Social Engineering Blogs

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Can Liars Really Control Their Facial Expressions?

The University of Buffalo has released more evidence that liars under intense scrutiny cannot suppress their facial expressions of emotion.  Recently, the reliability of microexpressions in lie detection has come into question.  ABC has reported on the perceived validity of microexpressions and their use by the TSA.

The scientific truth is that there are seven universal facial expressions of emotion.  These expressions can and do appear on a person’s face as microexpressions and are very helpful in detecting deception as verified by Dr. Matsumoto in the article “Evaluating Truthfulness and Detecting Deception”, which appeared in the June issue of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.

The article cites renowned facial expert Mark Frank, who has spent two decades studying the faces of people lying in high stakes situations.  The study published earlier this year in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, examines whether subjects could suppress facial actions like eyebrow movements or smiles on command while under scrutiny by a lie catcher.

Carolyn M. Hurley, PhD, lead author of the study and Frank, co- author of the study, found that these actions can be reduced, but not eliminated, and the suppression of one element of expression resulted in reduction of all facial movement, regardless of their implications for veracity.

This new study “Executing Facial Control During Deception Situations” found that although liars can reduce facial actions during intense situations such as questioning, they can’t suppress them all.

“As a security strategy,” Frank says, “there is great significance in observing and interpreting nonverbal behavior during an investigative interview, especially when the interviewee is trying to suppress certain expressions.”

An interesting side note is that most of the participants believed that they had controlled all of their facial movements during their interrogations.

What are your thoughts on the veracity of microexpressions in truth accuracy aka deception detection?

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?

Empathy Emptiness

Do you have emotional empathy for other people?

This seems like a no-brainer but research is now suggesting that people who have had severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) have a loss of emotional empathy , which is the ability to recognize and understand the emotions of other people.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales, conducted a study to investigate whether physiological responses to emotions are connected to emotional empathy.

PsychCentral reported that the team used electromyography and skin conductance to analyze two groups of adults, one with severe TBI and a healthy control group, focusing on the participant’s facial muscle and sweat glands while they viewed happy and angry facial expressions.

“The results of this study were the first to reveal that reduced emotional responsiveness observed after severe TBI is linked to changes in empathy in this population…,” said study author and doctoral candidate Arielle DeSousa.

What are your thoughts on Emotional Empathy or the lack thereof?