Emotion, Technology, Lies: OH MY!!

Emotion is a very important piece of human interaction.  All people have the ability to display both basic emotions (ie. happiness, sadness, anger, etc.) and complex emotions (ie. jealousy, pride, embarrassment, etc.).  Our emotions shape how we react to different situations and how we handle different challenges.  

These figures show the same 8 basic emotions.  Each emotion, although not totally the same due to individual differences, share similar facial features.  This allows us to distinguish between emotions.

As shown in the images above, all humans display the same facial features when feeling a certain emotion.  For example, when we are surprised, every person initially opens their mouth and bulges their eyes.  As a species, we all react similarly when feeling a certain way.  To make more sense of this phenomenon, Bio Motion Lab has created a prototype of a human using virtual laser pointers.  In the simulation, the user can change different traits, such as gender, weight, and mood of the human on a spectrum, and see how the body language changes.  This prototype shows that humans share very similar body language to express their feelings.

The prototype simulation starts off neutral and allows the user to place the human on different parts of each spectrum.

The way we respond to emotional stimuli helps to differentiate between people.  Some people can be honest and express their emotions, and others block off and even sometimes lie, depending on the circumstance.  It is scary to think that most people can lie to someone's face without being caught. Humans are able to exaggerate and blatantly lie about anything without facing any consequences because the lie is not detected.  Humans lie because they do not want to face a punishment for something we did wrong.  Sometimes we lie to get out of an accidental situation, but other times we engage in premeditated actions and plan on lying from the get-go.  Regardless, we are a very gullible species and tend to believe most of the things we hear.  

Wouldn't it be nice if people were like Pinocchio, and their noses grew a little every time they lied?  I know that having that trait would make the lives of the law enforcement much easier.  Unfortunately, nothing is that simple, and law enforcers have different tactics to detect lies.  In Dr. Paul Ekman's video, Three Ways to Catch a Liar, he explains that people can lie using words, but their body indicators are really what tell the truth.  He states that the most useful method in detecting a lie is by analyzing microexpressions.  These expressions only last for about 1/25 of a second, and if the microexpression doesn't match the statement, then that person is concealing an emotion.  Although this doesn't determine that the person is lying, there is a good indicator that they are hiding something.  A second thing to notice is a person's body language.  Specifically, nodding has been seen to contradict words time and time again without the person even realizing their movements.  Dr. Ekman has been using these tactics to learn more about human emotions while helping law enforcers, including FBI and CIA agents.

Dr. Ekman and television series "Lie To Me" members point out different microexpressions found in each basic emotion, making it easier to detect what the subject is actually feeling.

Back home, a friend of mine was having issues with her computer, so she took it to tech support to get it fixed.  After many virus scans and restarts, the technician began to check for any hardware issues, and found that the webcam on the computer was turned on.  After checking all of the running applications and closing them all out, he noticed that the webcam seemed to still be running.  After toying around with the computer some more, they realized that someone had hacked into her webcam and had been watching her whenever she was using her laptop.  Furthermore, the hackers were able to deactivate the light that turns on with the webcam so she wouldn't know it was on while activating the microphone.  In short, the hackers were able to watch and listen to everything she said in front of her computer without her knowing.  Clearly, they did not have her consent, and knowing this, I constantly keep a piece of paper taped over my own webcam.

The point is that technology is rapidly expanding in ways that most people are unaware of.  When we are online, our every move is getting tracked.  Now, there are forms of technology that can detect our emotions when we are not surfing the internet.   Not only can the software inspect our inner thoughts, but hardware is becoming another source of emotion tracking.  There seems to be no end in sight of massive surveillance issued by the government. Newer technology that is able to identify your name just by looking at your face is beginning to be distributed world wide.  Even scarier, future technology will also have the ability to detect our emotions.  These technologies will have "emotion sensors," and although they won't know what exactly triggered an emotion, they will know what emotion we are experiencing at that time.  These companies have no guidelines to follow regarding consent and notification to use face recognizers and faceprints. Soon enough, people are going to lose all personal privacy that they have, and that is terrifying to me.

Technology is also slowly destroying interpersonal connections in the real world. People are less likely to communicate with someone face-to-face, and turn to technology because it is simple and faster.  Humans are becoming so heavily reliant on technology that we panic when we are without it.  We sometimes even begin to isolate ourselves from the real world, and begin to replace our personal relationships with cyber friends.  These addictive behaviors destroy our emotional functions.  On one social blogging sight, Tumblr, bloggers are constantly posting about wanting to sit online rather than interact with people.  Whether this is an ongoing joke or not, social media and technological advances are beginning to inhibit our ability to function outside of the cyber realm.

A typical Tumblr blog post.

Emotional interactions are vital for human existence.  Many people find their reason for existance through objects or experiences. If we didn't have any sense of attachment or emotion, negative feelings like emotional pain, envy, and hatred would not exist, but neither would positive emotions, such as joy and contentment. Therefore, life would have no logical reason to continue other than to simply and instinctually exist because there would be no motivation. However, if we continue to deny ourselves from obtaining the full human experience by wasting our time in front of a screen (that is monitoring us!!!) our emotions will begin to lose their importance in our lives.

Talk the Talk and Thought the Thought

Language gives people the ability to discuss the past, present and future.  As Keith Chen explains language, he expresses the differences in languages around the globe, and how some are more detail-oriented than others. For example, in English, we would vaguely describe a person as our "uncle."  However, in Mandarin Chinese, the details about who this uncle is are much more descriptive, like "my uncle who is married in on my mother's side."  He also explains the concept of future-based versus futureless languages, and how the way words are grouped together really make a difference in both personal and national levels when it comes to health and wealth, and probably much more.  Futured languages force us to add a new ending to words, clearly stating that the future is completely different than the present day.  On the other hand, futureless languages do not require a new ending, therefore making the future seem similar to the present.  These differences in word groupings lead people to think in different ways, research has shown.

I noticed that a lack of language can really hinder a person's ability to complete a task.  This August, I was an Awakening leader for ten of the incoming first year students.  We gave them a number of challenges throughout the week, and saw that they were able to get the task done efficiently through communicating.  However, we also realized that they were easily distracted from the task, and we always have to help them refocus.  Because of these observations, we decided to challenge them, and have them complete a task completely mute.  They were given five minutes to plan aloud with each other, but had to be completely silent for the remainder of the activity.  We noticed that they became extremely frustrated because they could not be successful as quickly as usual, and that they used their hands in attempt to get their ideas across to the group.

Team Anaconda during Awakening 2018

One study that I found fascinating was Gary Lupyan's alien experiment.  Students were given a task to identify which aliens were safe and which ones were dangerous just by looking at them.  The experimental group was given the category of alien that the specific alien shown was a part of, whether it be "leebous" or "grecious," while the control group was not told any information other than the original task.  The results showed that the experimental group was able to recognize the similarities and differences between the aliens significantly faster than those in the control group.  The most interesting part of this study, in my opinion, was the fact that the control group created their own categories for the aliens once they began to notice the commonalities and changes between the different pictures.  Clearly, the students in the experimental group had an advantage and was able to process the pictures faster because of the categories they were supplied with, which only builds up the idea that language influences our thought processes.

Left side was catagorized as "leebious" and the right as "grecious" in Lupyan's experiment.

One idea that captured my attention was linguistic relativity.  This is a common interest among people all over the world, considering that it discusses the way people view the world and interact with one another.  This idea is linked with color perception, and how we categorize every new color we see, and how every culture processes color differently.  Some say that people have eleven categories for color, and they are added to as we encounter new colors. However, more recent research shows that one group, called the Namibian Himba, only uses five groups of color descriptively, yet we as a species are able to see the same spectrum of color.

After reading about these experiments, I began to wonder about how deaf people and sign language are connected with this idea.  Obviously, people that speak in sign language use a more visual way of conveying a message, but sometimes we as humans don't always have words to describe our feelings.  In these cases, we turn to actions, just as my Awakeners had to do while they were muted.  Similarly, the participants in Lupyan's study were able to visualize the aliens and see the differences, along with being given language cues.  Do deaf people process their thoughts in a different way?  I learned that deaf people sometimes sign language mumble, which happens when they quickly run through the signs without fully doing them.  People mumble all the time while they are speaking, so does this imply that the processes are similar, if not the same?  Signers also have accents, depending on where they are, and there are different forms of sign language all over the world.  In sign language, the same sign can have many different meanings depending on its placement.  Similarly, languages can have the same word with different spellings that have completely different meanings.

These two different (well, maybe not as different as we think!) forms of communication influence our thoughts in similar ways.  For me, language is very captivating and I am beginning to realize how language is completely taken for granted.  Without a system of communication, we would have very insufficient thought processes and would be extremely limited as a human race.

Baby Talk

Throughout my life, I have always been interested in babies and their thought processes.  How do they think? Do they have babbling noises running through their heads?  This concept always intrigued me.  When my twin siblings were born, I was six years old.  I remember always wanting to know how to get my siblings to like me, so I would always try to make them laugh.  I would also try to play little mind games with them, like peek-a-boo.  Because object permanence wasn't implemented for them yet, it blew their little minds when my face reappeared from behind my hands.

If only they knew...

But the most exciting thing for me was watching them interact with each other.  When they would play together, they would use the other's toys.  Because these toys were new to them, they became very engrossed in the item, ignoring all of their own toys that they were used to playing with normally.

A photo of my siblings and I back in the day.

Phenomenon like this are constantly tested.  If Piaget were to analyze this scenario, he would think that my siblings were more attentive because it was a foreign object to them.  Sylvain Sirois and Gert Westermann would agree with Piaget in that they are more interested in the new item than what they have seen previously.  However, a conflicting opinion would state that babies come equipped with some knowledge at birth and can understand basic math, physics, and other life aspects.

Personally, children baffle me.  They are so intelligent and never stop making me wonder what is going on inside their tiny little heads.  I would love to think that babies are born with basic knowledge of the world around them, and are readily equipped with the proper tools to survive, but the answer is still unclear.  There is one thing I do know for sure: whether they are born smart or they learn as they develop, babies never cease to amaze me.