Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Emotion Management Skills

Many people think that as adults they are good, if not great, at managing their emotions but is that really the case?

How equipped are you at managing your emotions? 

According to PsychCentral  many of us don’t really know how to regulate beyond simply distracting ourselves from the problem.  Author of The Emotional Toolkit, Darlene Mininni Ph.D. states,

We often turn to the strategies we know. If you’re a man, you might distract yourself by playing video games, tinkering with your tools or drinking alcohol, she points out.  If you’re a woman, you might shop or eat.

The good news is that distracting yourself sometimes is not bad.  It’s when we turn to these “strategies” most times that coping with real emotions becomes a problem. “Emotions send us important messages and help us connect with others and accomplish great things,” Mininni purports.

Decoding Your Emotions according to Mininni:

1.  Understand what you are Really Feeling? Anxiety, Sadness, Anger, Happiness.

2. Identify the message of the emotion:  Why am I afraid, How have my values been attacked, What have I lost (sadness)? etc.

3.  Cope with Emotions by Taking Action:  That is is there anything you can do to solve the situation even if it is onlyt baby steps to your goal. What if there is no action you can take?

Mininni suggests meditating, getting social support and or seeking therapy.

 What are some strategies you use to manage your emotions?

A related article by RedOrbit delves into the emotional impact of drinking more specifically of social drinking.  It suggests that alcohol has an emotionally positive impact on us.

The new study conducted by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, which will be published in the journal of Psychological Science suggests that a moderate amount of alcohol enhances a person’s positive emotions and relieves them of negative emotions in social settings.

Unlike past studies, this study focuses on alcohol consumption in social settings and notes that moderate doses of alcohol in group settings has the opposite effect than the negative impact moderate drinking has on a man or woman who drink in isolation.

Michael A. Sayette, lead author of the study and a psychology professor at the university’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, said, “We felt that many of the most significant effects of alcohol would more likely be revealed in an experiment using a social setting.”

Participants consumed a total of three drinks during a span of 36-minutes, and the researchers recorded video of each session. The duration and sequence of each subject’s facial and speech behaviors was “systematically coded frame by frame using FACS and Grouptalk (a model for speech behavior).

“By demonstrating the sensitivity of our group formation paradigm for studying the rewarding effects of alcohol, we can begin to ask questions of great interest to alcohol researchers — Why does alcohol make us feel better in group settings? Is there evidence to suggest a particular participant may be vulnerable to developing a problem with alcohol?” Sayette added.

Do you find social drinking to have positive or negative effects? 

Infectious Emotions

A new study purports that strong emotions are very contagious.  The research shows that if all members in a group share the same emotional state, then their brains will follow suit.  Not only will our emotions link up, so will our brain activity.

The study conducted by researchers from Aalto University and Turku PET Centre delineates that experiencing strong emotions synchronizes brain activity across individuals.  This reported by Medical News Today.

The article goes on to note that the research shows that observers who share other people’s emotional states become a part of a somatoensory and neural framework.  This enables them to understand other people’s intentions and actions, allowing them to “Tune In”  with them.

Professor Lauri Nemmenmaa from Aalto University says this synchronization enables social interaction and group processes.

That raises the question, how long is necessary to constitute a group setting that connects our brain waves and emotions?

A related article by PHYS.ORG comments on how the above idea might function in the real world.  It focuses on the training teachers receive in helping young children deal with their emotions such as frustration, anger and excitement.

 ”Everyday moments are golden opportunities for children to learn how to manage their emotions. Too often, teachers want to make negative emotions go away. Instead we need to use them as learning opportunities,” says Rebecca Swartz, a doctoral candidate and the study’s first author.

Student teachers who reported more effective strategies for regulating their own emotions and who also reported more accepting beliefs about children’s emotions were more supportive of children when they had emotional outbursts.

Swartz hopes that teachers will learn emotional regulation strategies as part of their professional development so they can model them for children and manage challenging emotional moments in the classroom.

“It might be effective to bring in a mentor who could coach, consult, and reflect with teachers as occasions arise,” she said.

 What are your opinions on the linkage of our emotions and brains in group settings? 

Cognitive Deception Detection Skills

PoliceOne.com has reported on some intriguing deception detection techniques.  Cognitive interviewing has now been used to detect possible deception when questioning suspects about crimes.

According to this article and the Force Science Institute, there are two extremely helpful techniques when trying to elicit deception when interviewing criminal suspects:

1.   Asking a suspect to sketch one or more drawings to illustrate his story

and

2.  Asking him to repeat his account in reverse order of occurrence, beginning with the end of the story and working backward in time.

“A deceptive subject’s cognitive resources already are being strained to the limit to create his story and maintain it consistently. Increasing that load even more with these demanding and surprising tasks can provoke potential signs of deception, if you know what to look for,” clarifies Dr. Edward Geiselman, a Force Science certification instructor and a psychology professor at UCLA.

According to the article Cognitivbe Interviewing (CI) elicits between 25-40 percent more correct and relevant information than conventional questioning.  CI is used by many governement agencies including the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

CI was originally developed din six stages, but Dr. Geiselman has incorporated the latest research to extend this type of questioning to criminal suspects with CIS – Cognitive Interview for Suspects, which includes two new additions (listed above).

As with the best methods of obtaining truthfulness building rapport played an important role in the research and method developed.  It also helps in delineating a baseline for the suspect.

Dr. Geiselman notes that more direct research in the comparison of his method (CI) and the traditional interrogation techniques is “certainly warranted.”