Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Did they Really Like their Christmas Present?

Giving and receiving Christmas gifts can be a stressful nightmare but how can you tell if someone really liked their gift?

In a survey of 2,000 Brits, 65% of people confessed to pretending to like a gift to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

The graphic above shows the body language signals to look for to see if someone does or doesn’t like their gift.

Most of us probably know how to read these signs somewhat instinctively- in a study conducted on gift giving, 680 men and women were asked to identify whether or not a recipient liked their gift. 75% of the participants were able to correctly do so. We covered this story in a past blog on Emotions in Gift Giving.

However, in this spirit of giving this holiday season, let’s remember that psychologist have also scientifically proven that one of the greatest contributing factors to overall happiness is how much gratitude you show.

It’s truly the thought that counts and expressing your appreciation for a gift (whether you truly like it or not) can lead to not only your happiness, but the gift giver as well.

 

It Pays to be able to Read Emotions, Literally.

7-2-2014 2-44-38 PMA recent study out of Germany suggests that one’s ability to read emotions in others may have a direct correlation to how much you earn.

In a study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, researchers looked at emotion recognition ability and tested and measured it along with other interpersonal skills such as how socially astute they were, their networking savvy and how seemingly trustworthy they were in 142 German workers.

High emotional recognition was linked to a higher salary, even after controlling for salary-bumping factors like age, gender, education, work experience and work hours.

“This very basic ability has effects on the interpersonal facilitation facet of job performance and, most notably, even on annual income, an objective indicator of career success,” the study authors wrote. “The better people are at recognizing emotions, the better they handle the politics in organizations and the interpersonal aspects of work life, and thus the more they earn in their jobs.”

So just how good are you at reading emotions in others? Humintell offers a full suite of products to help improve your emotion recognition ability!

Save 40% this holiday season on any online course until December 24th with code HOLIDAY40!

Babies, Memory, and Positive Emotion

3435206192_c2b9c66f0a_zOf the many new experiences that infants have each day, which ones will they remember? A new study entitled “The effects of exposure to dynamic expressions of affect on 5-month-olds’ memory” published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development suggests that infants are more likely to remember a unique geometric shape whenever a positive emotion accompanies it. The study is the first of it’s kind to explore how emotion may influence infant’s memories.

Researchers from Bringham Young University monitored infants’ eye movements and measured how long the babies look at a particular image.

More of the study is described below, taken from an article on Medical Daily written by Susan Scutti:

“To begin their experiment, the researchers enlisted the help of a group of mothers and their 5-month-old babies. The mothers set their infants in front of a monitor. Then, a person appeared on the screen. The person spoke to the baby in either a happy, neutral, or angry tone of voice, and immediately following this, the babies saw a novel geometric shape materialize on the screen.

After this “emotional exposure,” the researchers proceeded to test the babies’ memories. Five minutes after the test, some of the babies saw two side-by-side geometric shapes: a brand new one, and the original one from the study. Here, the researchers recorded how many times the baby looked from one image to the next and also how long they spent looking at each shape. One day later, the researchers conducted the same test with the remaining babies, monitoring their eye movements as they showed them the two images. What did they discover?

The babies performed significantly better at remembering the novel shape when it was attached to positive voices. Following the 5-minute interval, infants exposed to the happy voice showed a “reliable preference” for the novel geometric shape compared to the previously unseen image. The infants who heard a neutral or angry voice did not show this same preference. After the one day interval, though, infants exposed to both the happy and neutral voice showed a reliable preference for the novel geometric shape. However, paired with a negative voice, the shape did not stick in their memories.

“We think what happens is that the positive affect heightens the babies’ attentional system and arousal,” said Dr. Ross Flom, a BYU psychology professor and lead author of the study. “By heightening those systems, we heighten their ability to process and perhaps remember this geometric pattern.”