Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Communicating Across Cultures

Many global organizations have classes on cross cultural communication or how to live abroad, but What exactly constitutes cross-cultural communication problems?

Well , The Salt Lake Tribune has taken the initiative to define these terms.  Cross-Cultural miscommunication is about not fully understanding the nuances of a different culture.  What exactly do we mean by nuance, well the non-verbal and verbal messages other cultures use.

An example that was give is if one person uses a tenative tone of voice in a business conversation.  To the sender it may seem normal and even expected, but to the receiver it can be interpreted as arrogant.

However, it is not usually the nuances of divergent cultures that are the problem, it is the result of misunderstanding them in that the message the sender is trying to give is lost.

How Do We Fix Communication Problems? 

A good place to start is to Define Terms  correctly.  Do not take for granted that a businessman from a different country sees ideas,  concepts, and plans exactly as you do even if you work in the same industry.

The article goes on to note that you should “make sure you take the time to explore which terms could be confused.”

For example,  if you are speaking to someone about additional research that you would like to be done you should make sure to clearly define what you mean about research,  ”So, to make sure we are both using the same definition of the term ‘research,’ might I share that my understanding is that research is spending about $1000,000 to interview 1,000 people? Is that your understanding as well?”

Humintell undertands that miscommunciation in a global society today can be very unfortunate.   It’s important to understand that culture does not always mean different ethnic groups. Every group has its own culture.

Try IntelliCulture our cross-culture adaption course.  This course helps you understand exactly what culture is, how it influences behavior and how to think critically when encountered with a difficult cultural situation.

Having good cultural awareness is not just for the business traveler.  With global interactions taking place everyday in varying ways it is just as important for the average person to understand and apprecite cultural differences.

IntelliCutlure is perfect for business men or women, college students, teachers, lawyers and even doctors.

Emotional Moments

Emotions are a big part of our daily lives.  Each person reacts to their environment in different ways and displays emotions according to the situation.  There are sad moments in life as well as joyous ones.  Below are pictures of some emotional displays:

The first photo is from the Associated Press and pictures an emotional Tom Sullivan who was searching for his son Alex after the Colorado “Dark Knight” tragedy.

Courtesy of AP /Barry Gutierrez

Maureen O’Sullivan’s Wizards Project Update

Photo courtesy of Psychology Today.

The Wizards Project was a research project conducted by Drs. Paul Ekman and Maureen O’Sulllivan, that studied the ability of people to detect lies.

This research showed that for the average person, being able to detect deception is not an easy task.  Most people can detect deceit only about 50% of the time, which is the statistical equivalent of flipping a coin.

However, the Wizards Project study purported that there is a very small group of people who are extraordinarily adept at detecting deception with more than an 80% accuracy rate.  These individuals were deemed “Truth Wizards”.

According to EurekAlert the study tested about 13,000 individuals using 3 varying tests.  Later sources site that there were 20,000 participants with 50 who were able to claim to be Truth Wizards or natural lie spotters.  Among the wizards are JJ Newberry and Eyes for Lies.

 ”Our wizards are extraordinarily attuned to detecting the nuances of facial expressions, body language and ways of talking and thinking. Some of them can observe a videotape for a few seconds and amazingly they can describe eight details about the person on the tape, “ commented O’Sullivan.

The project is no longer in existence as Maureen O’Sullivan has since passed away and according to the information right now, no one has taken over the project or is continuing new research with such a large scale group on “truth wizards”.

Dr. Matsumoto’s response to the question, Since the passing of Maureen O’Sullivan, what is the status of research into Naturals? Who is doing this work now, and where can we learn the latest research results? is, 

“I don’t really know the status. We offered several times to her estate to help to finalize her final works and consider continuing that work, but have not heard back.”

Dr. O’Sullivan did note in the study’s findings that, “…we found groups of people who are consistently better at spotting deception, although most groups, including police officers, CIA and FBI agents, lawyers, college students and therapists, do little better than chance.  By carefully analyzing the videotapes used in our test, we were able to find many objective behavioral measures that could have been used as clues to deception, but most people did not pick up the signals.”

She also states that facial muscles are not under our conscious control all of the time especially when there are strong feelings involved.  These expressions that flash on and off our face at high speeds and are now labeled microexpressions.  She delineates that the wizards were able to pick up on those fleeting facial expressions more so than the average person.

Dr. Matsumoto’s response to the question, what makes one person better at reading emotional expressions than another, is,

“Practice, experience and one’s natural propensity to read emotions. Some people are born better sensors and perceivers of the world to begin with. It most likely has something to do with one’s genetics, personality and life experience. Also how much a person hones their ability by practicing would have a great impact on reading emotional expressions.”  

The wizards study showed that training for 20 minutes was able to significantly improve a person’s ability to recognize microexpressions, an important key in detecting deception.

To see a short video featuring Maureen O’Sullivan click here.