An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields
Sally Khon shares her experience with ugliness in in this TED Talk: Let’s Try Emotional Correctness.
“It’s not about political correctness,“ says Kohn, “but rather, emotional correctness“
Click here to view the embedded video.
“Emotional Correctness is the tone, the feeling, how we say what we say, the respect and compassion we show each other.“
Spotting a liar is complicated, as author Kevin Goodman outlines in his latest Huffington Post Blog “5 Guidelines to Catch a Liar”.
In his post, Goodman asserts that traditional signs of lying such as averting the eyes, fidgeting and playing with one’s hair are not necessarily proof of deception. Why, you ask?
In their effort to be convincing, liars, actually tend to make good eye contact. Carol Goman substantiates this claim asserting that liars tend to overcompensate their eye contact in that they stare for too long.
As for fidgeting, that could easily be a sign of an innocent but overly anxious person. Dr. Paul Ekman stated in a 1999 NY Times article that “an innocent suspect fearful about being believed, for example, may leak evidence of anxiety or apprehension. The lie catcher must evaluate the meaning of the signals in each individual case”
So if lie detection experts aren’t always relying on these false indicators of deception, what other tactics are they using?
SUE
Goodman discusses a new interview approach favored by many police psychologists and deception researchers called SUE (strategic use of evidence). The approach involves the interrogator allowing the suspect to comfortably tell their account of what happened and then at a later point, the interrogator introduces evidence. The purpose of this method is to disclose inconsistencies. Lying involves mental effort; with this in mind, this approach forces the suspected liar to account for what happened against the evidence and thus, increases the potential for the liar’s contradiction. Keep in mind, this approach is only beneficial with actual evidence.
Non-Confrontational Approach
Lying requires constant mental effort as the liar is battling their story against the truth; therefore the propensity of vagueness and the risk of contradiction ensues. Goodman suggests that the interviewer can gain the upper hand in this situation by maintaining a non-confrontational approach, meaning make the liar feel comfortable with sharing their account of what happened as well as follow-up with details. This way if inconsistencies in the liar’s story verses the truth arises, the details can therefore be verified.
Observing Baseline Behavior
As mentioned earlier, lie catchers note that fidgeting can be a sign of an overly anxious but innocent person, and likewise, overly constrained behavior can stem from naturally reserved people. To tackle this situation, experts observe a person’s baseline behavior – the process of developing a basic understanding of a person’s normal body language.
Microexpressions
Microexpressions are said to help reveal the disparity between how one presents oneself and how one authentically feels. Although microexpressions are involuntary expressions lasting a fraction of a second, Dr. David Matsumoto of San Francisco State University, asserts that people can be trained to spot them when they occur. Goodman suggests that one good way to delve into a more in depth conversation with a witness or suspect is to ask the same types of questions in varying ways (referring to the event in question) and closely watch their microexpressions.
Share Your Insights for Spotting Deception !!
When was the last time you cheated?
The definition of cheating is “an immoral way of achieving a goal“.
Certainly not something to be proud of or feel good about, cheating is usually associated with feelings of guilt and nervousness.
Interestingly, the NY Times reports recent research that shows as long as you didn’t think your cheating hurt anyone, you may have felt great afterwards.
The study entitled “The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior” was recently published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by researchers Ruedy, et al from the University of Washington, the London Business School, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
In the study’s initial experiments, one group of participants were asked to predict how they would feel if they cheated. In general, most people claimed they would feel bad.
Another set of participants were given a baseline assessment of their moods, took a word-unscrambling test and were then handed an answer key. They were told to check their answers and asked to report how many they got correct. For every correct answer, they were told they would be paid $1 dollar. 41% of the participants cheated and a follow-up assessment of their moods showed that they felt an emotional boost compared to those who did not cheat.
“The fact that people feel happier after cheating is disturbing, because there is emotional reinforcement of the behavior, meaning they could be more likely to do it again,” said Nicole E. Ruedy, the study’s lead author.
Ruedy and her team them removed the financial incentive and asked a new group to take a test on a computer. The participants were told the results would correlate with intelligence and a likelihood of future success. 77 participants were told that if they saw a pop-up message offering them the correct answer, they should ignore it and continue working.
In this study, more people cheated. In fact, 68% of this group cheated at least once, clicking the button for the correct answer. In the follow-up assessment, this group also reported a rise in upbeat feelings. So the financial incentive did not provide additional incentive to cheat- participants did it anyway.
Why did these participants cheat? The researchers found that those who cheated experienced thrill, self-satisfaction, a sense of superiority.
Dr. Ruedy noted that the study’s cheats believed that no one was hurt by their actions. “Perhaps people could be made aware of the costs that others actually bear,” she said. “Identify victims of their behavior.”
For the complete research paper and to learn more, please click on this link