Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Amanda Knox: A Hot Spot

Amanda Knox was recently interviewed by ABC’s Diane Sawyer in her first Primetime interview after she returned home from Italy where she spent 4 years in a prison after being convicted of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher.

At the beginning of the interview, Knox shows what we call a “hot spot”: an inconsistency between what she says and what her nonverbal behavior says. Can you spot it in the video below?

Remember, seeing a hot spot does not necessarily mean that the person is lying. Rather, they are indicators of areas of concealed thoughts or feelings.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Want more hot spotting practice?
Take a look at these past blog posts: Looking for Hot Spots and Hot Spotting: Practice Makes Perfect

Negotiating: Get Angry, it helps.

© John Hix | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Contrary to popular belief or even instinct; anger is a productive emotion when it comes to negotiations.

The Wall Street Journal comments on new findings that purport displaying anger in a negotiation proves productive.

However, this is only true if the anger that is being displayed is real.  Faked anger elicited a negative response and greater demands, but people who seemed truly angry we able to conjure up a more beneficial negotiation outcome.

These finding coincide with previous research that suggests anger signals dominance and promotes compliance.   The researchers state that fake anger displayed in this experiment undermined the trust in the negotiation but real anger came across as tough.

In the book Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications , Humintell affiliate Andy Boughton expounds upon the concept of negotiation in chapter 13  entitled Negotiation and Nonverbal Communication.  He points out  that ‘in negotiation…there is one rule to rule them all – information is power!‘

“I find it best to use closed ended questions when establishing the baseline.” 

Some specifics he looks for are manipulators (unconscious fidgets we do to relive stress), emblematic slips (nonverbal gestures with specific symbolic meaning within a given culture) and microexpressions (emotions that last less than 1/2 second on the face).

To learn more about Boughton’s views on negotiation and on Dr. Matsumoto’s book Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications click here.

Perceptions of Beauty: Dove Commercial

This video has been making its rounds on Facebook and Twitter.  It was published on Apr 14, 2013 on YouTube and has over 7.5 million hits.

Interesting and startling fact:  Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful.

Dove, a self proclaimed entity that is committed to creating a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety, decided to conduct a compelling social experiment that explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let us know what you thought of this commercial.  Would you like to see more companies making commercials like this?