Photo courtesy of CHAD ZUBER/SHUTTERSTOCK via Pacific Standard Magazine

By now, many of us have realized that the average person, yes that’s you and me, is not very good at detecting deception BUT very proficient at implementing it.

This fact has been proven time and time again by research that purports we are only as accurate as chance (50%) when it comes to correctly catching lies.

Pacific Standard Magazine has reported on the deception myths that some law enforcement officers fall prey to such as, if a suspect is fidgeting, touching their nose, stroking their head etc.

Much research finds this mindset is counter productive and notes that it even lowers the accuracy of judgments.  Why are the above concepts inaccurate?

Simply because people react differently under stressful situations.

What juries, law enforcement, and media need to understand is that accusing someone of a wrong doing is Very stressful and even frightening (for the innocent as well as the guilty) and convicting them because they don’t react to tragedy or the loss of a loved one as others want them to or expect, affects not only them but their families and the effects are irreversible (even if they are later found innocent and released).

Overestimating one’s ability to recognize when someone is not being truthful might not make much of a difference for us on a daily basis.  However, when criminal investigators do it, it can have dire consequences.

David Taylor, a homicide detective and veteran law enforcement trainer points out some important facts,  “Everyone responds to traumatic situations completely differently.  Given death notifications, some people will ball up in a corner and cry their guts out. Some will sit there in complete disbelief, or become argumentative. How would you be, accused of a crime? And how the person accuses you is going to impact your reaction.”

In a related article also by Pacific Standard mag the lie myths from above, which were popularized by the T.V.  show Lie To Me (cancelled) are put under scrutiny.  Timothy Levine, a professor of communication at Michigan State University reported that  “Lie to Me appears to increase skepticism at the cost of accuracy.” 

In past post, Humintell reports, “While the TV show is loosely based on Dr. Paul Ekman’s work in the field of microexpressions, it must be remembered that Lie to Me is a television drama series where plot lines are fabricated, characters are fictional and the truth is often exaggerated.”

Levine’s study, published in the journal Communication Research, finds watching the drama increases suspicion of others even as it reduces one’s ability to detect deception.  Levine and his colleagues experiment involved 108 undergraduates at the university.  To find out more about Levine and his study read Humitnell’s past blog,  Lie to Me: Viewers Impact.

 How do you weigh in on this information ?  
Do you think you are better than average at Detecting Deception?

Humintell’s director Dr. David Matsumoto not only did the original research (along with other researchers including Dr. Ekman) for microexpression recognition training tools, but he continues his research into emotions and culture today.

Below is an interview with Dr. Matsumoto about his current research on Triumph vs. Pride by science reporter Anna Meldolesi for her Italian Newspaper, Il Corriere della sera.

So, what does Dr. Matsumoto have to say about Emotions, Triumph and Pride?

Q1: From media articles announcing the paper in press in Evolution and Human Behavior, I understand that triumph comes first, pride second. Triumph is an instant reaction to winning.  By making the winner appear larger and more fearsome, triumph cements social dominance and advertises victory.  Is it correct? 

Can you please describe some situation where a chimp would exhibit the same behavior? Do non-human primates sometimes exhibit also pride?

Dr. Matsumoto:  Yes that is correct in terms of what we believe and state in the paper.  I do believe the literature has examples of the same kind of behavior in chimps, and in fact “triumph behaviors” are noted throughout the animal kingdom, although in different ways.   I do believe there is some evidence for nonhuman primates to exhibit pride, but I am not familiar with that literature. But some of that literature conflates what we know about pride with our findings on triumph.

For example see the video below:  

Click here to view the embedded video.

  What do you think about Dr. Matsumoto’s comment?
What about the video?  Share your comments with the Humintell Community!

Marco Gillies of GoldSmith college was spurred into launching a new computer gaming project that works with actors because he thinks that “games shouldn’t be designed by programming experts, but by experts in movement.”

Programming companies have already successfully aimed at creating gaming characters with realistic-looking movements.  However, Gillies and his colleagues are developing characters that can recognize subtle movements and express them in a very natural way.

This system will hopefully be the first truly interactive gaming system of its kind with the algorithm’s ability to react to social behaviors and subtle body movements.

 ”Writing software to recognise complex and subtle movements like human body language is notoriously difficult.  We are taking a different approach, which allows people to design movement interfaces directly by moving,” Gillies told Wired.co.uk.

The project works with actors attached to motion sensors that are tracked by Kinect cameras to create natural movements via a machine learning algorithm program that tracks their movements.

Gillies goes on to comment that, “Actors understand movement implicitly in their bodies, they understand movement by moving.  It would be almost impossible to turn that kind of implicit understanding into rules that we can explicitly program into some software.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

After testing their system using non-thespian gamers, they found that within three hours the subjects had begun designing simple games based on their body movements.

What do you think about being the designer of your own game ?  
What are other applications of such technology?