Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Does Gossip Affect Your Brain?

Using neuro-imaging, scientists are measuring which image a person’s brain will focus on given a choice between two visuals of faces one with negative connotative associations and one with positive or neutral associations.

Which image does the brain choose according to io9 Psychology ?  The results are intriguing to say the least.

Previous research has shown that people remember negative information better.   This new study took it a step further testing our brain and determining that the brain responds differently to a person’s face after we hear nasty gossip about someone.

Scientists found that people will stare longer at the face’s of people they’ve heard bad things about.  They suggest that this brain override for focusing on people we’ve heard bad things about could offer an evolutionary advantage:  They commented in the journal Science:

‘It is easy to imagine that this preferential selection for perceiving bad people might protect us from liars and         cheaters by allowing us to view them for longer and explicitly gather more information about their behavior.’

The study links gossip as having a measurable effect on our perception of other people.
The down side to this study is that the desire to stare at victims of gossip is no guarantee that their behavior matches the gossip.  They might not be “bad” people.  Also, a true criminal would exploit this human weakness.

Ask The Expert: Your Questions to Dr. Matsumoto Part 4

Back by popular demand, we’ve brought back your questions answered by Dr. Matsumoto. Our most recent question and answer series was in February 2011.

You can find questions and answers here.

We also did the question and answer series back in February of 2010. We asked you, the readers, to ask specific questions they may have to Dr. Matsumoto. We then selected your questions and had Dr. Matsumoto personally respond in a 2-part series.

You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Ask your specific question(s) to Dr. Matsumoto in the comments section above. The questions can be related to anything: microexpressions, facial expressions of emotions in general, culture, emotion, nonverbal behavior, etc.

Please no inappropriate questions! Don’t forget we monitor all questions asked on the blog and inappropriate questions will be deleted.

We’ll select certain questions we think are interesting, interview Dr. Matsumoto and post the responses within one week.

Thanks for your participation!

Studying Facial Expressions in High School

Colby Howell and Varun Ramesh, two Hamilton High school students, won paid trips to Los Angeles to compete for $4 million in prizes and scholorships at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair , for their scientific research projects.

These students were among the grand prize winners last week in the Arizona Science and Engineering Fair. The statewide competition is sponsored by the Arizona Technology Council Foundation.

According to azcentral.com, Varun focused his research on developing a computer device that could detect facial expressions and gestures of  individuals talking to someone with a visual impairment.

15 year old Varun and his research partner Shantanu Bala, a student at Barry Goldwater High, wanted to develop a “dyadic interaction assistant for tracking head gestures and facial expressions.”

In their research, they used a camera aimed at the person listening to someone speak who has a visual impairment. The listener’s facial expressions were recorded and fed back to a glove with sensors worn by the person with the impairment.  That person could almost always understand the facial expressions of the listener.

Varun stated, “It’s sort of like emoticons.”

The students are developing a new prototype for the Intel ISEF.  “We found we could get 95 percent accuracy,” Varun said, which is better than their predicted 90% accuracy.