Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Monkey Face – Don’t Mate with Me!

Monkey Faces

Courtesy William L. Allen

Science Magazine reports on a research that highlights the importance of the face and its signal value in evolutionary history.

The Guenon monkey species tend to live in close proximity to each other, but it is important that they don’t interbreed as such offspring has been found to be infertile.   From an evolutionary standpoint, this species would have died off (or at least drastically decreased the size of their population) if they were not able to somehow know this and not interbreed.

So how has nature dealt with this?

Researchers reported, in Nature Communication, that the Guenon species that live in close contact have evolved certain facial expressions to prevent interbreeding.

The researchers used facial recognition algorithms to analyze photos that were compiled over a year and a half time frame.  They found key features that illustrated the the differences between neighboring species, which is counter to a past belief that it was environmental factors (i.e.lighting etc) that caused the Guenon facial diversity.

BBC Big Brother Programming?

stockvault-electronic-circuit-plate124375

Courtesy of StockVault

The BBC Network is taking facial recognition marketing to a new level.   They have employed the use of  facial coding web cameras to gauge viewers’ emotional reactions to their network television shows.

The initial study, reported on by Recombu.com, has been measuring 200 U.K. participants and will soon expand to international markets. Tracked programs include “Sherlock” and “Top Gear.” The technology, provided by startup CrowdEmotion, is the latest technology from facial-coding companies.

The webcam uses facial coding software that detects the viewers’ facial reactions (i.e. emotions) such as fear, surprise, anger, disgust, sadness and happiness.  The software then matches the person’s facial expression to an emotional state from information gathered from 20 years of neuroscience research.

“CrowdEmotion’s ability to capture, record and quantify our audience’s emotional attachment and engagement to our TV shows, places BBC Worldwide at the forefront of global audience research and ultimately determines what our fans love to watch,“ commented David Boyle EVP, BBC Worldwide Insight said.

Boyle went on to point out that this is the first study of its kind for BBC Worldwide to measure people’s emotional responses to programs using a technology-led, neuroscience approach.

CrowdEmotion’s CEO, Matthew Celuszak, says that this software could be used, in the near future, to allow people to interact with TV sets by winking or smiling.  Celuszak noted that their partnership with BBC allows them to push boundaries and help quality content in marketing (branding).

The next set of studies are scheduled to take place in Russia and Australasia.  We are already on the wave of smart T.V’s and more of those are already implementing webcams.

Is this Intelligent Marketing OR Intrusive Propaganda ?

How the Mind Justifies Inequalities

Take a short trip with Psychologist Paul Piff, in understanding how the mind makes sense of advantage even when it’s clear that is a random act rather than an act of had work and strategy.

Learn how people behave when they feel wealthy in this 16 minute TED talk. Piff notes, “People become less attuned to the different features of situations including the flip of a coin that had randomly gotten them into their privileged position in the first place.“ 

Click here to view the embedded video.

What this UC Berkeley study showed was that as a person’s level of wealth rose their level of compassion and empathy fell.