Social Engineering Blogs

The Humintell Blog September 13, 2022

How Good Is Your Cat at Emotion Recognition?

cat emotions Historically cats have received less research attention than their canine counterparts and their cognitive abilities were less recognized. However, in the last 10 years, research focusing on trying to better understand our feline companions has grown.

Emotion Recognition in Cats

A recent 2020 study entitled “Emotion Recognition in Cats” published in the journal Animals demonstrated that cats are able to recognize conspecific as well as human emotions through auditory and visual observations.

In the study, the authors recorded sounds of one male and female cat, each of them in two situations. In the first situation they would hiss and in the second they would purr. Also, a man and a woman were recorded laughing and growling. Finally, a neutral sound was downloaded from the internet. Authors then took photographs of the same cats hissing and purring and of the same people demonstrating a ‘human angry face’ and a ‘human happy face’.

Emotion Recognition in Cats

Ten cats were tested in their own homes, in a quiet room, where a projector and screen were installed, and a

speaker was placed behind the screen. Cats were facing the screen, sitting on their owner’s lap.

Each trial consisted of a recorded sound (angry, neutral or happy) emitted by the speaker while two faces were simultaneously projected on the bottom corners of the screen. If the sound was hissing or purring, the ‘hissing cat face’ and ‘purring cat face’ would be projected, and if the sound was laughing or human growling, the ‘human happy face’ and ‘human angry face’ would be projected.

The researchers wanted to know if the cats be able to match sound and face. To answer that question, the duration that the cats spent looking at each face was recorded as well as a whole range of behaviors that could be considered expressions of stress or discomfort. Every trial was filmed by two camcorders. Researchers looked at what face the cat would look at the longest.

The results?

Researchers found that cats looked significantly longer at the face whose expression matched the sound they heard, for ‘cat hiss’, ‘human anger’ and ‘human happiness’, but interestingly, not for ‘cat purr’, maybe because there is not an easy distinguishable face for purring in cats.

They also found that younger cats (three to four years) were better at this task than older cats (five to nine years). Regarding the ‘stress behaviors’, they found that cats displayed significantly more ‘stress behavior’ to ‘cat hiss’ and ‘human anger’ then for any other stimuli.

These results demonstrate that cats integrate visual and auditory signals to recognize human and conspecific emotions. They also appear to modulate their behavior according to the valence of the emotion perceived.

Cats Recognize Facial Expressions?

Another study by Oakland University researchers Jennifer Vonk and Moriah Galvan in Rochester, Michigan, suggests that cats are more receptive to human emotions than we’ve previously surmised.

Their study involved 12 cats and their owners which showed that felines behave differently based on whether their owners are smiling or frowning. While similar behaviors have previously been documented in domestic dogs, researchers were interested to see if domestic cats – who mostly appear uninterested in their human owners – possess similar abilities.

During their study, researchers observed that cats exhibited more frequent “positive” behaviors – purring, rubbing or sitting on their owner’s lap and spending more time with them – when their owner was smiling. Frowns seemed to produce the opposite effect in the cats.

Researchers also noticed that these cats exhibited similar “positive” behaviors when placed with strangers, regardless of whether the strangers were smiling – as if they were giving the strangers the benefit of the doubt or were trying to put their best foot forward.

All of this suggests that cats can learn how to read owner specific facial expressions over time.

Researchers were careful to note, however, that their findings do not mean cats are capable of feeling empathy. Instead, it seems to indicate that cats have learned to associate their owners’ smiles with rewards and positive attention.

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The Humintell Blog August 24, 2022

Mental Health and Deception Detection

Are we confusing cues of low credibility with atypical behavior of people with mental health issues?

Re-published with permission from Evidentia University.

Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Atypical behaviors found in some mental health conditions negatively affect judgements of deception and credibility” by Lim, A.; Young, R. L. and Brewer, N. (2022), in which authors carry out a study to examine some visible behaviors that we associate with an unbelievable speech, but also, are behaviors that people with some mental conditions can present.

There is a general belief that what people say does not matter as much as their behavior when they say it, since it could indicate guilt, deception, regret, etc.

In a 2006 study, 58 participants were asked when they knew someone was lying. The most common answers were: when there is an aversion to the gaze, incoherence, exaggerated body movements, certain facial expressions…

Only one of the elements was related to the content of the message: the inconsistency. Which leads us to think that we focus much more on non-verbal elements than on verbal ones, an idea consistent with numerous previous studies on the subject.

While the use of unreliable cues in lie detection is concerning in itself, it is likely to be problematic for people who have a disability or mental health condition as well.

For example, some people with social anxiety and social communication disorders have difficulty maintaining eye contact, which, rather than being a guilt avoidance mechanism, is more related to fear of social interaction.

On the other hand, repetitive body movements may be behaviors of people with neuro-developmental disorders or autism spectrum disorders.

However, to an observer who doesn’t know much about the subject, these behaviors can be misinterpreted as signs of nervousness or guilt.

Another indicator of trustworthiness is emotional expressions.

For example, there are studies that show that, in a trial, both victims and defendants are perceived as more credible when they show negative emotions (such as crying) rather than neutral (flat affect) or positive emotions (smiles).

Despite the fact that many studies have pointed out that it is necessary to pay attention to verbal signals especially, the stereotype that the most important are the non-verbal ones is very widespread, even for professionals such as police or judges.

This can be explained by attribution theory, which is based on the premise that individuals inherently seek to understand and explain observed behaviors, thus attributing a cause to the behavior.

In another study, authors examine the effect of four cues commonly associated with lying: gaze aversion, repetitive body movements, monologues, and flat affect. These behaviors are selected because they are associated with lying and also because they often appear in people with mental health problems.

It was hypothesized that individuals displaying these behaviors would be perceived as more liars and less credible. The total sample was a total of 392 people of legal age, gathered through online tools.

They were shown a video of a game, in which one person had to choose whether or not to steal a small amount of money and then convince another person that they had or had not. If they got away with it, they got $50; if not, only $10. The people in these videos were professional actors with a standardized script.

Results revealed significant effects of repetitive body movements and monologues on perceived deception, and significant effects of flat affect on credibility. It is important, as it could have important practical indications for people who often show these behaviors, for example, people with schizophrenia or mood disorders, people with neuro-developmental disorders, autism spectrum, among others.

However, contrary to expectations, and also contrary to previous studies, gaze aversion did not have a significant effect on judgments of deception or credibility. It is possible that this happened because in this study this trait was studied individually, while in most studies it is interpreted within a context or accompanied by other behaviors that can give strength to the “lie effect”.

One limitation of the study is that it was not conducted with people with mental health conditions, so authors recommend the direct participation of these populations.

If you want to know more about nonverbal behavior and how it influences our personal relationships, visit our Nonverbal Communication Certificate, a 100% online program certificated by the Heritage University (Washington) with special discounts for readers of the Nonverbal Communication Blog.

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The Humintell Blog August 2, 2022

Meta Analysis: Psychological Effects of Power Poses

Body language affects how others see us, but can it also change how we see ourselves?

Amy Cuddy’s infamous 2012 Ted Talk (above) claimed that power posing was the key to confidence. Critics shut down her theory for years, but the latest research indicates that there may be some truth in it after all.

In a recently published meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin, a team of psychologists shed light on the possible physical, behavioral, and psychological effects of power poses and other body positions.

Background

Initial studies on power posing indicated that engaging in expansive body positions will raise testosterone levels, lower cortisol levels, and increase risk taking. A number of these studies received a lot of media attention when they were published but faced enormous criticism because their results could not be replicated. Since then, additional studies on the effects of body positions have been published, but their results have been mixed.

The Methodology

Researchers from Germany and the United States collected and analyzed findings from past studies to determine whether posture influences a person’s self-perception, behavior, and hormone levels.

They searched 12 scientific databases using terms such as “body position” and “power pose” and found over 24,000 potentially relevant studies. Only studies that used an experimental design with random assignment, which would allow causal inferences to be drawn, were retained. To avoid publication bias, the team also sent out requests for unpublished data.

The resulting sample is the largest sample of studies on body positions so far, consisting of 128 experiments with a total of almost 10,000 participants.

The team focused on two types of body positions:

Power poses: Standing or sitting in a very expansive way, taking up a lot of space. A low-power pose would be crossing your legs and folding your arms while standing, or bowing your head and putting your hands on your lap while seated.
Upright postures: Standing erect or sitting up straight in a chair versus bowing your head and slumping.

Theoretical and empirical research have suggested that power poses are nonverbal expressions of dominance, whereas upright postures are displays of prestige.

The Results

The team found clear evidence for the effects of both body position types on self-perception.

These nonverbal expressions of status clearly produced larger effects than did other forms of embodied feedback (e.g., facial feedback or arm flexion): When experimental participants took power or upright postures, they felt better and were more confident than when they took contractive or hunched body positions. The effects held for males and females of all ages in both Western and Eastern countries.

There were also some effects on behaviors, such as task persistence and antisocial behavior. However, these findings were less robust and might be influenced by outliers and/or publication bias.

There was no evidence for effects on hormones (e.g., testosterone, cortisol) or other physiological indicators (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance).

Questions Remain

Although people may feel more confident, it remains to be seen if they act more confident when standing tall.

Some research has found that power posing does affect behavioral traits like task persistence and antisocialness, but other studies have not. Only those that have found bigger effects have been published, which means researchers haven’t been able to examine studies with less significant results, a phenomenon known as publication bias.

There are some study design limitations that prevent the researchers from being able to say that standing tall can directly make you more confident. Most of the studies they analyzed didn’t have a control group; the researchers didn’t compare people power-posing to people standing in a neutral position. Instead, they asked participants to adopt either a dominant, open, or submissive posture.

Confidence vs Competence

nonverbal power of posture If our posture can result in different chemical configurations being manifest in our brain, can this actually help us seem competent and get a job? The answer, according to Dr. Matsumoto, is a little mixed.

On the one hand, there is certainly a lot conveyed through a sense of powerful posture. Not only can it make other people, such as an interviewer for a job, conclude that we are self-confidant, but it can even make us feel more self-assured and competent. This is not to be downplayed.

That said, it does not actually make us competent. Dr. Matsumoto cautions the aspiring power posturer against over-reliance on these tactics:

“My advice would be to first gain actual competence in your field. The last thing anyone should want is to look confident and not really be competent. Once one has a certain degree for a lot of competence, adopting certain body postures may help to feel even more confident and powerful … but they’ve got to believe it and be able to back it up with real competence.”

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