Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

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not all of these are based on actual scientific research or might be based on antique scientific techniques that are outdated and now being proven inaccurate.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?

Why Laughter is Such Good Medicine

The New York Times reports on why laughing is so good for us.

Although laughter seems like a relative simple concept, the effect it has on our bodies is anything but simple.  Research has shown that laughing more can make us happier (overall), slimmer, and healthier.

“Laughter is an early mechanism to bond social groups,” Dr. Robin Dunbar,  an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford said. “Primates use it.”  He suggests that it is not the intellectual pleasure of humor but the physical act of laughing that is beneficial.  The muscle movements involved in laughing cause the brain to produce endorphins and that causes us to feel good.  Endorphins are pain relievers and stress reducers.

Dunbar and his colleagues tested resistance to pain in five sets of laboratory studies and one field study at comedy performances.  The studies results, which are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, provided an answer to the conundrum of whether we laugh because we feel giddy or we feel giddy because we laugh.  They also showed that the resistance to pain was not the result of an overall well-being but was from actual laughter.

There is a suggestion that social laughing was originally a part of social grooming, which promotes closeness in a group.  “Panting is the sound of rough-and-tumble play,” Dr. Provine said of primate play. It becomes a “ritualization” of the sound of play. And in the course of the evolution of human beings, he suggests, “Pant, pant becomes ha, ha.”

Dr. Dunbar agrees and purports that laughter may have been favored by evolution because it helped bring human groups together, the way other activities like dancing and singing do.