Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

The Web of Deceit

We’ve all heard that it is in human nature to deceive people.  Whether it is a malicious lie or a “harmless” white lie, we all do it especially when there is something big on the line (say a relationship or money).

Well, the Internet is no exception to the fallibility of human beings.  According to ScienceBlog, The University of Massachusetts says that the written word has no shield against the daily deception of humans.

As a matter of fact, we lie even more in emails and texts than in person.  At least that is what Robert S. Feldman, professor of psychology and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Mattityahu Zimbler, a graduate student, published in the October issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

The researchers studied 110 pairs of college students and found that there is deception in all three forms of communication but it increases with our technological advancements of instant messaging and e-mail.

Why is it more prevalent to lie in cyber space than to the person right next o you?

The researches both agree that, “It seems likely that the asynchronicity of e-mail makes the users feel even more disconnected from the respondent in that a reply to their queries is not expected immediately, but rather is delayed until some future point in time.”

“Ultimately, the findings show how easy it is to lie when online, and that we are more likely to be the recipient of deceptive statements in online communication than when interacting with others face-to-face,” says Feldman.

Look Into My Eyes

In the past many studies have been conducted on children with autism and social disorders such as bipolar disorder and mood dysregulation.  It has been well documented that children with these disorders have problems identifying facial expressions of emotion but little has been know of why.

New research has discovered why children with these social disorders have difficulty in recognizing and processing facial expressions of emotions such as anger, sadness and happiness.  The findings were recently revealed at the Society for Neuroscience; and, according to the examiner.com and US News Health, they suggest that it is the lack of eye contact that triggers children’s  inability to correctly recognize faces and facial expressions.

Pilyoung Kim from the National Institute of Mental Health found that children with social disorders such as bipolar focus more on the nose and mouth region of a person’s face rather than the eyes, which is the focus of their healthy counterparts.  Kim suggests that treatment programs that get children to focus on the eyes  to identify emotions would be most beneficial.

In a previous blog “Virtual Emotions and Autism“, we reported that new technology was being developed via video games to help children with social disorders such as these to recognize facial expressions of emotion.  The ability to recognize or not recognize facial expressions of emotion affects a person’s ability to interact socially to the world around them.

“If such training helps children to process the emotional information in the world more accurately, that may in turn increase their ability to regulate their emotional reactions to social situations,” purports Kim.

The Depth of Deception

Do you ever wonder why it is so hard to tell the truth all of the time?  Why is it that we are deceptive beings?

Well, Salon.com has reported on the mechanics of deceit, the evolutionary science of deceit and how the two areas overlap.

The article focuses on Robert Trivers a professor of anthropology and biological sciences at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.

Via a phone interview Trivers  reveals how to define deception and how it works.  When asked the question, “When you talk about deceit and self-deception what exactly are you talking about?” Trivers responded, “Well, in verbal terms it would be lying to others and lying to yourself. But deception is much deeper because it doesn’t require language and it’s found in a whole series of other animals.

His book, The Folly of Fools reveals more than just information on typical deception.  Some of the topics covered include animal predation and people’s sex lives.

To see the rest of Triver’s interview click here.