. Paez and his team sought to test this theory. Not only does Christmas tend to consist of a relatively static set of universally practiced rituals, at least within a given culture, but many of these rituals are also particularly family-centric. This provides an effective case study for the role of ritual on emotions.

Overall, they hypothesized that the participation in family meals and holiday celebrations would generally boost positive affect and reports of life satisfaction. There should also be interpersonal benefits, they reasoned, in increasing attitudes of social support and what they call “collective emotions” or perceived family climate.

The study was primarily conducted by recruiting participants and asking them a series of Likert scale-style questions about positive/negative affect, life satisfaction, perceived social support, and social loneliness. These were applied shortly before Christmas, and then another series that specifically asked about these same measures was fielded post-holidays.

The vast majority of participants took place in ritual meals for Christmas, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve/Day. They found largely significant results, with negative affect and social loneliness both dropping, while life satisfaction and perceived social support both increased.

They managed to conclude both that participation in holiday rituals tended to lead to greater well-being, and that most people studied did in fact participate in family rituals.

This generally supported theoretical expectations that rituals would result in such a boost in positive mental attitudes, but it may be important to consider exactly what these rituals consist of. As we wrote last week, people tend to celebrate Christmas with a variety of different levels of consumption or spiritual activity.

In that blog, we discussed how holiday traditions that focus on family or religious rituals tend to result in a much happier and low-stress period, while those based in consumption and financial exchange tended to be stressful and anxiety-provoking. Hopefully future research replicates Dr. Paez’s findings in that way!