Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

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.

Does Crying Make you Feel Better?

Many women may find that having a good cry makes them feel better.  The occasional cry even seems cathartic.  However, this does not seem to be the case, as TIME HEALTHLAND reports.

Recent research has shed some light on the subject of “releasing it all” in a good cry. The study found that for two-thirds of its female participants shedding tears had no effect on their moods.

Jonathan Rottenberg head author of the study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, states, “Crying is not nearly as beneficial as people think it is.  Only a minority of crying episodes were associated with mood improvement.”

However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel ladies.  If you think that a good cry will make you feel better then by all means go for it.  Research has proven that it won’t make you feel worse and if your mind tells your body that you are releasing stress, frustration, or sadness, then you might have reached the Holy Grail.  Using your mind to make your body feel better!

We recently posted a blog that suggested people who can’t cry have trouble expressing their emotions, which can lead to further frustration, anger, or sadness due to a lack of being understood by others.  In this case crying does seem to have a beneficial quality for humans.

Although, this study revealed that crying did not help a woman’s mood, it was also reported that crying did not make them feel worse either.  30 percent of the participants reported feeling better after a cry opposed to the 9 percent that reported feeling more sad after they cried.

Crying can make you feel better but it can also turn off the opposite sex.  In a past blog research revealed that women’s tears turn men off.  So, in essence it is a double edged sword; crying may make you feel better but it can have the opposite effect on others.

What do you make of all this “crying” research?  Is it good, bad or do you feel  indifferent to it?

Related articles

A good cry doesn’t make you feel any better, study says (bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com)

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Can’t Bear the Heat?

The summer weather was slow in arriving but is now in full blast.  In places like Sacramento and Reno, the temperature has been reaching triple digits.  How is all this heat affecting our behavior?

Many people would blindly say that tempers rise when hot summer days are prevalent.  Try to argue with someone on that matter and you might find yourself in a very heated debate.   But do hot temperatures cause people to temporarily go crazy?

What is the correlation between heat and violence?  Science purports that yes there is a correlation but it is not quite what one would expect.

Wired.com reported on one study that psychologists Ellen Cohn and James Rotton of Florida State University have conducted, which concluded that assaults rose with the temperature but only to a point.

An interesting fact from this study is that crime doesn’t rise when it is super hot like one might suspect.  The study purports that at around 80 degrees Fahrenheit crime rates for assault started to decrease.  Therefore, the findings suggest that at moderate levels of discomfort, people are disgruntled and lash out, while at high temperatures they just want to chill out indoors or relax and use less energy.

This makes sense since when it’s really hot people’s major concern tends to be to stay cool and conserve energy.  People get lazy in super hot weather.  Don’t they?

Interesting enough, psychologist Craig Anderson from Iowa State has conflicting data that suggests a linear relationship between heat and violence, with assault rates peaking at the highest temperature.

Arguments for Anderson’s theory state that body changes during hot weather such as increased heart rates, blood circulation, sweating (all associated with fight or flight) and increases in testosterone provide the perfect conditions for aggressive behavior.

What are our thoughts?  Does crime go hand in hand with soaring temperatures?