Social Engineering Blogs

Most of us would just as soon not be afraid, but our natural fear response can have some unexpected benefits.
This point is made salient by recent scientific efforts to program fear responses into artificial intelligence. While this might seem like an odd thing to do, programmers saw this as a helpful component to teaching computers how to effectively drive cars.

Computers can accomplish a lot of incredible tasks, but they tend to learn through trial and error. This makes sense if computers are given a game. They can calculate likely outcomes of given moves, essentially trying out various simulations in order to determine which will be the best approach.

Often this is used in machine learning contexts, where the computer simply tries various tasks and, based on the results, eventually learns how best to handle unexpected situations. While this works great in low-risk situations, it might be more challenging when faced with high-risk tasks, such as driving a vehicle.

Driving is an exceptionally dangerous thing to do, and as humans, we recognize that. This results in a certain level of fear and anxiety for human drivers, compelling us to be more cautious.

But if a computer seeks to learn driving through trial and error, they will inevitably cause many accidents before learning how best to drive. While these trials could be simulated, incorporating human emotions might streamline the process.

That was the hypothesis taken by a team of artificial intelligence researchers with Microsoft. In order to simulate fear, the researchers asked a group of participants to engage in a driving simulation. During this simulation, they recorded pulse rate for each participant, looking at what situations led to increased pulse rates. This served as a proxy for the driver’s fear/anxiety response.

These were then coded into the artificial intelligence in order to simulate similar fear responses when the computer faced scary situations. While the process still had to be learned through trial and error, the researchers estimate a 25 percent reduction in crashes over the computers who had not been taught to be afraid.

This was able to teach the computers not to turn rapidly, for instance, which scientists had been struggling to do with traditional means.

Fear is certainly an unpleasant emotion, and it is easy to forget that it serves a purpose. As we have noted in previous blogs, emotions such as fear are rooted in evolutionary drives and make up a great deal of how we perceive the world.

Such research raises questions about how other emotions can be incorporated into artificial intelligence to create richer and more life-like computers, working to bridge the gap between their capabilities and ours.

It is well known that emotions can spread to other people of the group, but what is the role of emotional recognition in this process?

There is certainly a long history of research and casual observations as to how other people’s emotions can impact our own, but the exact causal mechanism is a bit elusive. Why does somebody looking sad make us look sad? The answer might be related to microexpressions or the reading of subtle epressions.

Initially, emotional contagion appears to be a very real phenomena, rather than yet another example of psychological mythmaking. As Dr. Elaine Hatfield of the University of Hawaii says , “When we watch other people, for some reason, we’re wired up to get in sync with them on so many things that it kind of boggles your mind. … And they calculate that it’s so fast that you couldn’t possibly do it consciously.”

Hatfield emphasizes that there is something primal and instinctive about emotional contagion. She claims that this can occur even when neither individual is aware that they are feeling a strong emotion.

Already, we can speculate as to a connection with emotional recognition, as emotional expressions are deeply rooted into our evolution and can be perceived during almost immediate, involuntary processes.

Hatfield and her husband, Dr. Dick Rapson, connect emotional contagion with our unconscious mimicking of the subtle expressions of our compatriots. This leads to a phenomenon where we mimic their emotion, even when neither of us may be aware that anyone in the vicinity is feeling that way!

In fact, this unconscious mimicry sounds a lot like the automatic processes born out of mirror neurons.

While Drs. Hatfield and Rapson decline from more closely investigating the phenomena of microexpressions, there is some reason to speculate that these play a causal role.

In order to answer that question, it will help to turn to an interview that Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto conducted with NPR. In that interview, Dr. Matsumoto emphasizes the fleeting and incredibly quick nature of microexpressions.  Often, when other people notice our microexpressions, they will pass by conscious understanding.

Microexpressions usually do not appear to make sense, even if we manage to see them, but Dr. Matsumoto noted that they have the potential to play significant roles in interpersonal interactions. However, he emphasized that often this comes down to noticing subtle emotional expressions, rather than actual microexpressions which are just prohibitively fleeting.

So, we may notice somebody’s expression of sadness, without seeing it for what it is, and then we will feel sad once we unconsciously mimic that expression, but it is unclear that that amounts to microexpression detection.

As Dr. Matsumoto notes, microexpressions are incredibly difficult for people who are not trained to notice. While training can come very quickly, people without that training are unlikely to actually be detecting microexpressions.

This all suggests that the answer to the puzzle of emotional contagion, while not rooted in microexpressions, is somehow connected to similar immediate and non-conscious processes of emotional recognition and facial mimicry.