Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Negative Emotion Enhances Memory?

Negative emotions actually enhance a person’s memory.  Who would have thought that it was all the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elms street movies that we watched after school that would make us the geniuses we are today?  Well, it turns out it just might be according to an article in The Behavioral Medicine Report .

Bridgid Finn, PhD, researcher in psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, purports, “Memory is labile and dynamic – after you retrieve something, you’re still engaged in processing that information in some way.  We’ve established that the period after retrieval is key in retaining information.”

Finn states that learning is enhanced by (negative) emotion.  Researchers did three different types of tests to examine their hypothesis.  In the initial study, which was published in the June 2011 issue of Psychology Science, 40 students were tested and showed that the process involved in retrieving an item does not end when that item is retrieved.   The experiment revealed that participants did best on items that had been followed by negative pictures.

Why is this and does this work with positive images and memory?  So far research has suggested that positive images do not enhance a person’s memory.  Scientists find that a negative picture can enhance later retention due to the close relationship between areas (amygdala and hippocampus) involved in  negative emotion and remembering.

A second experiment was designed to explore the limits of the enhancement effect.   “…the students continue to process the information during the two second pause,” Finn says.  The third and final study involved 61 students and was intended to rule out the possibility that arousing images simply made certain pairs of words seem more distinct; therefore, easier to remember.

“For negative emotion to enhance later retention of something, this experiment shows that you have to retrieve that information,” Finn states. “That is, you have to go get it. In the absence of retrieval, the negative pictures do not enhance later performance. That’s critical.”

What are your thoughts on this study?  What applications of this study do you see in the future?

Related articles

Shock and recall: Negative emotion may enhance memory, study finds (eurekalert.org)

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Face of the Future!

IBTimes-New York has just reported that Facebook is just about to introduce its new mood recognition app.

Face.com a face detection and recognition service has just introduced Facebook to its new facial recognition technology.

They have announced the release of their new mood recognition API (for those of you who are not techies, application programming interface).   This new “mood detector” has only five categories in which to place a person:  Happy, Sad, Surprised, Angry and Neutral.

So what happened to frustrated, confused or plain sleepy?

Don’t fret too much; this technology is only being applied to your photos.  They don’t tag your face when you log on.  Facebook reports that their photo feature is their most popular feature;  1 billion photos are uploaded each month!

How long will it be until technology tracts not only your every move but your every emotion as well?  Is it just a matter of time?

Glimpse into the future:  All computers have cameras that automatically start recording when they are accessed.  Everyone will know everything about you when you use the internet (and lets face it who NEVER uses the internet).   If you showered, what your wearing, who your with and so on.

The industry of facial recognition technology is booming.   This app can be compared to Apple’s iPhoto and Google’s Picasa.

What do you think about all these facial/mood recognition devices?

It’s one thing to be able to tell who is in a picture and quite another to discern what that person is feeling or possibly displaying.  As one reader suggested its a slippery slope.

Can Liars Really Control Their Facial Expressions?

The University of Buffalo has released more evidence that liars under intense scrutiny cannot suppress their facial expressions of emotion.  Recently, the reliability of microexpressions in lie detection has come into question.  ABC has reported on the perceived validity of microexpressions and their use by the TSA.

The scientific truth is that there are seven universal facial expressions of emotion.  These expressions can and do appear on a person’s face as microexpressions and are very helpful in detecting deception as verified by Dr. Matsumoto in the article “Evaluating Truthfulness and Detecting Deception”, which appeared in the June issue of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.

The article cites renowned facial expert Mark Frank, who has spent two decades studying the faces of people lying in high stakes situations.  The study published earlier this year in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, examines whether subjects could suppress facial actions like eyebrow movements or smiles on command while under scrutiny by a lie catcher.

Carolyn M. Hurley, PhD, lead author of the study and Frank, co- author of the study, found that these actions can be reduced, but not eliminated, and the suppression of one element of expression resulted in reduction of all facial movement, regardless of their implications for veracity.

This new study “Executing Facial Control During Deception Situations” found that although liars can reduce facial actions during intense situations such as questioning, they can’t suppress them all.

“As a security strategy,” Frank says, “there is great significance in observing and interpreting nonverbal behavior during an investigative interview, especially when the interviewee is trying to suppress certain expressions.”

An interesting side note is that most of the participants believed that they had controlled all of their facial movements during their interrogations.

What are your thoughts on the veracity of microexpressions in truth accuracy aka deception detection?