By Bahar Gholipour and David Freeman for Huffington Post
Could something as simple as a smile put an end to racist and sexist first impressions?
Probably not. But a new study published in the August issue of the journal Motivation and Emotion suggests that when people smile, strangers may be less likely to judge them based on their race and gender. In other words, by conveying friendliness and openness, people may stop some of those harsh snap judgments in their tracks.
But this doesn’t mean you should smile your way through unfair social interactions.
“Some have concluded the implication of this finding is that members of stereotyped minorities could just smile to reduce the likelihood that others will apply stereotypes to them, but that is too simplistic,” said study co-author Nicole Senft of Georgetown University.
“That conclusion places the responsibility on minority group members to combat stereotypes through their own behavior,” Senft said. “Instead, I think it’s important that we all turn the lens inward and become more aware of the many factors that play into the impressions we form of others.”
Senft and her colleagues asked 93 students to look at a series of photographs of faces and rate the person on Big Five personality traits, which include agreeableness, extroversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness and neuroticism. The photographs included Caucasian and Japanese men and women. Half the students looked at photographs showing faces with a neutral expression, and the other half looked at the same faces smiling.
When judging the inexpressive faces, the students showed hints of applying some preconceived notions about gender and ethnicity in their impressions. They rated Caucasian men lower on agreeableness than Caucasian women, and rated Japanese women as less extroverted than their Caucasian counterparts.
However, when the same faces were smiling, these biases disappeared from the ratings.
This might not be that surprising after all. Smiling, just like race, gender and various facial expressions, sends social cues, which people use to form a quick idea about the person they’ve just met.
“We smile to signal our intent to play, to affiliate, to approve, to appease, or to submit,” said psychologist Alan Fridlund of the University of California at Santa Barbara, who wasn’t involved with the study. “All of these motives have in common our signaling others that we mean them no threat.”
But Fridlund isn’t convinced that smiling can do away with the cultural prejudices formed over a lifetime, and said it’s more likely that the findings simply demonstrate a phenomenon called overshadowing: The smile momentarily distracts people of other cues they can get from the other person. “Give people something big to look at, and they are diverted from everything else,” Fridlund said.
Senft also cautions that the study was small and only included American students of European and Asian descent. More work is needed to replicate these findings and examine the effects in other racial groups such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
Nevertheless, the finding that something as simple as a smiling face can change how we form first impressions suggests how malleable ― and in a way, superficial ― such impressions can be.
“For me, the takeaway is that we all need to be wary of the impressions we form of people when we don’t have much information to go on,” Senft said. “That sense we sometimes get that a person just ‘isn’t very nice’ might have more to do with our own biases than with anything about them.”
Don’t let employee training fall to the side of data security. 
By: David PageSecurity AnalystQSAWhen it comes to data security, many businesses tend to think of things like locks, firewalls, and the latest technology to protect their sensitive data. But they often overlook their biggest vulnerability: employees.Now, I’m not saying employees are bad; they’re just human, and humans make mistakes. Unfortunately, many hackers will take advantage of human error to gain access to your data. You need to spend just as much time and money on your employees as you do on secure technology.Follow for more data security articles like thisMany data breaches happen as a result of a well-meaning employee doing something to make your business vulnerable, whether it’s clicking on a phishing email that downloads malware, giving out sensitive information to someone they shouldn’t, or not being diligent in protecting their passwords. Most of these cases aren’t even intentional or malicious.Why is training important?
TweetThings like email phishing scams and social engineering can affect anyone in your business from the top executive to the janitor. Make sure all of your employees are briefed on policies involving basic physical and data security.What should employees be trained on?It’s good to make a list of policies employees should be made aware of and be trained on. Some policies may include:technology usepassword managementdata handling proceduresincident response plansdata security best practicessocial engineering techniquesBasically, if you have a policy about security that involves your employees, your employees should know about it. Tips for training employeesHolding yearly meetings doesn’t really do it anymore—your employees need a constant reminder to prioritize data security in their daily activities. They will also absorb more information if they receive training more often. Here are some tips to get your employees ready.
Set monthly training meetings: focus each month on a different aspect of data security, such as passwords, social engineering, email phishing, etcGive frequent reminders: these could be sent out in an email or newsletter that includes tips for employeesTrain employees on new policies ASAP: also, newly hired employees should be trained on policies as quickly as possibleMake training materials easily available: Intranet sites are a great way to provide access to training and policy informationCreate incentives: reward your employees for being proactiveWatch out for your employeesIt’s important to make sure your employees understand how critical their role is in keeping your business’s data secure. Training employees should be a top priority in your overall data security strategy. After all, your employees are the ones standing between your data and the bad guys. Shouldn’t you make sure they know what to do?Need help finding resources for employee training? Talk to us!David Page is a Qualified Security Assessor and has been working at SecurityMetrics for 2 and a half years. He has over 18 years experience in network and system engineering, design, and security. 
Tiny yet fascinating! Ants building a bridge out of themselves to help others cross over.In us humans too, cooperation is something that should be favoured by natural selection because it’s beneficial. By cooperating humans can better their chances of survival and reproduction. Individuals who cooperate are more likely to pass on their genes.But there’s a flipside to the story. Individuals who cheat and don’t cooperate are also more likely to be reproductively successful. Individuals who receive all the benefits a group provides but don’t contribute anything have an evolutionary advantage over those who do cooperate. Such individuals lay their hands on more resources and hardly incur any costs. Since the availability of resources can be correlated with reproductive success, over evolutionary time, the number of cheaters in a population must increase.The only way in which the evolution of cooperation can happen is if humans have the psychological mechanisms to detect, avoid and punish cheaters. If cooperators can detect cheaters and interact with only like-minded cooperators, cooperation and reciprocal altruism can gain a toehold and evolve over time.Psychological mechanisms favouring cooperationIf you pause to think about all psychological mechanisms that we possess to detect and avoid cheaters, you’ll soon realize that a rather great part of our psyche is devoted to these ends.We have the ability to recognize many different individuals, not just by their names but also by the way they talk, walk and the sound of their voice. Identifying many different individuals helps us identify who is cooperative and who is non-cooperative.No sooner do new people meet than they form quick judgments about each other, mostly about how cooperative or non-cooperative they’re going to be.“She’s nice and very helping.” “He has a kind heart.”“She’s selfish.”“He’s not the type who shares his stuff.”Similarly, we have the ability to remember our past interactions with different people. If someone deceives us, we tend to remember this event vividly and vow never to trust that person again or demand an apology. Those who help us we put them in our good books.Imagine what chaos would ensue if you were unable to keep track of those who’ve been non-cooperative toward you? They’d continue to take advantage of you causing you tremendous loss.Interestingly, we not only keep track of those who’re good or bad to us but also how much they’re good or bad to us. This is where reciprocal altruism kicks in. If a person does x amount of favour upon us, we feel obliged to return the favour in x amount. If a person does a huge favour upon us, we feel obliged to repay in a big way (the common expression, “How can I repay you?”). If person does a not-so-big favour for us, we return them a not-so-big favour.Add to all this our capacity to understand each other’s needs, convey our own and feel guilty or bad if we’re disappointed or if we disappoint others. All these things are in-built in us to promote cooperation.It all boils down to cost v/s benefitsJust because we’re evolved to cooperate does not mean non-cooperation does not happen. Given the right circumstances, when the benefit of not cooperating is greater than the benefit of cooperating, non-cooperation can and does happen.The evolution of cooperation in humans only suggests that there is a general tendency in the human psyche to cooperate with others for mutual benefit. Generally, we feel good when cooperation that is beneficial to us happens and feel bad when non-cooperation that is harmful for us happens.