Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Pets and Happiness

Pet lovers across the world would attest to the health benefits of their furry friends.  Dogs or cats are unconditionally loving, they would say.

Science has long agreed with pet lovers on the health benefits of having a pet.  Many hospitals and homes for elders employ pets as companions to patients.  They have been reported to help with depression and lower blood pressure rates.  But is there really a universal health benefit to having a pet?

Professor of Psychology, Harold Herzog, from the Western Carolina University, claims there is not enough scientific evidence to support the claim that pets help people live happier, healthier, or longer lives.

Aps (Association for Psychological Science) reports that research shows conflicting data both in support of the health benefits of owning a pet and for negative reports that pet owners are not better off health wise.

Herzog argues, that the reason for these inconsistencies is that the studies suffer from methodological problems, such as small, homogenous samples, lack of appropriate control groups, and reliance on self-report to measure participants’ health and well being.

What are your thoughts on the health benefits of pets?

Herzog, author of Some we love, some we hate, some we eat: Why it’s so hard to think straight about animals, assures the public that he too is a pet lover. “I’m not trying to delineate the role of animals in human life…It’s entirely plausible that our pets really do provide medical and psychological benefits.  We don’t know how strong that effect is, what types of people it works for, and what the underlying biological and psychological mechanisms might be.”

There is no doubt that animals are very important in many aspects of people’s lives.  Herzog states that it is clear they serve a therapeutic function.  Service dogs that help people with disabilities have provided ample and necessary help to those who otherwise might not receive it.

Do you think Herzog makes a good argument when he cites reliance on self-reports and small homogenous samples as the reason why some studies are not reliable?

Take a look at the video below for additional information on Herzog and his book.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related articles

Are pet owners healthier and happier? Maybe not (eurekalert.org)

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Laugh At Yourself!

Most people have heard the old adage, ‘laughter is the best medicine’.  But could you truly enjoy a good laugh if it was at your own expense?  Many of us think we could and want to but do we really have the sense of humor that allows us laugh at ourselves?

Ursula Beermann, from the University of California Berkeley, and Willibald Ruch, from the University of Zurich,  studied 70 psychology students and gauged their ability to laugh at themselves.

However, this study was not all fun and games.  Research has linked optimism and laughter to improved health.  Understanding humor can be very important in one’s health and could shed light on conditions such as autism where the social skills required in recognizing jokes and the nuances used in certain jokes are lacking.

According to TIME Healthland, the study found that an individual’s ability to laugh at themselves had no bearing on how often they could laugh in response to the silly images of others. This implies that the ability to laugh at oneself is linked with our individual mood and personality.

Research Digest reports that Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System was used to decode the participant’s facial expressions looking for signs of true Duchenne smiles, which are symmetrical and involve creasing of the eye muscles.

80% of the participants flashed a genuine smile, but it was those that claimed to be able to laugh at themselves, and whose friends agreed with that statement, who displayed more frequent and intense smiling and laughter in response to silly images of themselves.

Therefore, being able to laugh at yourself is a distinct trait and linked to an upbeat personality.  Participants who were able to laugh at themselves were more cheerful and less serious overall.

What are your thoughts on this study?

Can a good sense of humor be learned or is it completely inherent?

Faking It

In an article posted on Global Winnipeg, forensic psychologist, Leanne ten Brinke, analyzes news footage and interviews of individuals, both male and female, who are addressing the “disappearance” of their loved ones.

Are they telling the truth or did they have a part to play in the disappearance?  Well, ten Brinke aims to find out.

What is her method of detecting deception?  Facial leakage as she terms it, which is a micro facial expression of emotion.  Liars, she affirms, cannot always control what their body reveals especially in their facial expressions.

When we try to hide information or contradict a fact our mind knows to be true then it “leaks” via micro facial expressions despite an individual’s best attempts to display otherwise.

Ten Brinke claims 90% accuracy in separating liars from truth tellers and purports that facial expressions are a strong predictor of a guilty party.  We previously blogged about a study that ten Brinke co-authored, which involved spotting genuine and contrived displays of remorse.

She points out that detecting deception via facial clues is not always black and white.  They are just a clue to consider when deciding if a particular line of questioning should be explored further and not an outright omission of guilt.

“There are certain muscles in the face that we’re not really able to control,” the psychologist states.  She points out that appearing sad requires both the upper and lower face to change at the same time.  Some people can only fake emotion in the bottom half of their face while the top part (i.e. eyebrows) remains unchanged.  She also notes that when sadness is faked, oftentimes people look surprised in their upper face.

Here is the link to a video that delineates the psychologist’s methods in analyzing behavioral clues in detecting deception.