Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

The Infamous Face Cover

Take a look at this past blog that Humintell posted about face covering and sports.  There are some interesting insights into this phenomenon.

The infamous “face cover”:  What does it mean?

We often see athletes and individuals in high stress, emotional situations do what Dr. Matsumoto calls a “face cover”.

But why exactly do people cover their face in emotional and stressful times?

Some individuals believe that the face cover is only a part of social communication, but Dr. Matsumoto believes that it is not. He believes that individuals often cover their face to conceal their emotions and that it is an immediate reaction that most people cannot control.

Dr. Matsumoto also suggests that covering one’s face could also have some evolutionary basis, rooted in not letting enemies see your emotions because it could potentially be a danger to your well-being. Nonetheless, this gesture is immediate and unconscious.

Keep your eye out for this behavior and you’ll surprisingly see it fairly frequently (you may even catch yourself doing it!)

Dr. Matsumoto discussed emotions in sports at the Happiness Conference in Sydney, Australia:

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Seeing” Happiness”

© Dana Rothstein | Dreamstime Stock Photos

According to Medical Xpress, if you try to see happiness in the facial expressions of others it can reduce your aggressiveness.

Professors Marcus Munafo and Ian Penton-Voak, from the University of Bristol,  delved into the relationship between the recognition of emotions in ambiguous facial expressions and aggressive thoughts and behavior. They looked at healthy adults and at high-risk adolescents (for committing a crime).

What was the result of the study, published in the journal of Psychological Sciences?

The researchers found that they could modify a person’s bias in emotion recognition and encourage them to see Happiness  by showing participants composite images of happy, angry or emotionally ambiguous facial expressions and then asking them to rate them as happy or angry, which allowed the researchers to establish a baseline for how likely a participant was to see an ambiguous face as angry.

Professors Munafo and Penton-Voak then used the results to encourage some of the participants away from this negativity bias by telling them that some of the ambiguous faces they had previously labelled as angry were in fact happy.

Basically, the study conditioned participants to view ambiguous faces as happy faces too. In doing so many participants reported lower levels of anger and aggression in themselves.

“Our results provide strong evidence that emotion processing plays a causal role in anger and the maintenance of aggressive behavior.  This could potentially lead to novel behavioral treatments in the future,” noted professor Munafo

An interesting fact is that in testing this result further, the researchers found that participants shown only angry faces shifted their perceptions and became more likely to see Happiness in ambiguous faces as well as reporting lower levels of anger and aggression in themselves.
What do you see in regular faces; sadness, anger, discomfort, or happiness? 

Jodi’s Distaste for her Mother

Click the link below to hear Patti’s insights on what Jodi Arias’ body language tells us about what she thinks of her mother.

http://www.youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional – The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti’s website for her new book “SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma” at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti’s YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.