Social Engineering Blogs

The Humintell Blog January 3, 2017

Living with Moebius Syndrome

As we enter the New Year, it is time to prepare for Moebius Syndrome Awareness Day on January 24. While often ignored, a better understanding of this rare condition can lead to a better understanding of facial expressions – and the people who cannot show them.

Moebius syndrome is characterized by a craniofacial/neurological disorder that results in facial paralysis, stifling the ability to exhibit basic emotional expressions like frowning or smiling. While Moebius syndrome is quite rare, affecting approximately 1 in 50,000 to 1 in 500,000, it profoundly affects the lives of those who live with it.

By being unable to show emotion through facial expression, Moebius syndrome poses distinctive challenges for social interaction. Dr. Kathleen Bogart, a psychologist who is afflicted by the condition but also studies it, has elaborated on this challenge.

Dr. Bogart explains how hard it is to reciprocate emotions without the benefit of facial expressions, saying “I wasn’t able to return [expressions]. I tried to do so with words and tone of voice, but it was no use. Stripped of the facial expression, the emotion just dies there, unshared. It just dies.”

Despite these challenges, Moebius syndrome does not prevent people from living happy and successful social lives.

Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto and Dr. Bogart have worked together to better understand how people without facial expressions cope. In a 2010 study, they found that Moebius syndrome does not prevent the recognition of emotions in other people’s faces.

This is notable, given the role of “facial mimicry” in developing emotion recognition skills. Most people learn to recognize emotional expressions by mirroring the expressions seen in others. This allows us to feel their emotions ourselves, helping us connect the visual presentation of an emotion with how we feel it ourselves. Because those with Moebius syndrome cannot do this, they must have found another way to recognize emotions.

Dr. Matsumoto explains that people can develop compensation skills, just as they would for other senses: “Just like for blind people, whose senses of touch, smell, hearing become sharper… Same thing here, I think, only it’s in the domain of nonverbal communication.”

This compensation takes several different forms. Matthew Joffe, a therapist with Moebius syndrome emphasized developing an expressive laugh and sense of humor. “I use humor a lot,” he explains, “It’s a way of showing my humanity, for one thing, and over the years people have said I have a great laugh… I have many different laughs for different occasions, each one looks distinct in my body”

Similarly, Dr. Bogart has learned to be an effective reader of people. “At a party, I feel like I can tell whether someone will be worth talking to within seconds… I can read people’s comfort level, or whether they can work through discomfort, very quickly.”

These tactics seem successful too! In another study by Dr. Bogart and Dr. Matsumoto, they found that participants with Moebius syndrome were no more likely to experience anxiety, depression, or general dissatisfaction with life.

For more information of Moebius syndrome, read Humintell’s past blogs here and here.

psychmechanicsblog January 3, 2017

Mate choice copying and why all the good guys are taken

In humans, females are the high investing sex meaning that they invest more in their offspring than the males.

Nine months of gestation followed by years of feeding, nurturing and caring means paying a huge price in terms of time, energy, and resources.

Due to this, there is a pressure on women to select the right mates that are not only genetically sound but are also willing and able to help her invest in their offspring, especially in the context of long-term mating strategy.

Making the right mate choice is important for a woman because it’s likely to ensure her own reproductive success. Any error or misjudgment on her part, however, could mean that her huge efforts go to waste or that her reproductive success stands threatened.

One of the psychological mechanisms that women have evolved to increase the probability of making the right mate choice is called mate choice copying.

Mate choice copying

Say you move to a new city that’s very alien to you. You have no idea how things work there. What do you do to survive and adjust?

You simply copy those around you.

As soon as you arrive at the airport, you do what your fellow passengers do to reach the exit. On the subway station, you see a bunch of people lined up and assume it to be the place where tickets are sold.

In short, you make many calculations and predictions based on what other people do and they mostly turn out right.

In psychology, this is called the social proof theory and states that when we’re uncertain we follow the crowd.

Mate choice copying is very similar to the social proof theory in the way it works.

When selecting a mate, women have a tendency to evaluate what mates other women have selected in order to give themselves a better idea about which mate is worth selecting and which is not.

If a man is attractive to a lot of attractive females, a woman concludes that he must have a high mate value i.e. he must be a good mate.

Otherwise, why would so many attractive women fall for him in the first place?

Studies have shown that women rate men as attractive when they see other women smiling or positively interacting with them. Interestingly, when a women look at an attractive male, they’re more likely to spontaneously smile, thereby reinforcing mate choice copying for other women.

It’s easy to see the potential benefits that mate choice copying can offer to a woman. Evaluation of the male traits usually takes a lot of time and mate choice copying can provide women with useful shortcuts that they can use to aid their mate selection.

Mate choice copying is also the reason why women find committed men attractive. If a man has been deemed worthy enough to commit to by a woman, then surely he must be a good catch.

Women often complain that ‘all the good guys are taken’. The truth is the other way round. They perceive all the taken guys as good.

Mate choice copying in the bedroom

One of the common sources of conflict between couples in the bedroom is regarding foreplay. Women usually complain that men pay little attention to foreplay. They deem men who can stimulate them to orgasm as competent.

When asked why they like men who can stimulate them to orgasm, women naturally respond in terms of the pleasure that they gain from orgasm.

But, according to animal communication expert Robin Baker, the advantages a woman gains from selecting the more competent men are biological as well as sensual.

Basically, a woman uses a man’s approach to foreplay and intercourse to gain information about him.

A man who’s able to arouse a woman and stimulate her to orgasm signals that he has past experience with other females. This, in turn, tells her that other women have also found him attractive enough to allow intercourse.

The more effectively he stimulates her, the more experienced he should be- and hence greater the number of women who’ve so far found him to be attractive.

Mixing her genes with him, therefore, may produce sons or grandsons who’re also attractive to women, thereby increasing her own reproductive success.

References:

Yorzinski, J. L., & Platt, M. L. (2010). Same-sex gaze attraction influences mate-choice copying in humans. PLoS One, 5(2), e9115.

Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L. M., Little, A. C., Burriss, R. P., & Feinberg, D. R. (2007). Social transmission of face preferences among humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 274(1611), 899-903.

Eva, K. W., & Wood, T. J. (2006). Are all the taken men good? An indirect examination of mate-choice copying in humans. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 175(12), 1573-1574.