Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

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.

The Evolution of Language

Humans have learned a lot about our growth as a species through the study of apes and ape culture, and now the latest scientific evidence suggests that language originated with our hands.

Scientist are now focusing on how we convey information and io9 evolution writes that how we make the sounds of language – which of course primarily happens in our voice boxes – is less important than how we convey meanings.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute purport that the gesture theory of language evolution suggests that the complex spoken languages we use today originate from relatively simple ideas our ancestors conveyed with their hands.

Their research found that all four of these species (of apes) develop a complex system of hand-waving and gestures in the first twenty months of life. These range from simply poking other apes to get their attention to slightly more abstract gestures like shaking their heads or extending their arms outward.

The fact that their young can and do pick these up shows that it is a way for them to convey meaningful information.

Researcher Michael Collins notes, “In monkeys, intentional arm movements are dedicated mainly to grasping. Communicative gestures probably emerged in apes, and began to assume grammatical forms in hominins.”

Another important fact to consider is that human babies learn the same basic gestures across cultures regardless of where they are raised.  Apes, however,  did not show common meanings for gestures across or within species.  The only commonality was that they used hand gestures in sophisticated ways from a young age.

Robots Read Facial Expressions?

Nowadays, robots can do almost anything- the one thing they are lacking is the ability to read facial expressions.  Well, that just might be changing.

Science has been progressing on robot’s ability to express facial expressions of emotions but recognizing them is an entirely different trial.  Researchers from the University of Tsukuba, Japan have created a method of teaching robots via facial expressions.

Young children learn about social norms and a large part of acceptable behaviors through nonverbal communication and the environment around them.  They also learn if something is accepted or rejected through simple expressions such as a smile or a frown.  Researchers are hoping to apply the same ideology to a robot and influence its actions using the very same methods.

The Verge reports that this new technology uses wireless electromyography (EMG) head band, which can accurately read smiles and frowns 97 percent of the time.

Does that sound too good to be true?

Check out the video below and decide for yourself as a scientist and a robot interact via facial expressions a frown or a smile to be exact.

Click here to view the embedded video.