Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Studying Facial Expressions in High School

Colby Howell and Varun Ramesh, two Hamilton High school students, won paid trips to Los Angeles to compete for $4 million in prizes and scholorships at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair , for their scientific research projects.

These students were among the grand prize winners last week in the Arizona Science and Engineering Fair. The statewide competition is sponsored by the Arizona Technology Council Foundation.

According to azcentral.com, Varun focused his research on developing a computer device that could detect facial expressions and gestures of  individuals talking to someone with a visual impairment.

15 year old Varun and his research partner Shantanu Bala, a student at Barry Goldwater High, wanted to develop a “dyadic interaction assistant for tracking head gestures and facial expressions.”

In their research, they used a camera aimed at the person listening to someone speak who has a visual impairment. The listener’s facial expressions were recorded and fed back to a glove with sensors worn by the person with the impairment.  That person could almost always understand the facial expressions of the listener.

Varun stated, “It’s sort of like emoticons.”

The students are developing a new prototype for the Intel ISEF.  “We found we could get 95 percent accuracy,” Varun said, which is better than their predicted 90% accuracy.

The Efficacy of Training to Recognize Microexpression of Emotion

A new study performed by Dr. David Matsumoto and Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang demonstrated that the ability to read microexpressions, facial expressions of emotion that can appear on the face as fast as 1/2 second,  can be trained.

They present two studies that prove this claim as well as evidence for the retention of the training effects.  Their study is the first scientific evidence of training efficacy to read microexpressions in normal adult populations.

These findings are important because they demonstrate that not only can people be taught the ability to read emotions on the face, but also that this ability can be retained.

See the full paper and the research for both studies here.

Lie Spotters

What are the tricks to spotting liars?   Well, the answer is simple training, training, and more training.  The Huffington Post wrote about deception detection techniques used in the law enforcement and Intelligence world every day.

They suggest that extroverts lie more than introverts and that extroverts maintain their lies longer in interrogations.  Huff post writes that liars are verbal and gregarious as well as being strategic thinkers who can intuitively sense how others perceive them.

Another interesting tidbit is that men tell eight times more lies about themselves than others, while women lie more to protect others.

LieSpotting clue #2: Listen for distancing language and non contracted denials:  Watch as Bill Clinton says “ I did NOT” instead of “I didn’t” — that’s a non contracted denial.  Listen as he says “ THAT WOMAN … Miss Lewinsky”… classic distancing language

LieSpotting tip#6: Watch for gaps between someone’s words and their body language.  One of the most common deception “tells” is saying “yes” while shaking the head “no.” John Edwards is a prime example of this

Check out Huffington’s website for more interesting lie detection tips and videos:  Be sure to look at slide 10 Putting it all together of A-Rod and his denial of drug use.