Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

The Pursuit of Ignorance

 What does real scientific work look like?

Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein, professor at Columbia University, implies that Ignorance is far more important to discovery than knowledge.

 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Firestein gets to the heart of science as it’s really practiced and suggests that we should value what we don’t know — or “high-quality ignorance” — just as much as what we know.  Ignorance, he implies, is far more important to discovery than knowledge.   Firestein jokes: Real Science looks a lot less like the scientific method and a lot more like “farting around … in the dark.”

What is your take on Ignorance, do you think it’s that important?

Empathy, Empowerment and Teenagers

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Photo courtesy of StockVault

As most of us know either from our own kids or interaction with other’s kids, teenagers can be moody, confusing and seem to lack empathy.  How can we cultivate sensitivity in our teens, especially teen boys?

New research published in Developmental Psychology,  shows that biology, not parenting, is to blame for insensitive and selfish behavior by teenagers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that cognitive empathy, the mental ability to take others’ perspective, begins rising steadily in girls at age 13.  However, boys don’t begin to show gains in perspective-taking until age 15, which helps in problem-solving and avoiding conflict.

What’s more interesting is that adolescent males actually show a temporary decline, between ages 13 and 16, in a related skill—affective empathy, or the ability to recognize and respond to others’ feelings.  Fortunately, the boys’ sensitivity recovers in the late teens. Girls’ affective empathy remains relatively high and stable through adolescence.

This study co-authored by Jolien van der Graaff, a doctoral candidate in the Research Centre Adolescent Development at Utrecht University in the Netherland, is an expansion on researchers’ current understanding of cognitive growth during adolescence.

According to a 2012 research review co-authored by Ronald Dahl, a professor of public health at the University of California at Berkeley, researchers used to believe that both forms of empathy were fully formed during childhood.

It is now clear that “the brain regions that support social cognition, which helps us understand and interact with others successfully, continue to change dramatically“ in the teens, says Jennifer Pfeifer, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Preliminary research in her lab also suggests cognitive empathy rises in teens. The discoveries serve as a new lens for exploring such teen behaviors as bullying and drug abuse.

Cognitive empathy versus affective empathy, arises in a different part of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, verses the limbic region where affective empathy is grounded. Affective empathy begins in infancy imitating how to treat others from what one is exposed to.

So why do boys have less cognitive empathy than girls, one answer is that decline in affective empathy (which predicts an individuals level of cognitive empathy)  among young teenage boys may spring, in part, from puberty when testosterone increases, sparking a desire for dominance and power. Boys who were more mature physically showed less empathy than others.

What are your thoughts on cognitive empathy?

LinkedIn Endorsements: Reliable or BS?

If you’re on LinkedIn then no doubt you’re familiar with the relatively new feature where you can endorse someone for his or her skills and expertise. This feature is akin to Facebook’s “Like” option.
Not too long ago I connected with someone on LinkedIn who I’d previously had no interaction with whatsoever. The person reached out to me because we shared a common interest. Within hours of connecting he endorsed me for the following skills: management, training, marketing, leadership, and business planning.
Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate someone taking the time to endorse me but this struck me as odd because management and business planning are far from some of my stronger skills. There are things I’m much more skilled at, like persuasion, influence at all levels, coaching, sales, and sales management to name a few.
So why did I get these endorsements? Several reasons.First, my profile is pretty robust and creates a good impression (authority).Second, lots of other people have endorsed me (consensus).Third, LinkedIn makes it easy to endorse me for lots of skills.Now here’s the rub – a lot of the endorsements are BS. I say that because of the last point I made. LinkedIn has made it so easy to endorse people that it’s becoming meaningless. Recommendations are a far better gauge of someone’s skills and expertise because they mean the recommender has some direct experience with the person they’re recommending. Writing a recommendation takes more time and effort but didn’t our parents tell us things that take time and effort are worth more? I have nearly 1,600 contacts and the vast majority have never sat through my training, worked directly with me or even met me.

Another reason I think the endorsements are BS is because LinkedIn suggests them. By default many people just go with most or all of the listed skills even if they don’t have any real basis to make the endorsement.
Finally, consensus becomes unreliable. For example, my new contact endorsed me for management. It was suggested and now that he’s endorsed me, as have others, it creates the impression that management is one of my better skills. The more people that see that, the more they will endorse me. Do you think that makes me skilled at management? I don’t.
Reciprocityis yet another reason the endorsements should be taken with a grain of salt. Many people feel obligated to return the favor after having been endorsed. I visited my new contact’s home page when LinkedIn asked if he has the following skills: management, marketing, business planning, economics and macroeconomics. I don’t have any real idea and therefore can’t in good faith endorse him just because of what’s on his LinkedIn page and the pull of reciprocity.
For all the reasons noted above, I rarely endorse people. When I do, I do so because I have some basis for making the endorsement, not because LinkedIn asks me to or because I feel obligated to return the favor. I’ve actually declined to give recommendations when asked. I did so because I’d never worked directly with those people or even sat on a committee with them. In other words, I had no basis for making the recommendations.
If you’re considering hiring or doing business with someone undoubtedly you’ll check out their LinkedIn home page. After all, it’s the equivalent of a resume on steroids. When you notice their endorsed skills and expertise, if any apply to why you may do business with them, then here’s my simple suggestion: have several solid interview questions ready to help you determine if they’re all they’re cracked up to be. In other words, caveat emptor, buyer beware.