Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Our Brain and Facial Expressions

Recognizing facial expressions of emotion is no small task.  As simple as it may sound, many people find it difficult to understand how someone is really responding to their words or actions based upon facial expressions that sometimes only last a fraction of a second.

HindustanTimes reports on a study conducted by Dr. Lesley Fellows that focused on regions of the brain that are connected to face recognition and emotion processing skills.

What they found was that the area of the brain with the biggest impact on emotion recognition was the ventromedial PFC.

Dr. Fellows commented, “Patients with damage to the ventromedial PFC had a hard time distinguishing a neutral facial expression from emotional ones..Patients with left ventrolateral PFC damage recognized that an emotion was present in the expression, but had difficulty telling one emotion from another.”

The study’s findings, published in the Journal Cerebral Cortex, could help to understand some of the difficulties in social behavior seen in illnesses including certain forms of dementia, autism, or after a traumatic brain injury.

Wealth & Deception Go Hand in Hand?

The upper class is more likely to believe that greed is good?  Well that is what Futurity.org is reporting.

A UC Berkeley study, published in the journal The Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, has revealed that wealthier people were more likely to lie and cheat when gambling or negotiating.  They were also found to have a greater propensity to endorse unethical behavior in the work place.

“As these issues come to the fore, our research—and that by others—helps shed light on the role of inequality in shaping patterns of ethical conduct and selfish behavior, and points to certain ways in which these patterns might also be changed,” Paul Piff, a doctoral student in Psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the study purports.

He goes on to state, “These findings have very clear implications for how increased wealth and status in society shapes patterns of ethical behavior, and suggest that the different social values among the haves and the have-nots help drive these tendencies.”

What are your thoughts on wealth and greed?  Do you think that the wealthier You become the greedier you are?

More than Meets the Eye

Humintell has learned that Maine law enforcement believe there might have been foul play in the mysterious disappearance of Florida Firefighter Jerry Perdomo.  He has been missing since Feb. 16 and family members stated that he drove to Maine from Florida to visit friends and has not been seen since.

Susan Constantine, Humintell’s Florida affiliate, was interviewed and asked to dissect the news conference video of  Perdomo’s wife for signs of deception.

Susan is a body language expert that has been interviewed numerous times for her expertise on nonverbal behavior/body language  in news stories where deception is detected.  Her most famous consultation was in reference to the Casey Anthony Case.

She has also been featured on numerous TV stations and in many articles such as US News‘ article on body language and job interviews.

“Most people are not cognizant of their own body language, of the nonverbal signals we send to others.  Nonverbal signals are sent all the time and can make or break (a job interview),” Susan pointed out during that interview.

Wftv.com channel 9 have a video that shows Perdomo’s wife speaking about her husband as well as Susan Constantine’s evaluation of that video.

What do think about the nonverbal behavior of Perdomo’s wife?

Is there more to the story than what she is saying?