Social Engineering Blogs

By guest blogger Craig Baxter. 

Craig-James Baxter is the founder & owner of Understanding Body Language. Liars, Cheats and Happy Feet, and has achieved the highest grade possible (A+) in his non verbal communication final and furthermore, is now a master trainer in reading advanced micro expressions with Elite Humintell training. Find out more about him at this website, or at the links at the end of this post.

Detecting deception is a truly difficult task, and I do hope the following will help you become more adept in spotting dishonesty.

Did you know that research has indicated that truth tellers often appear more nervous than liars? (Vrij & Mann 2001b). The fear of the truth teller’s story not being believed will arouse fear, which in turn will manifest into nervous energy (known as the Othello Error). Liars may successfully control their behaviour and speech, which removes the chance to observe such cues. Also, what’s interesting to note is that increased cognitive load (creative thinking) has shown to suppress the occurrence of deceptive cues, which I’ll cover later. Liars want to make an honest impression on you, and they attempt to control their deceptive behaviour accordingly. Truth Tellers are not as wary of their behaviour, and can look more uncomfortable when challenged.

So how do liars get away with deceit?

Well, here are two thoughts. If the lie is relatively small and un-taxing for the liar (known as low stakes) there is often little chance given to the receiver to notice deceptive cues, as often, no such cues are revealed due to the simplicity of the lie. I like to call these ‘everyday lies’. Another reason why liars get away with deceit is that the receiver concentrates on the wrong area when lie spotting.

Many deception beliefs are that ‘Liars don’t give you eye contact’, ‘Liars look up and right’ (NLP) and ‘Liars appear nervous and fidget more’. However, solid research has shown that these are myths, and massively weaken the lie detectors’ chances of spotting deception.

People struggle to detect deceit because they are often unaware of the countermeasures the liar will use to avoid detection and appear credible. This is known as attempted behavioural control. (Hocking & Leathers, 1980; Leary & Kowalski, 1990)

If you know that the liar is an extrovert (comfortable with others and high in confidence) then the likelihood is that their attempt to appear credible will be less noticeable than that of an introvert (more reserved in a social environment), due to their higher ability to act and decipher the reaction of the receiver. If you know the liar is adept in non-verbal communication, they might employ behavioural control that is impossible to spot, especially in high stakes lies. You must take into account the personality trait of the liar before attempting to detect deception.

Another problem where lie detection fails is where the liar embeds a lie into an otherwise truthful statement. These are called ‘embedded lies’ and are difficult to spot. (Metts, 1989; Levine, 2001)

An example of this would be an adulterous husband who wants to cover up his whereabouts on Friday at 8pm – he was with his wife’s best friend – yet when asked, he subsequently describes how he went to the gym that night. His answers are rich in detail due to the fact that he went to the gym on Thursday at 8pm, so the recalled information IS truthful, just not the day. The lie in this case is the day, which isn’t complex and doesn’t require much cognitive effort. This type of lying (embedded or concealing) is difficult for the lie catcher, because skilled truth seekers rely on analysing the content of a verbal story to detect deception. This type of behaviour is preferred for liars, as only small parts need to be fabricated, thus leaving no visual detectable signs of deceit.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog series where Craig goes into detail of how you can accurately detect deceit.

You can learn more about Craig by visiting his Facebook page, watching his video analysis on his YouTube Page and by following him on twitter

The marketing era of Social Media has not only arrived but is in Full Force!  Companies now depend on social media to fully market their products to the world at large.

The question is NOT should a company devote time, therefore money, to up-keeping social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, iContact, LinkedIn etc; the question is, is a company’s social media marketing as effective as it could be?

 How do companies effectively use sites like FaceBook and Twitter?

According to Ad Age Digital and Jonah Peretti, CEO of Buzzfeed a company needs to understand the emotional connections people have for social media sites and how those emotional reactions effect consumer behaviors.

“Understanding the social web doesn’t mean [just] being smart. Too often we’ll sit in a conference room and brainstorm the smartest strategy and try to find the smartest person to figure out how to get stuff to work on Facebook and Twitter,”  says Peretti

He went on to note that you need not just intelligence, but emotional intelligence to succeed in social media marketing.

Being smart” about social media is, “looking at a piece of content and saying, ‘If I saw this on my Facebook wall would I click it, would I have an emotion, would I want to share it with other people.”

Asking the question of whether this will create an emotion in a consumer is very important because it is those  emotions the call to action our and we will click on the things that  catch our attention but the things that stir an emotion within us we not only will click on but will share as well.

So the answer to the question above:

Make your post, tweet or side bar ad illicit an emotional reaction in your target audience
Ensure that, that emotion will lead to your product or event being shared

 ”There is a big difference, depending on the platform, on what contributes to what spreads [via social sites] and emotional intelligence is key to succeeding at social media.”
 
Ad Age Digital Media Conference 2012 – watch a short video on Social Media Marketing.

On a similar note there is a New App, the “Smurk“,  that claims to be able to help companies gauge the collective mood of a crowd.

MrWeb.com has reported that users will be able to stretch and scrunch he Smurk’s face to the exact expression they are feeling and share those feelings via text, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.  This app’s information can then be applied to any place, event, or product.

Do you click on share links, or likes for FaceBook?

What are some of your ideas for helping Humintell in sharing our blogs with others via these social outlets?