Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Dr. Matsumoto Interview on Metadata Podcast

Dr. Matsumoto recently appeared on the metadata podcast in Brazil where he was interviewed by Victor Santos, Anderson Tamborim and David Leucas.

View the entire video or see below for timestamps to specific questions.

2:00: How did you get interested in the area of nonverbal communication and behavior?

8:25: In your study “Spontaneous Facial Expressions of Emotion of Congenitally and Noncongenitally Blind Individuals” there is solid evidence for the universality of certain facial expressions of emotion in certain contexts.

What other studies exist that support the claim regarding the universality of facial expressions of emotion?

13:05: Although we have solid evidence of the innate character of the facial expression of spontaneous emotion, the posed expression, often used as a linguistic code, meets a cultural demand.

What role do you think posed expressions play in emotional expression in this context of cultural variability?

19:00: We see more and more uses of facial expression analysis of emotions and body language being used in the most diverse segments, especially public security. It is particularly difficult to find field research in the area of security, due to the many ethical issues involved and complications to carry out experiments or obtain the ground truth.

How useful do you think this knowledge is for public security professionals who will need to apply it in real time rather than watching a video in a lab?

23:41: There is a lot of criticism about nonverbal behavior coming from people are involved in areas of science. This happens because there is a lot of junky science which are then promoted by these critics. The conclusion that is made is that nonverbal behaviors such as microexpressions are junk science.

Do you see these kinds of criticisms in the United States or other countries?

28:30: Several researchers including famous names like Lisa Barrett Feldman insist that there is no facial expression of universal emotion and also that the face does not have the power to demonstrate the emotion experience. In some articles we also see a claim that there is no evidence that there is any kind of emotion neural circuit.

What is your point of view on these specific kinds of criticisms?

33:45: When you talk about spontaneous expressions, there’s not a single, specific FACS codification that you can use all the time in any situation. This is because our face is not just made to express microexpressions, it’s also made to be used to agree with people, to show empathy, etc. Most of our facial movements are not taken into consideration in a lot of research. Some researchers say “look at this person who is feeling angry. Matsumoto and Ekman say angry faces must have these AUs (action units). Ah ha! They don’t fit, so that must mean there is no universal angry face”.

What are your thoughts on this issue and point of view?

38:00: What do you think about the inclusion of contempt in the group of primary expressions?

44:40: Can you talk about your publication in 2019 in Frontiers of Psychology entitled “Microexpressions Differentiate Truths From Lies About Future Malicious Intent”?

50:40: In your opinion, what would be the main area involved in the study of facial expression of emotion that needs further research? What do you think is the future of this research area?

The post Dr. Matsumoto Interview on Metadata Podcast first appeared on Humintell.

Transparent Masks May Improve Nonverbal Communication

The widespread use of masks during the COVID-19 pandemic has posed numerous nonverbal communication barriers, muffling speech and impeding lip-reading.

For deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals, masks have made daily as well as clinical interactions especially difficult.

With approximately 72% of people older than 65 experiencing hearing loss, and with this age group having higher hospitalization rates compared to others, the increased availability of transparent masks may be particularly important in health care settings.

Research and Results

A team led by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology evaluated attitudes toward their newly engineered, transparent mask by surveying members of the general population and health care workers, including DHH health care workers.

They reported that 91% of DHH health care workers felt that communication would be easier with a transparent mask, with positive expectations from other health care workers and the general population as well.

The results of their surveys are published in JAMA Network Open.

“Transparent masks have the potential to address or overcome barriers of communication, especially within health care settings,” said corresponding author Giovanni Traverso, MB, BChir, PhD, of the Brigham’s Division of Gastroenterology and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. “It’s a simple message, but it’s important. Patient interactions are critical and there are measures we can take to improve them.”

When members of the general population and health care workers were shown a video of an individual smiling beneath an opaque N95 mask, only 20%-25% were able to identify the corresponding emotion as “happy.” This number increased to roughly 78%-88% percent of respondents when the model wore a transparent N95 mask.

Social Smiles

This research seems to back up what we have suggested in the past: that masks hinder politeness by hiding social smiles. Social smiles involve the pulling up of the lip corners, but the muscle around the eye generally does not activate.

Below you can see examples of a true smile (left) and a social smile (right).

How Masks Hinder Politeness

Even though social smiles are not emotional expressions, they serve an important purpose in all of our daily interactions and communications. Social smiles serve several different purposes including:

  1. Serving as a note of politeness or courtesy or greeting
  2. Telling you something about the person who is smiling
  3. Commenting on things that we say or other emotions that we show

Transparent Face Masks Key?

Among clinicians, nearly 2/3 of general health care workers and 82% of DHH health care workers felt positively about wearing a transparent mask to communicate with patients, with roughly the same proportions, respectively, stating that opaque masks worsened communication with patients. The 123 general health care workers who responded to the survey were employees of Mass General Brigham and the 45 DHH respondents were affiliates of the the Association of Medical Professionals with Hearing Losses.

To evaluate perspectives on transparent masks within the general population, the researchers polled 1,000 U.S. adults representative of the national population using the online, opt-in survey provider, YouGov. 45% percent of these respondents reported feeling positively about interacting with a health care worker wearing a transparent mask and 36.6% felt neutrally.

Studies with greater sample sizes, including health care workers from multiple systems, are necessary to validate this study’s results. Future investigations can also evaluate respondents’ abilities to detect a range of different emotions.

The study’s authors hope that their results will demonstrate the utility of transparent masks, especially for DHH individuals.

The authors are part of a larger team of Mass General Brigham and MIT researchers who have engineered a transparent, reusable mask called the TEAL Respirator, which they are working to deploy in hospitals through the efforts of Teal Bio.

“Our lab works to develop products that can help people on the ground,” Traverso said. “We’re working hard to make and improve these masks so that they can be available for our hospital workers, and hopefully the general population as well.”

In the meantime…

It’s clear that social smiles are important for every day interaction. Without the ability to see them and until the widespread use of transparent masks (particularly in healthcare), we may have to take some extra steps to compensate.

Here are some helpful tips we suggest when wearing a mask:

  • Nod when you see someone
  • Wave “hello” and using other gestures to communicate
  • Saying “hi” in a pleasant voice

The post Transparent Masks May Improve Nonverbal Communication first appeared on Humintell.

8 CREDIBLE Steps To Become A Successful Interviewer

Written by Humintell Affiliate Jay Abiona of Credible Security Solutions

Have you ever conducted an interview and were unsure if the individual was being 100% honest? If so, then this article is for you!

We all know that the largest cost in any business is usually payroll. In order to have loyal, hardworking and HONEST team members, you need to hire appropriately.

As a business owner, we have an obligation to our clients to ensure the highest levels of integrity and that all starts with our team and who we hire.

This article will assist you with hiring the ‘right’ candidate within your business by providing you tips on how to truly conduct a successful interview.

According to Statistic Brain, $50 billion is stolen annually from U.S. Businesses by their employees. That is almost equivalent to $137 million a day that comes right off the bottom line from all companies combined throughout the nation. This is a staggering amount, which can be blamed on our economy, a company’s culture, their screening process and I personally know it can be seen & prevented during the hiring process. Mainly in the first INTERVIEW and I want to show you how.

There have been dishonest people throughout the world for thousands of years and obviously this will continue but the question is not one’s level of integrity but why are we hiring someone who is being dishonest during the interview?

Since, I am sure no one would knowingly hire someone who was being deceptive during an interview; I could only assume it is because the interviewer is not aware of the non-verbal modes of communication that occur during EVERY conversation.

I am going to cover eight (8) CREDIBLE steps that will assist you within the hiring process, making your interviews more effective, which in turn will help you make a better decision when attempting to hire the ‘right’ person for the job.

1.    CONDUCT A THOROUGH REVIEW OF THE RESUME:

According to the Society of Human Resource managers, 53% of people lie on their resume. So, that means more than half of the people you interview will have inaccurate information on their resume/application.

When reviewing a resume, you should be aware of time gaps, numerous employers, education level and experience in the position they are applying for.

If you are reviewing an application, you should pay close attention to the reasons they left their previous employer/s, criminal convictions and missing names/numbers of previous employers. This is the information you will use to base some of your questioning during an actual interview.

2.   REVIEW THE REFERENCES:

Now, some businesses will not give you any information regarding an applicant and may have you contact their corporate office.

However, it doesn’t hurt to try and who knows, you may get some very insightful information that you could use in your interview.

So, please ensure you are taking notes while conducting your reference checks and use these notes as a guide with regards to their previous employers, education and additional skills they CLAIM to have on their resume or application.

3.    ELIMINATE INTERRUPTIONS:

You can do this by placing a ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign on the door, turning off your mobile phone, asking them to turn their phone off and/or unplugging any landline phones in the interviewing area.

Then remove the barrier that most interviewers have when conducting an interview. You know the barrier I’m referring to.

Come out from behind your desk and place two chairs facing one another in the middle of the room with nothing in between them. Now, you the interviewer should be sitting in a rolling chair, preferably one with a backrest and armrests. The interviewee should be sitting in a stationary chair with a backrest but without wheels and preferably without armrests.

This will help you read their body language during the interview and since their chair will not have wheels, they will not be able to roll their chair & release nervous energy.

4.    DON’T ASK CLOSED ENDED QUESTIONS:

You should be doing 20% of the talking as they should be doing 80% of the talking, which can be accomplished by asking open ended questions.

For instance, “Tell me about a time you were terminated by one of your previous employers.” as opposed to “Have you ever been terminated by one of your previous employers?” The first question is open and will cause the guilty party to think more about the answer, which in turn may cause non-verbal modes of communication or body language markers of discomfort.

This can help you identify the dishonest candidate and actually motivate them to be honest about their previous performance issues as well as why they were terminated. We will talk more about that in step # 5.

The latter of the two questions is closed and could be easily answered with a simple ‘no’, whether they were or were not terminated in the past.

5.    INTENSIVE LISTENING:

An honest person will usually speak with confidence and in a timely manner to the question being asked. Using the example above, an honest person after hearing the question “Tell me about a time you were terminated by one of your previous employers.” will quickly reply; “I’ve never been terminated!” if they in fact have not been.

However, the dishonest candidate may pause and take a moment to think before answering that question because of how it was asked. Since a simple yes or no doesn’t suffice, they will need to think more about the actual time they WERE terminated! That pause in answering can mean a few things such as them thinking about, which job of the many they may have been terminated from or they may be deciding whether or not to be honest with you (Internal Dialogue).

That is when your rolling chair comes into play and is used to move in just a bit closer and with a soft spoken tone of voice say something like: “Hey, we’re both human and we all make mistakes and bad decisions sometimes. What happened?, Why were you terminated?” This rationalization is how you can motivate them to be more honest with regards to answering that question. This technique can be used with other open ended questions as well.

6.   BE AWARE OF THE NON-VERBAL CLUES:

Please keep in mind when reading body language, the markers or ‘tells’ mentioned below must come in clusters and be timely with the questions asked.

Just observing one or two of the body language markers mentioned below does NOT mean the candidate is being deceptive. These behaviors are usually associated with individuals who are nervous in general and that would be a normal reaction during an interview. However, we all know that a person being deceptive will most likely be nervous as well.

So, be mindful of the following body language markers or ‘tells’:

  • Tone of voice
  • Eye contact/movement
  • Red/flush/blotchy skin
  • Body alignment
  • Hesitation with answers
  • Breathing pace
  • Open or closed body language
  • Avoiding questions
  • Position of legs/feet
  • Look for unusual reactions
  • Dramatic changes in body position
  • Negative tone on specific questions
  • Wringing of hands/repeated rubbing or scratching

Once again, please keep in mind when reading body language, the aforementioned markers or ‘tells’ must come in clusters and be timely with the questions asked.

Just observing one or two of the body language markers above does NOT mean the candidate in being deceptive. You are merely evaluating comfort levels to the questions being asked.

To learn more about body language markers, feel free to click on or search #ClipWithATip now.

7.    LOOK FOR FACIAL MICRO-EXPRESSIONS:

Seven Universal Facial Expressions of Emotion (Humintell)Another body language marker to pay close attention to are the facial micro-expressions that happen sometimes in a fifth of a second, which can help you determine what emotion they are truly feeling at the very moment the question was asked.

The Seven Basic Emotions are 1. Anger, 2. Contempt, 3. Disgust, 4. Fear, 5. Happiness, 6. Sadness 7. Surprise.

These emotions have been scientifically proven to have a certain facial expression associated with them, which you can see below in the photos

8.    ENSURE THAT THREE FORMS ARE PROVIDED:

So, you feel this is the person you would like to hire? I would strongly suggest having EVERY potential employee read and sign a background check consent form, credit check consent form as well as a drug test consent form.

Once they are provided with these documents, they have been informed that these extra preventive measures are in place, which may in turn make them reconsider employment if they KNOW you are checking all three areas. If they sign the forms, ensure all three checks are actually completed.

In conclusion, there are numerous tools you can use to ensure you are conducting a successful interview. The eight steps mentioned above are a few of the basics needed in order to become a successful interviewer and assist you within the hiring process.

If you truly want to master the art of interviewing, then you should NOT miss my presentation entitled “Interviews For Success: An insiders approach to reading body language.”, where I discuss open ended questions, facial micro-expressions and how to read body language effectively.

The post 8 CREDIBLE Steps To Become A Successful Interviewer first appeared on Humintell.