Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

The Evolution of Disgust

Psychologist, David Pizarro delves into the world of facial expressions, in particular the universal facial expression of Disgust, first conveyed by Darwin in the late 19th century, and its evolutionary benefits for human survival.

What Pizarro notes is that disgust has evolved to not only to include items that might poison or hurt us (disease) but has come to dominate our moral norms as well.  We express the same disgust response to moral digressions that reflect ideologies that we do not support.

Watch Pizarro’s TED Talk  demonstrating a correlation between sensitivity to disgusting cues — a photo of feces, an unpleasant odor — and moral and political conservatism.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Does Disgust Affect Your Political Views?

Influencers from Around the World – You Think You Don’t Have Authority? You’re Wrong!

Our “Influencers from Around the World” post this month is courtesy of Hoh Kim. Hoh has been guest writing for so long I’m hard pressed to tell you something that hasn’t been said before so I’ll tell you this – I am very thankful I met him in January 2008 when we trained together under Robert Cialdini. Hoh and I have remained friends ever since and I’ve enjoyed our communication and getting to know each other even more. I encourage you to visit his website, The Lab h, and his blog, Cool Communications. You’ll also find Hoh on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Brian Ahearn, CMCT® Chief Influence Officer influencePEOPLE Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.You Think You Don’t Have Authority? You’re Wrong?Do you ever find yourself thinking you don’t have any authority because you’re not the boss, a C-suite executive, a celebrity or something else like that? I’m here to tell you that you do have some authority! 1. Let me ask you this question first. Do you have experiences? Of course you have experiences. If you have experiences then you must have some expertise. Seth Godin, one of the world’s most respected marketing experts said, “Everyone’s an expert (at something).”So ask yourself, in what area do you have better, deeper and more experience? One good way to find your expertise is to write an “experience resume.” A typical resume will show you where you worked, which school you attended and what jobs you’ve held. An experience resume lists experiences, maybe up to fifty, you’ve had during your lifetime. It could contain trips, work, cooking, art, baby-sitting, reading, etc. You will find your expertise from the list by looking for patterns in the experiences or through connecting the dots among experiences. Here is a personal example; I like to teach and I like communication consulting in business as opposed to working as a full time teacher in a school or university. By combining those two I became a business coach. Also, I enjoy workshop facilitation and I like LEGOs so I learned LEGO Serious Play, a method of using LEGOs for business strategy development. Now LEGOs are one of the major teaching methods I use during my workshops.2. Once you identify your expertise you need to consider what evidence or symbols give other people proof of your expertise. Without having some evidence your expertise will not be perceived as such by your customers. Questions to be asked include: a) What advanced education or certification have you earned in your area of expertise? b) What awards or recognition have you earned? c) Have you written articles, books or contributed to other publications in your area of expertise? Don’t worry if you do not have enough evidence to support your authority yet. That means it should be part of your plan to obtain that evidence moving forward. Someone might say, “I don’t need evidence!” Perhaps. After all, neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates graduated from college. However, most of us are not Steve Jobs or Bill Gates! They now have tremendous evidence based on their amazing business results and great product innovations. That is the evidence to support the fact that each is a respected authority. Each of us has to have some evidence if we want to be recognized as experts in certain areas.3. Lastly, to build your authority you need to have E3 = Experiences, Expertise and Evidences. If you’re a manager here is one more very important tip. One of the key roles for managers is to help build their team member’s authority. Ask the above questions to your members and help them to identify their personal authority. If they need more evidence to support their authority you can come up with a plan to help them, including training or a project assignment. If you’re good at this you will be a successful manager.Here’s the bottom line – Authority is waiting for you to use! It just needs to be discovered then developed.Today’s column is based on my recent webinar “The Cialdini’s Influence Series for Managers.” In that webinar I talked about the principle of authority and while preparing I received help from two people with many experiences – Bobette Gorden of Influence At Work and Brian Ahearn. Thanks!Hoh Kim, CMCT® Founder, Head Coach & Lead Facilitator, THE LAB h

Human Error III – Attentional Bias

Human Error Series – How to Exploit Biases and Defend Against Manipulation

This series was suggested by a member of /r/socialengineering, and upon reading his request it struck me that though many resources detail methods of manipulation that exploit these biases in one way or another, no author has aimed to explain how to exploit each individually and shown how to defend oneself against these biases. Further, we’re expected to be aware of which of the many biases are taking place and are being exploited at any given time, which requires a more detailed knowledge of the fundamental nature of these biases.

By explaining these biases and analyzing their place in hypothetical situations and how they could be abused, seen from the perspective of a social engineer, I hope to

Teach you a more fundamental understanding of human behavior and cognition.
inspire you to use your own creativity and imagination to approach the subject of applied social psychology.
Allow you to see situations in a different light and be more adaptable in dealing with them.
Raise awareness and shed light on what is happening in your own mind when these biases are being turned against you by others.

Sociality and social interaction is an interplay of all manner of manipulations and influences, and what is apparent is not often what is actual. What you think is happening might not be as it seems, and might actually be a part of the game other people, and even your own brain, are playing with your mind.

Enjoy!

– Joven

Attentional Bias

Important: This is about the cognitive bias known as the attentional bias.

This is not an article about various neurological attention biases that exist, such as pseudoneglect,[1] or the animal brain’s attentional bias for left visuospatial information.[2]

This is also not referring to various other cognitive biases which are often categorized as attention(-related) biases, which most of the cognitive biases fall under in some manner, including anchoring,[3] or the unnamed attentional bias towards things that don’t fit a pattern.

Disclaimer: Most examples are written from the POV of a male protagonist, because most of my audience and most of my clients are men. Do bear in mind: if experience teaches me anything, women are, on average, better natural social engineers by far. And ladies, if you think my saying this is just a cheap ploy to appease you, then learn to take a compliment.

The What

Attentional bias refers to the human tendency of our perception to be affected by our internal recurring thoughts and associated emotions, and thus determine a large part of the information will be used when making a value judgment by a judge in a decision-making process.

While applying some biases, like anchoring, works by creating salient information or directing the target towards that information, the attentional bias instead works by eliciting already existing information, or