More than Meets the Eye
Humintell has learned that Maine law enforcement believe there might have been foul play in the mysterious disappearance of Florida Firefighter Jerry Perdomo. He has been missing since Feb. 16 and family members stated that he drove to Maine from Florida to visit friends and has not been seen since.
Susan Constantine, Humintell’s Florida affiliate, was interviewed and asked to dissect the news conference video of Perdomo’s wife for signs of deception.
Susan is a body language expert that has been interviewed numerous times for her expertise on nonverbal behavior/body language in news stories where deception is detected. Her most famous consultation was in reference to the Casey Anthony Case.
She has also been featured on numerous TV stations and in many articles such as US News‘ article on body language and job interviews.
“Most people are not cognizant of their own body language, of the nonverbal signals we send to others. Nonverbal signals are sent all the time and can make or break (a job interview),” Susan pointed out during that interview.
Wftv.com channel 9 have a video that shows Perdomo’s wife speaking about her husband as well as Susan Constantine’s evaluation of that video.
What do think about the nonverbal behavior of Perdomo’s wife?
Is there more to the story than what she is saying?
Negative Nellies
For decades, researchers have probed the conundrum of genetics vs. environment. Now new research from Oregon State University suggests that adoptive parents who had a tendency to over-react when their child tested age-appropriate limits or made mistakes, also had children who had “negative emotionality” or acted out and had more temper tantrums.
Health Canal.com has reported that researchers found that children with higher increases in negative emotionality from nine to 27 months were also found to have the highest levels of problem behavior at age two.
“Parents’ ability to regulate themselves and to remain firm, confident and not over-react is a key way they can help their children to modify their behavior…You set the example as a parent in your own emotions and reactions,” says lead author Shannon Lipscomb assistant professor of human development at OSU-Cascades.
The study was published in the latest edition of the journal Development and Psychopathology.
What are your thoughts on negative emotions and genetics vs. environment?
Besides the social impact of negative emotions the Atlantic has also reported on the impact of negative emotions and health more specifically their link to heart disease.
While the controversy over negative emotions such as anger and anxiety having a link to heart disease is still very debatable, many experts believe that there is a connection.
Some experts suggest that there is a link between the emotions of anger, anxiety, depression and heart disease. Their reasoning is that the risky behaviors often associated with those emotions such as smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise etc. are also contributors to coronary heart disease.
The article goes on to point out that lots of anger has been associated with thickening of the arteries and the development of plaque, which are possible precursors for heart attacks.
It also mentions that a recent meta-analysis incorporating twenty studies and nearly 250,000 individuals found that anxiety is associated with development of coronary heart disease.
Do you think negative emotions such as anger and anxiety have a direct affect a person’s health?
Advertising of the Future
Want a fast way to market your product or service to your target audience and not waste money? Well, the future of marketing allows businesses to do just that.
Time NewsFeed has reported that new facial recognition software can show billboard ads to a specific gender and ONLY to that gender.
The ads were developed by Plan UK, a non-profit organization, to promote its “Because I’m a Girl Campaign”. It’s main goal is to obtain sponsorship for education for girls in third world countries. Because women are the organization’s target audience, they will be able to view the entire 40 second ad, while men will just get the organization’s website information and a basic message.
So how do they delineate between male and female?
The billboard, being tested in London, is equipped with a high definition camera that is used to scan passer-bys facial features. It has a 90% accuracy rate. However, the price tag is very steep. The cost for a two-week ad is approximately $47, 000.
Watch the video below courtesy of Plan UK.
If you think this is just the future of visual advertising, think again! HyperBot.com has reported that this type of emotional advertising is being implemented by radio as well.
Mixberry Media in partnership with Moodagent hopes to create instant playlists based on moods and emotions.
Advertisers will now be able to target their messages to emotional profiles. Mixberry Media’s audio ad technology along with Moodagent’s knowledge base of the emotional aspects of songs will allow brands to select a specific song to embody the essence of their message.
See What is Not Being Said!
History.com has a great video that delves into the “Secrets of Body Language”
In their episode, experts dissect the essence of the body, the face, and the voice to reveal what is really behind our body language.
Non-verbal communication consists of a variety of different things such as gestures, facial expression, posture, as well as eye contact.
We all rely on our words to communicate the things we need or want. Imagine going to a foreign country and not knowing the language. It would seem that you would have a difficult time getting the basic things you needed.
However, science has proven that the majority (greater than 90%) of what we communicate is through non-verbal gestures.
Watch and learn how to read body language giveaways!
Emoticon App
Ubergizmo.com has reported on a new Emoticon app for cell phones. “Twikao” is an app the digitizes a facial expression from a photo and turns it into an emoticon.
Developed by Takuto Onishi from Japan, this app can take any photo of a face (as long as it is fairly clear) and turn it into an emoticon. It has over 100 facial variations. See the image below courtesy Ubergizmo.com
On a similar note NewsOK has reported on what it means to have a “facial accent”. They compare the face symbols used via a keyboard by Americans and Japanese and suggest that even in the electronic world of emotions different cultures have varying facial accents or regions of facial focus.
Disgust & Disease
Can the emotion of disgust help us stay healthy?
Recent articles from Metro.com (uk) and SF Gate suggests that it very well can.
It is scientifically proven that disgust is one of the seven basic universal facial expressions of emotion, meaning it is expressed in the same manner, on the face, across cultures.
Metro reports that researchers, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, say that disgust is a major factor in the survival of our species.
Dr. Curtis believes disgust is a powerful way to help people change their behavior and points out that 40% of the world has bad sanitation. The research of Dr. Curtis and her colleagues aims to explore disgust and harness its “power” to improve our lives by curbing the spread of disease.
Past research on disgust has shown that different areas of the brain experience an increase in activity when disgusted by something. Other species use disgust as a survival mechanism as well. Fish avoid other fish that have parasites and mice won’t mate with other mice that are sick.
Disgust has evolved to be about survival. It also impacts the behaviors that humans choose to make and is categorized as a negative emotion but it has both positive and negative effects.
Dr. Matsumoto talks about the effects of disgust in his research article Emotion in Predicting Violence published in the January 2012 issue of the FBI Bulletin.
He points out that when comparing emotions such as anger, contempt and disgust, all, perhaps, negative in terms of valence, it is important to know that differences among these emotions clearly show that they are not alike. Anger, contempt, and disgust have different physiologies, mental states, and nonverbal expressions.
He goes on to state, “disgust causes an individual to eliminate or reject contaminated objects…anger focuses on persons’ or groups’ actions, while contempt and disgust focus on who they are.
Emotion Transference
Did you know that objects can grab properties from nearby objects? This is referred to as illusory conjunction.
Well, according to Scientific American this is true not just of objects, but of social beings such as human, more specifically their faces.
They report that researchers at Arizona State have documented that male faces are more likely than female faces to ‘grab’ the anger from an adjacent face. Female faces, on the on other hand, are more likely to ‘grab’ happiness from an adjacent face.
Their findings published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology indicate that it is not just a matter of the participants both male and female seeing male faces as more angry and female faces as more happy but that the errors were most common when the emotion came from the adjacent face.
However, it is important to remember that this “grabbing” of emotion can be influenced by biases we hold. Our expectations do shape perceptions as well as misperceptions.
What are your thoughts on this research? Have you noticed this in your real world experiences?
Eye Movement Mishaps
LP Magazine has reported on the misconceptions between eye movement and deception detection. They refer to a seminar by Humintell’s director Dr. Matsumoto at the Certified Forensic Interviewer Elite Training Day last November.
The seminar focused on the difficulty in establishing deception or truth and the flaws most people commit when trying to do so. After reviewing a number of videos, participants were asked to judge whether the person on the video was being truthful or deceptive and why they were identifying that person as truthful or deceptive.
No surprise to Dr. Matsumoto, many of the participants delineated eye contact (lack of or too much) as a sign of deception and pointed out that the suspect looked left or right as they were being questioned.
It is particularly difficult to define statements of truth when there is no norm (baseline) to observe, no real threat of punishment if caught lying, or no strong emotion to conceal (high stakes situations). Dr. Matsumoto was quick to note that twenty-three of twenty-four research studies finding’s had no support for eye direction as an indicator of truth or deception.
The article goes on to discuss the role of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Recall vs. Creation in the process of predicting truthful vs. deceptive statements.
It points out that eye movements assist in the recovery of memories and speech and establishes that there is a memory search and additional thought taking place. This additional thought could either be of a creative or recall nature.
However, there is no way to establish whether this is the recovery of a truthful detail or the creation of a deceptive component of the story.
Did you have these same misconceptions? Do you agree with this article?
The Face of the Future
Take a glimpse into the future of store window marketing. Tokyo is leading the way with their life like female android developed by Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro.
Courtesy to CNET News for the video
Also, take a look at our recent blog post on Emotional Android Companions to learn how many robots can now express nine different emotional states.
False Memories and Bad Feelings
New research has been formulated regarding a physiological marker for false memories (not to be confused with lies), bad feelings and sleep.
The Guardian has reported on new research that claims false memories have a psychological marker that can be determined via a simple test that measures the conductance of the skin.
The results of the study are still in their infancy and additional studies should and need to be conducted to completely understand the body/brain’s physical response to memories that never happened.
German researchers used a variation of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (DRM), a widely used method for establishing false memories, in their experiment.
They used visual stimuli in lieu of word association, used in the regular DRM experiments, to determine the body’s physiological difference between real and false memories. They found that a stimulus that has already been encountered (a true recollection) will be more significant, to the participant, than one that has not because it is more familiar. This familiarity can be measured via increased skin conductance; thus, false memories are associated with decreased skin conductance.
One thing to keep in mind in the study’s findings is that false memories are very different than deception. This difference lies in the person’s awareness. People are unaware of a false memory; whereas, they are fully aware of the truth (real memory) when concealing information or lying.
On another note Science News reports that sleep embeds bad memories into the brain while remaining awake after a traumatic event lessens the emotional toll of the event.
The study’s findings published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggest that people who slept well after an unpleasant experience had a better recollection of that event while those that stayed awake did not.
Cognitive neuroscientist Jessica Payne of the University of Notre Dame, points out an observation that sleep deprivation leads to increased stress, which can profoundly influence emotions. She states, “In most cases, it’s better to sleep than to not sleep.”
This is can be relevant to post-traumatic stress disorder. The bigger question in this research is whether sleep just embeds the memory of the event or has a greater impact via changing how you feel about the event if you experience it again.
It is important to point out that there are other studies that have conflicting findings suggesting that sleep can help emotionally with traumatic experiences.
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