Social Engineering Blogs

The Humintell Blog May 30, 2023

Can Smiling Improve Your Mood? Research Says Yes.

Emotions and Facial Expressions

We all know that emotions give our lives meaning, and life without emotions is impossible to imagine.

Emotions are a vestige of our evolutionary history and are primarily controlled by an archaic part of the brain.

This is why Dr. Matsumoto describes emotions as immediate, involuntary, automatic, and unconscious reactions to things that are important to us.

Emotions help us react in some situations with minimal conscious awareness and are triggered by a universal, underlying psychological theme.

When triggered, they recruit an organized system of reactions that produce specific physiological signatures, direct our cognitions, and produce specific types of feelings.

Importantly, emotions produce specific, nonverbal behavior in the face, voice, and body.

Different emotions are expressed by different, specific, unique facial configurations (facial expressions) that are universal to all cultures, regardless of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender or any other demographic variable.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

If emotions produce specific universal facial expressions, can facial expressions in turn affect your emotions? According to the facial feedback hypothesis, they can.

But is this actually true?

Scientists have been interested in the idea of a facial-feedback hypothesis since the 1800s (Source: Betterhelp) and modern researchers have continued to study the hypothesis to this day.

Smiling is Good for Your Heart

One study conducted by clinical psychologists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman showed the positive effects of smiling. Turns out, smiling can be good for your heart in stressful situations.

How Masks Hinder Politeness For their study, the researchers examined participants’ heartbeats, since stress and heart health are related.

17o participants were split into 2 groups: one knew what the study was about, while the other didn’t.

In the training stage, the researchers taught the volunteers how to either hold their faces in a neutral expression, hold a social smile (upper right hand image), or hold a Duchenne smile (upper left hand image).

The researchers monitored the participants’ heart rates as they performed various tasks; both groups were required to use their hand to quickly trace a star reflected in a mirror, followed by placing their hand in a bucket of ice water for one minute.

While completing these tasks, each person had to hold chopsticks in their mouth which activated muscles corresponding to a forced smile.

They found the participants who were instructed to smile, and in particular those whose faces expressed genuine or Duchenne smiles, had lower heart rates after recovery from the stress activities than the ones who held their faces in neutral expressions.

Even the volunteers who held chopsticks in their mouths, that forced the muscles to express a smile (but they had not explicitly been instructed to smile), had lower recovery heart rates compared to the ones who held neutral facial expressions.

Interestingly, those who smiled genuinely during the trial recovered the fastest, followed by people with fake (social) smiles. Those with neutral smiles had the slowest recovery.

Even Fake Smiles Can Improve Mood

Recent research also suggests that fake or social smiling can make people feel happier.

An international collaboration of researchers led by Stanford University research scientist Nicholas Coles published a study in Nature Human Behavior.

As part of the Many Smiles Collaboration, a total of 26 research groups from 19 different countries and over 3,800 participants were involved. The average age of the participants was 26 and over 70% were women.

The researchers created a plan that included three well-known techniques intended to encourage participants to activate their smile muscles:

One-third of participants were directed to use the pen-in-mouth method
One-third were asked to mimic the facial expressions seen in photos of smiling actors
The final third were given instructions to move the corners of their lips toward their ears and lift their cheeks using only the muscles in their face

In each group, half the participants performed a small physical tasks and simple math problems while looking at cheerful images of puppies, kittens, flowers, and fireworks, and the other half simply saw a blank screen.

They also saw these same types of images (or lack thereof) while directed to use a neutral facial expression. After each task, participants rated how happy they were feeling.

After analyzing their data, the researchers found a noticeable increase in happiness from participants mimicking smiling photographs or pulling their mouth toward their ears.

Interestingly, the researchers didn’t find a strong mood change in participants using the pen-in-mouth technique but the evidence from the other two techniques was clear.

It provided a compelling argument that human emotions are somehow linked to muscle movements or other physical sensations.

For more on how smiling boosts your mood, visit this past blog post

The post Can Smiling Improve Your Mood? Research Says Yes. first appeared on Humintell.

The Humintell Blog May 12, 2023

A Tribute to Law Enforcement Officers

Guest Blog Post by Anthony “Tony” Ciaburro

The month of May (Law Enforcement Appreciation Month) is when we pause to remember our fallen officers.

As I reflect on those whose names are on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, I take comfort knowing that our profession remains undaunted.

The last few years have been the most difficult in the history of policing. Covid-19, a crisis of confidence following the murder of George Floyd, increased victimization and appropriate demands for elevated professionalism did not deter those who police.

The profession, the most highly trained and professional in history, remained dogged, determined, and on-duty.

We cannot bring back those who are now under the watchful eyes of the lions in our Nation’s Capital. Nonetheless, we can honor them by policing in noble fashion. Those who perished would want their colleagues to continue serving with dignity.

I cannot think of any profession which is more accessible. The evolution of technology has shown the positive and negative of policing.

There is no other job held to the same level of scrutiny. (Professional sports don’t count; what is being weighed on the scales of justice is not instant replay entertainment.)

Nonetheless, policing continues.

I was already a command officer when body worn cameras (BWCs) appeared in the field. How officers adapted and continued to work despite every word being recorded is admirable.

What other occupation must work under these conditions? Better said, which occupation works under these conditions and has embraced and excelled like law enforcement?

The entire use of force paradigm has changed over the past few years. Police, politicians, and those in our communities all demand and expect increased professionalism especially regarding use of force.

In reviewing use of force, I was in awe of the patience of officers and their precision. Officers would communicate calmly and use force when it absolutely appeared all options were exhausted. The shift is stunning.

When I started, delaying was considered indecisive and perhaps an indicator of low officer confidence or courage. De-escalation is now the norm and certainly more difficult.

If one watches the recordings of incidents, they will hear the officers discussing the sound tactics consistent with societal demands. In reality, officers do everything they can to avoid using force.

Modern police work is full of facets. There were always specialists as opposed to the generalist patrol officer. Nonetheless, the ever-growing areas of technical expertise are remarkable.

Interview and interrogation training like Humintell offers, field tactics, improved electronic optics for service weapons, expanding cell phone and computer technologies are part of the everyday ways to do business.

When officers would brief me on a case or explain to me why they needed a certain piece of equipment or approval for a training class, regardless of whether I could understand them, I deeply appreciated their vigor. They wanted to do their job better in a more transparent manner.

The laws have also changed. Miranda is more complicated. The age of the offender is important. In aggregate, today’s officers have many more factors to consider while gathering facts; therefore, they must have high intellect.

Despite continued admirable success against ever demanding and changing conditions, the numbers of those entering the profession are fewer. Recruiting and retention is a topic amongst all chiefs.

Pay, benefits, and mental health services must adjust to these market conditions. Competitive compensation, choices and a culture of competency are the foundation for success. Compensation must be meaningful and signal the employer’s intent and mindset of appreciation towards law enforcement.

Officers need fulfilling careers. A variety of challenges, i.e., assignments or choices is necessary.

Finally, culture is key. A well run and fair department in all aspects fosters retention and in turn, recruitment. Yes, the officers of today will change departments. They should not have to stay if their employment is somehow lacking.

Anthony “Tony” Ciaburro spent nearly 34 years in law enforcement. Tony started in 1989 at the San Jose Police Department and worked a variety of assignments until retiring as a captain in 2015. Tony then became a captain at the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department and promoted to the Assistant General Manager of Public Safety (AGM)/Chief of Police in 2017. As the AGM of Public Safety/Chief of Police, he had Police, Fire, and Lifeguard Services under his command. Tony is a fluent Spanish Speaker who embraces a philosophy of “Good to Great,” is a graduate of San Jose State University (MS & BS), the FBI National Academy (Class 245) and PERF’s SMIP.

The post A Tribute to Law Enforcement Officers first appeared on Humintell.

The Humintell Blog April 19, 2023

Does Music Elicit Universal Emotional Responses?

It’s no mystery that major and minor chords in western music makes us feel good. But could this be because of an evolutionary trait?

Recent research led by Eline Adrianne Smit and colleagues from the MARCS Institute for Brain suggests this could be the case.

Turn to any major pop radio station in the Western world and you’ll likely recognize some familiar features in the songs including:

A formulaic structure
Themes of romance
A catchy melody in a major scale
A song less than three and a half minutes

These unique features of modern music are designed to make the audience feel good, so we listen on repeat. But why do these songs make us feel good?

For the last few decades, psychologists have wondered if there are features to music that elicit universal emotional responses in humans.

Could certain elements of music be hard-wired into the human central nervous system?

A Musical Study

A recent study tested how different communities with varying levels of exposure to Western music would respond emotionally to major melodies and minor melodies. According to Discover Magazine, “At least in Western cultures, major and minor melodies and harmony heavily influence emotional responses to music. Major chords and progressions are associated with positive emotions, and minor chords and progressions are associated with negative emotions.”Smit and colleagues asked musicians and non-musicians in Sydney, Australia as well as different communities from Papua New Guinea with varying degrees of exposure to Western music, to associate major and minor melodies with either happiness or sadness.

The Results

The researchers found that the degree of familiarity with Western music corresponded with the association between major melodies with happiness, and minor melodies with sadness.

While this association was present for some groups in Papua New Guinea, researchers did not find evidence for this association in the community that was the most remote.

This study suggests that familiarity through cultural exposure plays and important factor when associating major and minor melodies with happiness and sadness respectively.

Interestingly, major chords tend to appear more frequently than minor chords in popular music and research shows that humans are likely to attribute positive emotions to things that we are familiar with.

Universality in Music?

Lead researcher Smit also thinks there could be some associative conditioning at play. She makes the important point that people typically don’t listen to music in isolation. Instead we listen to music that fits the context of our situation.

For example, we would usually hear major music at an event like a wedding, whereas we might hear minor music at a funeral.

If specific features of music are combined with emotionally laden events often enough, then we will likely associate that musical feature with that specific emotion.

Some psychologists have suggested that music was a sort of social glue in our evolutionary history, helping to facilitate the development of humans as a deeply social species.

While this study does support that culture reinforces the association between major and minor melodies with happiness and sadness, Smit does note that, “there is still absolutely the possibility that particular aspects of music might be universal.”

Universal Emotions in Music

In similar research conducted in 2016, Psychologist Heike Argstatter sought to determine whether universal basic emotions are recognizable in music across cultures.

This study built on her previous research which found that, within one Western culture, both trained musicians and laypeople consistently categorized the same musical sequences into categories based on the same basic emotions.

Dr. Argstatter then sought to extend these findings to audiences in disparate cultural settings.

The results? Dr. Argstatter found evidence that all participants, regardless of culture, would identify the same emotions in the same pieces of music. This was especially true for happiness and sadness.

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