Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

The Language of Language

What do people unconsciously communicate through things such as intonation, accent and phrasing?  And is it really possible to detect a lie?

Well, that is exactly what computer science professor and expert in spoken language, Julia Hirschberg, is setting out to examine.  Things to take into consideration, according to Hirschberg, “How do people convey that it’s another person’s turn to speak? What do people mean when they say ‘okay’? There are so many different ways it’s used.”

Reported on PHYSORG.COM Hirschberg is working with Barnard psychologist, Michelle Levine and Andrew Rosenberg on her current research project that was funded by a $1.5 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study deception in speech across cultures.

In 2003 Hirschberg began her work with deception in speech, which is one of the largest collections of such data partly because, as she purports, it is so difficult to collect real lies in situations where the truth is known.

“The best liars are the people who tell the truth most of the time,” said Hirschberg, who received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.  This year, she received the International Speech Communication Association’s Medal for Scientific Achievement as well as the James A. Flanagan Award for Speech and Audio Processing from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

She hopes that her research will make great strides in the fields of security such as deception detection and language development.

What are your thoughts on this type of research? Do you think it is important to be able to delineate the signs of deceptions on a regular basis, or should such research findings be kept for science and security fields?  Could such research findings possibly impede our social relationships?

Body Language and Hotel Employees

The Baltimore Sun has just reported that body language helps hotel employees interact better with customers.

In this rough economic time it is especially important for pricier hotels to employ experts to help their employees interact well with customers and ensure that they have a great experience.  Hotels are finding every way possible to ensure that their customers are kept happy in an effort to  promote return business.

One hotel chain Affinia, sought the advice of a body language expert to ensure high quality service for their customers.  Housekeeping up to maintenance were trained to spot the signs of frustration, discontent and anger.  Even hotel reservation teams can benefit from this training according to Chrissy Denihan, Affinia‘s  chief comfort officer.

The hotel industry relies heavily on good rapport.  If a person has a unpleasant experience at a hotel then they are less likely to stay at that hotel chain again especially if the cost is high.  Word of mouth can really build or ruin a hotel chain.

According to Denihan, research shows that women often respond better to face-to-face interaction whereas men prefer side-by-side communication.   Also, the biggest mistake is to talk too calmly (when someone is upset) and be too soothing,” Denihan said. “The person on the line doesn’t hear a sense of urgency to help them.”

What are your thoughts on hotel chains employing body language experts?  Do you think it will help in customer relations or have neutral effect?

Detecting the Truth!

There are many products and people out there claiming to have all the answers to deception detection.  However, not all of these are based on actual scientific research or might be based on antique scientific techniques that are outdated and now being proven inaccurate.

So how can someone actually tell if a person is lying?

According to the experts such as Dr. Matsumoto and Dr. Mark Frank, there is no one tell tale sign of deception.  Average men and woman (without training) are only able spot deception about 50% of the time.  Yep that’s right, their odds of detecting deception is no better than chance.

An interesting article in The Morning Post Exchange, depicts Pamela Meyer, a social media expert with an MBA from Harvard and a Masters in Public Policy, stating that we are lied to between 10 to 200 times a day.

In the article, Meyer goes on to delineate the pandemic of deception she believes we are facing today.  Throughout the accompanied video she “arms people with tools that can help take back the truth”.  Much of what she says is backed by scientific research on nonverbal communication, body language and the seven universal facial expression of emotion.

Scientific American also chimes in on the debate of body language and communication.  The article comments on mis-communication due to our advances in technology.  With the popularity of texting and emailing (especially since the invention of smartphones, which makes access to the internet readily available)  communication has lost some important social aspects necessary for understanding.   The succinct article suggests that communication is a two-way street and hand gestures as well as vocal inflection and microexpressions play a significant role in how we are interpreted (i.e. understood) and how we interpret others.

As our technology advances exponentially, we are able to realize the benefits and limitations of the devices we use today to detect deception.

One example is the polygraph machine, which was invented in the early 20th century which is still being used today. The reliability of the polygraph is debatable and it is not admissible in a court of law, but law enforcement agencies use polygraph machines all the time.  So what are the benefits and limitations of such a device? We previously blogged about the polygraph conundrum and its pros and cons.

Take a look at the video below from Michael Shermer (which we originally viewed on Eric Goulard’s blog), which poses a potential answer to the question:  Can the polygraph machine really scientifically measure if someone is lying?

Click here to view the embedded video.