Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Let the Truth Be Told!

Is deceit an intrinsic part of the human emotional condition?

No doubt, it has become an accepted part of human culture.  From the little white lies we tell our kids everyday , ‘yes Santa Clause is real and you have to be sleeping for the tooth fairy to come’, to the exaggerated facts on our resumes, lying has become a part of human social nature.

TV shows as well as literature from the Bible to Shakespeare are filled with exaggerations, contradictions and sometimes bold face lies.   Lying seems to be a lucrative business.

Has a piece of human nature become public enemy number one?  Well, in a word, yes!  However, we don’t just want to be able to recognize deception, we want to stop it before it even occurs, we want to battle human nature and win.

According to Nature Magazine, the U.S Department of Homeland Security has developed a Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) designed to spot a criminal before they commit a crime.  In essence, to stop deception before it comes to fruition.  We blogged about this technology in its infancy and it was very interesting to say the least.

Similar to a lie detector, which is not admissible in many courts of law throughout the world, FAST measures a series of physiological indicators such as heart rate, steadiness of gaze etc. In effect judging a person’s “state of mind” while they walk down an airport corridor.

There are significant differences from the polygraph and FAST.  FAST uses non-contact sensors and does not depend on active questioning of the subject.  This new device has undergone preliminary testing in an undisclosed location in the northeast.

However, many researchers point out that the “normal anxieties of travel” are enough to raise the heart rates and stress levels of most people.

What are your thought/opinions on this new “science”?

Extra Sensory Perception

As technology continues to advance at such a fast pace, we are inundated with creative ways to see and understand the world and people around us.

NewScientist has just released information on MIT’s Media Lab’s newest project – emotion recognition glasses.

No doubt this would be beneficial for many social situations and would probably avoid social gaffes as the article suggests.

However, will this impede upon the social “white lie” that everyone has partaken in at least once in their life?  Do we really want to show every emotion? Or are some emotions meant to be kept secret?  If they weren’t, wouldn’t humans have evolved to be mind readers without the aid of technology?

In the NewScientist article, the author erroneously states that Paul Ekman’ s seven universal emotions as the foundation of the theory of lie detection has been debunked (which is not true) but later posits facts that substantiate the theory.

Microexpressions are concealed emotions.  The seven universal facial expressions are proven to be congruent across cultures. Microexpressions are unconscious exhibits of a conflict between what is being said and what is known by the speaker to be factual.  These expressions do not necessarily equate to a lie but do suggest a need for greater concentration on the subject that allowed those inconsistencies.

These new glasses developed by Rana el Kaliouby , research scientist at MIT Labs, Rosalind Picard, an electrical engineer and Simon Baron- Cohen from the University of Cambridge, are based on different criteria than the seven basic facial expressions of emotion and focuses more on the following expressions:  agreeing, confusion, thinking, concentrating and perhaps the most important one for social reasons, disagreeing.

According to PC World , these MIT researchers began studying this technology to aid in amplifying  emotional signals for autistic patients.

The software, amazing as it is, has a percentage rate of 64%, which is more accurate than the average human but only by about 10%.  The prototype has a camera, the size of a grain of rice, which is wired to a computer.  In turn the glasses relay the emotional information to the wearer via an ear piece and a blinking red or green light.

What are your thoughts on these new glasses?

Liar, Liar Pants on Fire!

Being an effective and believable liar can be beneficial in a plethora of ways.

So, if you are not a natural then how can you learn to be a more effective liar especially in this day and age where technology is trying to thwart our every effort in duplicity?

Look no further. Scientific American has released 18 attributes of a successful liar.

According to a team of scientists led by Dutch psychologist Aldert Vrij, there are precise ingredients to a great liar.  They delineate 18 traits to a super liar.  Listed below are the top ten:

1.  Manipulativeness:  Liars are not fearful or anxious.  They are scheming, relaxed and confident.
2.  Acting:  Good actors make good liars.
3.  Expressiveness:  Liars are seductive and their expressions distracting.
4.  Physical attractiveness:  Good-looking people are judged as more honest.
5.  Natural performers:  Good at convincingly adapting to abrupt changes in discourse.
6.  Experience:  Practice make perfect. Prior lying helps manage emotions such as guilt and fear.
7.  Confidence:  Believe and it shall be.  Liars must have confidence.
8.  Emotional camouflage:   Liars mask emotions by feigning the opposite affect.
9.  Eloquence:  Eloquent speakers use word play to buy extra time to create plausible answers.
10.  Well-preparedness:  Liars minimize fabrication on the spot, which is more vulnerable to detection.

The researchers also point out that many of these qualities are inherent and cannot be fully learned (i.e. with ease of effort) if you will.

The full study, along with other studies on deception conducted by Vrij, can be found in the Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology.