Social Engineering Blogs

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OPINION: Why Crime Prevention Fails

I have a pet-peeve with the current spate of “anti-theft” apps for mobile devices. My problem doesn’t lie with their technology. Nope, my issue is with their marketing. There are a plethora of these apps that are being called “crime prevention tools”. I know what you’re thinking, “But if someone takes my cell phone, this app will use the GPS to track my phone and send me an email so I can tell the police where to get my phone.” True, but answer this question – What crime did it stop? Seriously, what crime did your app stop? And therein lies the problem with the app and with how we view crime prevention.

Part of the reason we have such a high rate of crime in this country resides mostly in our definition of “crime prevention”. Many times, we mistakenly believe “prevention” relies on the response to the crime. A faster recovery means we’ve sent a message to the bad guys that they can’t take our stuff without the cops coming to get them. Stop laughing. That’s the message the creative marketing teams behind these apps and other products will have you believe. Remember Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” campaign and the “war on drugs/crime”. Those sent a clear message to the bad guys – we have no clue how to stop you.

Stopping crime is a noble objective but no crime is totally preventable. As a matter of fact, it’s a safe bet that at some point in your life, you will be a victim of a crime. After 10 years of doing law enforcement in the military and my current job, I have an idea as to why this is. Simply put, the reason you will be a victim of crime at some point in your life rests in two places and neither of which needs the other for the crime to take place.

The first place where the crime onset takes place is with the criminal. Remember what I said a few posts ago about how the attacker will ultimately attack you regardless of what you do? The same idea applies here. You can’t control what an attacker will do. If he/she is motivated and skilled enough, which are two things you can’t always plan on, there is very little you can do beforehand to stop them. That’s not a defeatist attitude. This is me directing you to the second place where the crime onset occurs – the victim.

Victims, typically, do a lot of things good before an attack occurs but they also do some things terribly wrong. Where things go wrong for them is in their attitude – “I never thought it would happen to me…..But I lock my doors….Why me?” There are loads of reasons you were selected to be a victim. None of which you may have had any control over. It is for this reason I think we need a new crime strategy – crime mitigation.

As we’ve discussed before, your attitude towards crime mitigation has to be proactive. You have to be thinking about the best way to lower your chances of being a victim and lessening the damage from an attack. Whether you purchase a smart phone or sports car, you should have a proactive attitude towards engaging the threat. Buying an alarm or an app won’t stop theft but planning on it to happen at some point may not only mitigate the damage but provide more creative solutions to prevent the loss from happening in the first place.

Mapping Emotions

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Courtesy of StockVault

Emotions seem to play a role in most aspects of human interaction and life, yet scientists and philosophers still know relatively little about them.  New information on emotions is continuously evolving and Science Codex has reported on one of the newest theories on the science of Emotions.

This new theory, “the integrated embodiment theory of emotions”, is outlined in the journal of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.  It posits that emotions are formulated by the integration of different bodily perceptions that have representations of external objects, events, or states of affairs.  That is, emotions are not just representations of perception or thought but are separate mental states, which are a reflection of the integration of feelings of bodily processes and cognitive events.

Prof. Dr. Albert Newen and Dr. Luca Barlassina of the Institute of Philosophy II at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, are the creators of this new emotion theory and purport that their theory gives a unified and principled account of the relation between emotions and bodily perceptions, the intentionality of emotions, and emotion phenomenology.

This theory labeled an impure somatic theory of emotions and is contrasted with current pure somatic theories that posit emotions are entirely constituted by bodily perceptions.  Emotions are nothing but the perception of a bodily state.  That is we do not tremble because we are scared, but rather we are scared because we tremble.  “This theory does not, however, consider the cognitive content of many emotions“, says  Newen.

The “cognitive theory of emotions” says that emotions are essentially an assessment of the situation based on reason: this dog is dangerous because he is baring his teeth. “This theory is also unsatisfactory,” says Newen, “because it forgets the feelings as a central component of the emotion.“ For example, a person can judge that a dog is dangerous and at the same time have no fear because he is an expert in handling dangerous dogs. So the cognitive assessment does not necessarily determine the emotion.

According to Newen and Barlassina, the new theory is superior to Jesse Prinz’s most sophisticated theory of emotions so far, because this does not take into account that an emotion can also be directed at an object that is not present or does not even exist.

A related article from Science World Report purports that scientists may be able to tell exactly how a person feels by mapping their brain. For the first time, researchers have identified exactly which emotion a person is experiencing based solely on brain activity.

This study, published in PLOS One journal, claims to be different from others in that it does not rely on people to delineate their emotional state(s) (i.e. self-report).  It uses a computational model that identifies individuals’ thoughts of concrete objects.

Amanda Markey , one of the researchers, points out, “Despite manifest differences between people’s psychology, different people tend to neutrally encode emotions in remarkably similar ways.“

The researchers also found that emotion signatures aren’t necessarily limited to specific brain regions. Instead, they produce characteristics patterns throughout a number of brain regions.  In the future, the researchers plan to use this new identification method in order to overcome a number of challenging problems in emotion research, including identifying emotions that individuals are actively trying to suppress.

 Is this new theory of emotions being separate mental states superior to the old?

Dr. Matsumoto’s Radio Interview – “View Point” with Ellen Shehadeh

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Photo courtesy of StockVault

Listen to Humintell director’s radio interview on facial expressions, emotions, & culture on 90.5 FM’s “View Point” with Ellen Shehadeh.

“Faces are special because they communicate specific information about our emotional states as well as sometimes our thoughts and our feelings,“ Dr. Matsumoto pointed out.

He comments on an investigators duty when trying to evaluate truthfulness:

“That’s why being able to read microexpressions as well as all the other non-verbal as well as the verbal indicators are aids for an investigator to then follow-up because the follow-up and how you follow-up and what you’re gonna say and the content that you’re gonna explore whether you’re an investigator or psychotherapist or physician, or lawyer that’s the other very important half of the equation of being able to use these kinds of indicators.“

He goes on to talk about the difference between micro and macro facial expressions specifically the microexpression of fear:

“Now having said that [quote above] I believe that the dynamics of the expressions are gonna be different.  For example if you’re walking into an airport and you’re showing fear, you could be afraid of being caught because you’re carrying some contraband…or you could be afraid of the fact that you forgot where you parked your car or whether you turned off your lights in the garage…so the fact that you’re afraid doesn’t tell you which one that is [what reason you are displaying fear for], but I do believe that if you’re afraid of being caught you’re gonna be more likely to hide your fear. Whereas if you’re afraid that you forgot to turn off the lights in your car you’re not gonna be that afraid of wanting to hide that [type of] fear.  So, the fear is gonna look different and that’s the difference between micro expressions [trying to conceal the fact that you are afraid] and macro expressions…“

 For more information or to listen to the entire interview visit KWMR 90.5 FM.