Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Guest Blog Post: I See What You’re Saying

By Michael Reddington, CFI. Michael is an expert at moving people from resistance to commitment. He is President of InQuasive, Inc., and author of The Disciplined Listening Method.

As a Certified Forensic Interviewer and executive resource one of my foremost goals is to uncover hidden value in all of my high-impact interactions.  These interactions may include investigative interviews, negotiations, leadership communications, and family conversations.

The hidden value I seek is often unintentionally leaked into conversations through facial expressions, behavior shifts, specific word choices, and shifts in verbal delivery.  Observing these changes as they occur can reveal what another person is thinking and feeling within the context of any conversation.

For me the goal is not to detect deception.  It is to understand what someone else is experiencing, so I can adjust my perspective and approach to help me obtain the truth or achieve my goal.

Dr. Matsumoto’s research and Humintell’s training have proved to be foundation resources for my skill development.

I first met Dr. Matsumoto at the inaugural International Association of Interviewers’ Elite Training Day.  I was captivated by his presentation and impressed by his accessibility at the event.

We occasionally kept in touch over the intervening years and over time I delved further into his research and writing. I was thrilled when he volunteered to provide feedback on the manuscript for my book, The Disciplined Listening Method, which draws heavily from his research.

As a practitioner, I’m always excited by the opportunity to talk with research scientists, learn more about their work, and gain additional insights.  I was grateful when Dr. Matsumoto agreed to be one of the first guests on my new podcast, “I See What You’re Saying”.  The sixty-minute conversation flew by and I was thankful for all of the stories and ideas he shared.

One of my favorite take aways from our conversation was Dr. Matsumoto’s focus on leveraging observations to identify someone’s mental state.  Yes, catching someone trying to deceive you can certainly be a bi-product of this approach, but it isn’t focus.  The focus is on identifying a person’s mental state by observing shifts, or changes, their communications.  I found this separation to be paramount.

I was also struck by Dr. Matsumoto’s emphasis on the importance of improving our own capacity to breathe.  Our ability to maintain our composure is a significant indicator of potential success in all our high value interactions.  It can be extremely difficult to recognize someone else’s shifting emotions, solve problems, generate agreements, or obtain the truth if we can’t control our own emotions.

Of course, it was great to hear Dr. Matsumoto talk about some of his favorite research projects.  Hearing some of the behind-the-scenes details of his studies into the emotional expressions of blind athletes was a unique opportunity.

Listening to him summarize relevant research studies from other scientists was an unexpected learning opportunity.  I had never taken the time to stop and think how quickly we react to stimulus around us and that we’re often reacting before we truly understand what we are reacting to.

Perhaps selfishly, I was also thrilled to have the opportunity to weave the topic of martial arts into our conversation. It has been well documented that people who practice martial arts experience a long list of additional and unexpected benefits.

Dr. Matsumoto’s Judo experience, culminating in his role as an Olympic Judo Coach and induction into the United States Judo Federation Hall of Fame, make him the perfect person to share some of these additional benefits.  Concepts including enhanced observation skills, problem solving skills, confidence, and an increased capacity to breathe were among those he took the time to illustrate.

Once again, thank you Dr. Matsumoto for taking the time to join the podcast and share your experience and insights.  His research, perspective, and communication approach embody the core tenants of the Disciplined Listening Method.

To hear the whole conversation please click the links below.

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Amazon Music

The post Guest Blog Post: I See What You’re Saying first appeared on Humintell.

Podcast Episode: What Are Some Myths About Deception?

lying-deceit-deceptionWhat are some myths about deception? What are good deception detection techniques? How can auditors build more trust?

Dr. David Matsumoto, a renowned expert in the field of microexpressions, gestures, nonverbal behavior, culture, and emotion recently appeared on the Audit 15 Fun Podcast with Jon Taber to answer these questions and more.

Myths about Deception Detection

Dr. Matsumoto emphasizes there are many myths surrounding deception detection that have not been validated by science or vetted in the field.

Here are a couple myths:

1. There is one behavior that is always indicative of deception.

For example- liars scratch their nose or they look away. This has never been validated by science or vetted in the field in a consistent way.

2. Liars look away when talking or answering a question.

This hypothesis has been tested in many studies around the world and is almost never have been found to be true. Interestingly there is also data that liars know this misconception exists and will therefore look at the interviewer more when being questioned.

Is Deception Necessary?

Detecting deception is difficult and Dr. Matsumoto believes humans are wired to not know what people are truly thinking and feeling.

Societies have required some degree of blindness to what others are think and feel and that blindness is necessary for human societies to function.

He emphasizes that if we knew what others were thinking and feeling all the time, nothing would work; work organizations wouldn’t exist, recreational organizations would not exist, marriage would not exist.

Dr. Matsumoto believes that humans are wired to have a truth bias. In fact, there’s a lot of data that demonstrates when people are making determinations of veracity or deception there is a truth bias in those judgements.

However, there are people who are in professions (such as law enforcement officers) who we would want to be better at detecting deception than the average person.

Validated Deception Cues

Deception cues do exist verbally and non-verbally. Verbally, they can be in different ways: inconsistencies in speech, certain adverb usage or going off on extraneous tangents. Non-verbally the cues can occur in the face, body, voice, gestures, and body posture.

Helpful Deception Detection Tips

  1. Know that deception cues occur multi-modally across multiple channels and they’re not fixed.
  2. Get trained on validated indicators (both verbal and non-verbal).
  3. Practice active observation. Observing is just as important as active listening.
  4. Prepare for the interview! Get all the facts lined up and strategize your approach.

How to Build Perceived Trustworthiness

Dr. Matsumoto believes that any interviewer needs to build what he called “perceived trustworthiness” in the other person. In other words, you want the interviewee to perceive you as trustworthy.

How to do that?

  • Have an attitude of being authentic and genuine.
  • Engage in respectful behaviors; respect the person’s time, space, boundaries, boundaries of what they want to talk about.
  • Navigate the “trial balloons of trust” they will give you and express non-judgmental listening.

Listen to the 15 entire minute interview below

The post Podcast Episode: What Are Some Myths About Deception? first appeared on Humintell.

Can Smiling Improve Your Mood? Research Says Yes.

Emotions and Facial Expressions

We all know that emotions give our lives meaning, and life without emotions is impossible to imagine.

Emotions are a vestige of our evolutionary history and are primarily controlled by an archaic part of the brain.

This is why Dr. Matsumoto describes emotions as immediate, involuntary, automatic, and unconscious reactions to things that are important to us.

Emotions help us react in some situations with minimal conscious awareness and are triggered by a universal, underlying psychological theme.

When triggered, they recruit an organized system of reactions that produce specific physiological signatures, direct our cognitions, and produce specific types of feelings.

Importantly, emotions produce specific, nonverbal behavior in the face, voice, and body.

Different emotions are expressed by different, specific, unique facial configurations (facial expressions) that are universal to all cultures, regardless of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender or any other demographic variable.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

If emotions produce specific universal facial expressions, can facial expressions in turn affect your emotions? According to the facial feedback hypothesis, they can.

But is this actually true?

Scientists have been interested in the idea of a facial-feedback hypothesis since the 1800s (Source: Betterhelp) and modern researchers have continued to study the hypothesis to this day.

Smiling is Good for Your Heart

One study conducted by clinical psychologists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman showed the positive effects of smiling. Turns out, smiling can be good for your heart in stressful situations.

How Masks Hinder PolitenessFor their study, the researchers examined participants’ heartbeats, since stress and heart health are related.

17o participants were split into 2 groups: one knew what the study was about, while the other didn’t.

In the training stage, the researchers taught the volunteers how to either hold their faces in a neutral expression, hold a social smile (upper right hand image), or hold a Duchenne smile (upper left hand image).

The researchers monitored the participants’ heart rates as they performed various tasks; both groups were required to use their hand to quickly trace a star reflected in a mirror, followed by placing their hand in a bucket of ice water for one minute.

While completing these tasks, each person had to hold chopsticks in their mouth which activated muscles corresponding to a forced smile.

They found the participants who were instructed to smile, and in particular those whose faces expressed genuine or Duchenne smiles, had lower heart rates after recovery from the stress activities than the ones who held their faces in neutral expressions.

Even the volunteers who held chopsticks in their mouths, that forced the muscles to express a smile (but they had not explicitly been instructed to smile), had lower recovery heart rates compared to the ones who held neutral facial expressions.

Interestingly, those who smiled genuinely during the trial recovered the fastest, followed by people with fake (social) smiles. Those with neutral smiles had the slowest recovery.

Even Fake Smiles Can Improve Mood

Recent research also suggests that fake or social smiling can make people feel happier.

An international collaboration of researchers led by Stanford University research scientist Nicholas Coles published a study in Nature Human Behavior.

As part of the Many Smiles Collaboration, a total of 26 research groups from 19 different countries and over 3,800 participants were involved. The average age of the participants was 26 and over 70% were women.

The researchers created a plan that included three well-known techniques intended to encourage participants to activate their smile muscles:

  1. One-third of participants were directed to use the pen-in-mouth method
  2. One-third were asked to mimic the facial expressions seen in photos of smiling actors
  3. The final third were given instructions to move the corners of their lips toward their ears and lift their cheeks using only the muscles in their face

In each group, half the participants performed a small physical tasks and simple math problems while looking at cheerful images of puppies, kittens, flowers, and fireworks, and the other half simply saw a blank screen.

They also saw these same types of images (or lack thereof) while directed to use a neutral facial expression. After each task, participants rated how happy they were feeling.

After analyzing their data, the researchers found a noticeable increase in happiness from participants mimicking smiling photographs or pulling their mouth toward their ears.

Interestingly, the researchers didn’t find a strong mood change in participants using the pen-in-mouth technique but the evidence from the other two techniques was clear.

It provided a compelling argument that human emotions are somehow linked to muscle movements or other physical sensations.

For more on how smiling boosts your mood, visit this past blog post

The post Can Smiling Improve Your Mood? Research Says Yes. first appeared on Humintell.