Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

The Language of Language

What do people unconsciously communicate through things such as intonation, accent and phrasing?  And is it really possible to detect a lie?

Well, that is exactly what computer science professor and expert in spoken language, Julia Hirschberg, is setting out to examine.  Things to take into consideration, according to Hirschberg, “How do people convey that it’s another person’s turn to speak? What do people mean when they say ‘okay’? There are so many different ways it’s used.”

Reported on PHYSORG.COM Hirschberg is working with Barnard psychologist, Michelle Levine and Andrew Rosenberg on her current research project that was funded by a $1.5 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study deception in speech across cultures.

In 2003 Hirschberg began her work with deception in speech, which is one of the largest collections of such data partly because, as she purports, it is so difficult to collect real lies in situations where the truth is known.

“The best liars are the people who tell the truth most of the time,” said Hirschberg, who received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.  This year, she received the International Speech Communication Association’s Medal for Scientific Achievement as well as the James A. Flanagan Award for Speech and Audio Processing from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

She hopes that her research will make great strides in the fields of security such as deception detection and language development.

What are your thoughts on this type of research? Do you think it is important to be able to delineate the signs of deceptions on a regular basis, or should such research findings be kept for science and security fields?  Could such research findings possibly impede our social relationships?

Detecting the Truth!

There are many products and people out there claiming to have all the answers to deception detection.  However, not all of these are based on actual scientific research or might be based on antique scientific techniques that are outdated and now being proven inaccurate.

So how can someone actually tell if a person is lying?

According to the experts such as Dr. Matsumoto and Dr. Mark Frank, there is no one tell tale sign of deception.  Average men and woman (without training) are only able spot deception about 50% of the time.  Yep that’s right, their odds of detecting deception is no better than chance.

An interesting article in The Morning Post Exchange, depicts Pamela Meyer, a social media expert with an MBA from Harvard and a Masters in Public Policy, stating that we are lied to between 10 to 200 times a day.

In the article, Meyer goes on to delineate the pandemic of deception she believes we are facing today.  Throughout the accompanied video she “arms people with tools that can help take back the truth”.  Much of what she says is backed by scientific research on nonverbal communication, body language and the seven universal facial expression of emotion.

Scientific American also chimes in on the debate of body language and communication.  The article comments on mis-communication due to our advances in technology.  With the popularity of texting and emailing (especially since the invention of smartphones, which makes access to the internet readily available)  communication has lost some important social aspects necessary for understanding.   The succinct article suggests that communication is a two-way street and hand gestures as well as vocal inflection and microexpressions play a significant role in how we are interpreted (i.e. understood) and how we interpret others.

As our technology advances exponentially, we are able to realize the benefits and limitations of the devices we use today to detect deception.

One example is the polygraph machine, which was invented in the early 20th century which is still being used today. The reliability of the polygraph is debatable and it is not admissible in a court of law, but law enforcement agencies use polygraph machines all the time.  So what are the benefits and limitations of such a device? We previously blogged about the polygraph conundrum and its pros and cons.

Take a look at the video below from Michael Shermer (which we originally viewed on Eric Goulard’s blog), which poses a potential answer to the question:  Can the polygraph machine really scientifically measure if someone is lying?

Click here to view the embedded video.

FEAR- Is It Really Mind Over Matter?

“The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself”, Franklin D. Roosevelt (inaugural speech, 1933).

Fear can be a motivator or a crippling disease that keeps one from trying something new or difficult.  Most of us can explain the emotion of fear, can recognize the facial expression of fear and can recount a time when they have personally experienced fear.

But how does fear really work?

Most of us have at one time or another experienced, what society has linguistically termed,  fear. But biologically speaking how does fear make us act the way it does?  According to  io9.com: neuroscience , science knows how our brains process fear, but all the neural underpinnings of fear still remain a mystery.

Fear is one of the seven scientifically proven universal facial expressions of emotion.  The universal trigger of fear is a threat to one’s well-being.  The brain processes fear with the amygdala, almond-shaped clusters of neurons deep in our medial temporal lobes.

It has long been believed that the amygdala played a role in processing fear, how big a role had been undetermined until now.  A 1939 study revealed that removing the temporal lobes entirely (this includes the amygdala and connective fiber tissues within the lobes) made primates more tame, less aggressive and less responsive to fearful situations.

In another study in 1952, it was discovered that taking out only the amygdalae had the same effect of the disappearance of fear.  However, there has not been any revealing evidence of the effect of such a procedure on a human.

The ever increasing advancements in technology have allowed science to delve deep into the brain and focus on particular regions without causing collateral damage to adjoining regions of the brain.  In their review, “Neuropsychology of Fear and Loathing”, published in the journal Nature neuroscentists Andrew Calder, Andrew Lawrence and Andrew Young made observations about the the scientific strides in understanding the processing power of the amygdala and fear in the human brain.  They attribute advancements such as the fMRI for the ability to safely probe deeper into certain portions of the brain without damaging other portions.

The most popular human case study has shown that there is quite a difference between perceiving fear and having the ability to experience fear via brain signals (i.e. fight or flight response).  It was recently published, in January of 2011, and conducted on a human with Urbach-Wiethe disease (renders her amygdala useless).  The study revealed that the amygdala is a pivotal area in the brain for triggering (experiencing) fear.

What are your thoughts on fear?

Some people like to experience mild fear (just look at Halloween thrill seekers) and some people can’t stand the idea of being frightened, even if it is only a fleeting emotion.

What would you do if you couldn’t experience fear?  Would that be a bad thing or would that perhaps be beneficial?