Unmasking the Social Engineer: The Human Element of Security (2014)

Part II. Decoding the Language of the Body

Chapter 5. The Science Behind the Face

If you want to know what someone is feeling you must watch for the temporary changes in the face.

—Dr. Paul Ekman, Unmasking the Face

Over the past 45 years, Dr. Ekman's research has helped the world realize how vital the face is in reading emotions, and numerous other researchers have carried this torch forward. The face is so important that this book's longest chapter is devoted to it.

This chapter doesn't merely reiterate existing research; rather, it takes that research into an area on which it hasn't yet focused: social engineering.

It's said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. If that is true, the face reflects your emotional content. In fact, Dr. Ekman notes that the face is the primary—and the clearest—channel of emotion. Learning to read and react to this emotional content, decide what tactic to use, and choose when to apply your own emotion will give you seemingly superhuman abilities.

In one engagement, I began by building rapport with my target. The conversation was going great, and elicitation was working. I wanted to take the vector, or plan of attack, one step further and really enter the guy's “tribe” by mirroring some of his emotions about his coworkers who had just left. I turned to him and said, “I'm sorry; I should have introduced myself. My name is Paul—Paul Williams.” I extended my hand. He shook it and answered, “It's okay; I'm just as rude. Greg Hurly.”

I continued, “Those two who just left, do you work with them?”

“Yeah. The guy, Roger—he and I work for Sarah.” Greg let out an audible sigh, but even more telling was his expression, similar to the one shown in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1 What do you see here?

When you look at this photo, what do you see? Some see arrogance or smugness. Both are good guesses. I see contempt.

Recognizing this expression allowed me to extend myself into Greg's tribe even more. I also sensed he had some problems dealing with his female boss. “So, Greg, maybe you can help me. I have a pretty rough female boss too. How do you deal with it? Maybe you can give me some pointers.”

For the next 25 minutes Greg poured out his life to me. From then on, if I needed anything, I just had to ask. Being able to read Greg's facial expression enabled me to alter my communication to be more fitting to him. I built rapport, established trust, and gained the information I needed to succeed.

This chapter will help you learn how to do these things. It incorporates research from scientists such as Dr. Ekman, Dr. Wallace V. Friesen, and Dr. Maureen O'Sullivan, as well as practitioners such as Paul Kelly, a former Secret Service agent and known “truth wizard” identified in Dr. Ekman's & Dr. O'Sullivan's research on evaluating truthfulness. You will learn how to read the emotional content of someone's face and then alter your communication to fit.

Just the FACS

After spending many years researching facial expressions, Dr. Ekman teamed up with Dr. Friesen in the 1980s. They created a system that mapped the muscular movements of the face and classified them into action units (AUs). They believed that by learning to identify which muscles are used to create a facial expression, we can begin to see smaller “tells” of emotional content.

After more than 30 years of use, the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) has become a standard in this area of study.

The AUs are to be learned in groups. The groups are based upon the location and/or type of action involved. First, the AUs in the upper face are taught, which affect the eyebrows, forehead, and eyelids. Then, the lower face AUs are presented in five groups: up/down, horizontal, oblique, orbital, and miscellaneous actions. After learning each group, you practice scoring facial behavior.

FACS explains each AU with three main ideas:

· Appearance Changes

· How to reproduce the AU

· Score the intensity of the AU

Each muscular movement is broken down into an AU that describes what muscles are activated to create that expression. Ekman's work into emotional studies tells you when these emotions are triggered and what can trigger them. Combining these two aspects helps us to understand facial expressions as an equation.

If emotion is triggered by stimuli, neurons will fire, sending electrical impulses to the face, moving muscles in reaction, and showing this emotion externally.

Stimuli + Emotion = Muscular Triggers.

I won't go much deeper into the FACS system here, as you can get a full length FACS course online. My point is to tell you how all of this became such an important part of understanding people.

One of the things that Dr. Ekman has told me personally and has written about is the crux of this chapter—the one thing I hope you can take away: Just because you see someone's emotion doesn't mean you understand why the person is feeling that emotion—or displaying a facial microexpression, or micro, that is inconsistent with what is being said.

Once you learn to recognize and identify micros, you can change your communication style based on what emotion you see displayed, and then interject questions and elicitation to confirm the emotion you think you see. By using questions, conversation, and elicitation you will be able to pinpoint the true reasons for the emotion you saw. Dr. Ekman is developing an informative training tool, Responding Effectively to Emotional Expressions, or RE3, to help develop this skill set.

One word of caution: Be sure not to inject your own emotions into what you see or make assumptions about why someone is feeling a certain way. (Doing so would make you susceptible to the “Me Theory” error.) When you start a dialog, you can then determine why the emotion exists. Being able to understand the emotion helps you adapt and influence your target more.

Remember also that your goal as a social engineer is to become part of your targets' tribe. Doing so is easier when you give them more reason to feel you are just like them. For example, suppose you approach a group of strangers who are laughing and having a great time. You hang your head, your eyelids droop, and your lips are turned down—classic signs of sadness. Will the group want to get involved with you and your problems, or will they ignore you? If your goal is to get into that tribe, you can probably imagine that doing so will be harder if you look sad.

On the other hand, suppose your target is the sad person. Would you win him over by approaching him with a back slap, a loud laugh, and a few jokes? Or would you lower your voice, lower your body posture, and approach him softly, asking what's wrong?

Dr. Ekman and Dr. O'Sullivan started a program they named Truth Wizards. They identified a very small group of people who seemed to have a significantly above average ability to detect deception. My “scientific editor” for this book is Paul Kelly, also often referred to as PK in order to distinguish him from Dr. Paul Ekman; he has been identified as one of these Truth Wizards.

PK met Dr. Ekman after hearing a presentation about micros and learning that they were both involuntary and cross-cultural/universal. A very interesting facet of PK's communication skills is having been identified as a Truth Wizard from Dr. Ekman's and Dr. O'Sullivan's research on assessing credibility and detecting deception. These Wizards, approximately 50 in number, constitute the top one-third of one percent (99.666 percentile) of more than 15,000 people surveyed and have demonstrated a significantly higher accuracy rate (80 percent threshold) than average (53 percent). PK and I worked closely while I wrote this book to ensure that my work was solidly grounded in the science. In addition, when we ran into a few questions, we posed them to Dr. Ekman, who helped us stay on the path.

In my many conversations with PK, he talked about the power of being able to read these expressions, yet he gave the same caution as Dr. Ekman—just because you can see the expression doesn't mean you understand the reason for the emotion right away. As PK notes, micros do not answer the “why?” question, but they can often steer you toward finding that out. Dr. Ekman continued to identify people like PK from all walks of life and continued his research into these base emotions and the expressions attached to them.

To further help us with this task, Dr. Ekman broke what we are looking for into seven basic and culturally universal emotions, each with its own expressions and involuntary short-term muscular movements. They are fear, surprise, sadness, contempt, disgust, anger, and happiness. This chapter discusses each emotion in detail and offers many examples of what to look for. In addition, you will read stories and accounts from a veteran truth wizard that will help solidify these points and show you how any social engineer can learn to use these skills.

What Is a Truth Wizard?

In their Truth Wizards program, Dr. O'Sullivan and Dr. Ekman tested over 15,000 people and found that only 50 had a significantly above average ability to detect deception. This ability often included being able to read, detect, and decipher facial expressions. (Later, Dr. Ekman proved that learning to recognize and identify micros is a readily learnable skill.) This small number gave them only a few people to work with as a research pool. Regrettably, Dr. O'Sullivan passed away before she could publish her work about the Truth Wizards. In one interview, she described them as being “like Olympic athletes.” O'Sullivan remarked, “Our wizards are extraordinarily attuned to detecting the nuances of facial expressions, body language and ways of talking and thinking. Although they seem to have a natural talent, they practice and are always paying careful attention. They tend to be older, too, with a lot of relevant life experience” (www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/ama-lad100804.php) Dr. Ekman noted, “We're still trying to find out how in the world did they learn this skill? Are they the Mozarts of lie detection; they just had it?” (www.onthemedia.org/story/131287-the-face-never-lies/transcript/).

Paul Kelly is among this group. As a former Secret Service agent, course director, and senior instructor at the U.S. Secret Service Academy, and adjunct faculty member at the NSA's National Cryptologic School, he has significant experience in dealing with all sorts of people. I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with PK and interviewing him for this portion of the book.

In our discussion, I wanted to first determine the difference between a macroexpression and a microexpression. PK helped me see that besides the duration (a microexpression is very fast, from 1/5 to 1/25th of a second; a macroexpression can last between 2 and 4 seconds), the main difference between the two is that macroexpressions are the emotional expressions people want you to see. On the other hand, a microexpression is involuntary, uncontrollable, and often telling of the true emotional content the individual is experiencing at that moment.

Of course, this made me ask him, if we can see microexpressions, does that automatically mean the target is being deceptive? PK told me that is a common misconception. A microexpression is a conscious suppression, or an unconscious repression of emotion displayed through these tiny expressions. Dr. Ekman uses the term hot spot to refer to a micro or any other display, verbal or nonverbal, that is inconsistent with what is being said or done. While not indicators of deception in and of themselves, an effective interviewer can use hot spots as inroads to finding the answer to the “why” question.

The question that inevitably arises is whether a talent for reading people can be used to tell if someone is lying. PK was adamant that there is no such thing as the “Pinocchio” clue. In other words, no single clue, even micros, tells you, in and of itself, that someone is lying. Figuring this out involves setting a baseline and looking for changes—hot spots—in the target's behavior, knowing how to ask questions, and following up by reading more expressions.

Just because a truth wizard has an above average ability to read people doesn't mean the rest of us can't learn. I am proof of that. I do not believe I fall into the same category as PK, but I have been studying under Dr. Ekman and his group for over two and a half years, and feel I have a pretty good handle on this skill now.

In working with PK he offered me these comments and tips:

1. If you see a hot spot, and begin to seek the answer to that important “why” question, do not focus on just one possibility. Instead, force yourself to develop an “alternate hypothesis” as to why the hot spot was displayed. Doing so will help to keep your objectivity.

2. Be an active listener and observer. Don't focus on one thing; utilize all five channels: face, body language, voice, voice style, and voice content.

3. Do not make a rush to judgment. Take all the time available before making a decision. Let the interview run its course. Let the speaker tell his or her story. Use all available verbal and nonverbal cues.

4. Note hot spots as they occur, but be selective as to when in the interview you follow up and/or challenge/confront the speaker.

One final piece of advice before I go on: All you know for sure is what you see, so don't make assumptions about why someone is displaying a certain emotion. Questions, baselines, and interview tactics are needed to truly delve into the why. This leads nicely into determining the difference between an emotion and a feeling.

Emotions versus Feelings

The seven base emotions I mentioned earlier are the basis of feelings. In Emotions Revealed, Dr. Ekman defines emotions as “a process, a particular kind of automatic appraisal influenced by. . .our personal past, in which we sense that something important to our welfare is occurring, and a set of psychological changes and emotional behaviors begins to deal with the situation” (13). To paraphrase, we can define emotions as the set of psychological rules that our mind has made up based on our previous history and biology to deal with whatever circumstance we are in currently.

We all have built-in instruction sets based on our childhood, mental makeup, and moral and personal belief structure. Imagine you are in the grocery store, and you overhear a mom scolding her child. She is doing so in a derogatory way, even calling the child stupid. What happens to you? Your brain automatically runs your “code” to determine how you feel. If your parents treated you that way, maybe you feel empathy and sadness for the child. Or maybe your parents were respectful and loving, so when you hear this, it triggers anger at the thought that a parent would act this way. The first few seconds after your brain starts to react, you probably cannot stop the program that will run. Code has been injected into your system, and muscular, psychological, and physical responses are triggered. The emotional trigger brings up feelings: resentment, annoyance, frustration, unhappiness. These feelings are the aftereffect of the emotion and the emotional trigger.

By understanding the resulting feelings, we also come to understand that emotions occur in degrees. For example, is love an emotion or a feeling? If you believe it's a feeling, you're right. Love often is called an emotion, but it is not one of the seven base emotions. Rather, it results from emotions and therefore is a feeling.

When we are happy, that can cause us to love. A surprise can cause us to love. Love also can be sad and can cause fear. Love itself is not “a set of psychological changes and emotional behaviors that begins to deal with” a situation. This distinction is important to remember.

The following sections dissect each emotion to help you understand how you can use them during communications.

Fear

Imagine you are watching a movie, and the music gets ominous as a woman walks through a dark room. The music tells you that something is about to happen; it has preloaded some emotional content for you. Suddenly, an assailant jumps out of a dark corner, wielding a knife. What happens?

You may gasp or scream. Your head and/or body might move back, away from the thing that is causing you fear. These things happen in response to the psychological decision that is “fight or flight.” Your body is preparing for either—in this case, most likely it is flight!

Maybe even more telling is what occurs on your face when you are afraid. As shown in Figure 5-2, your eyebrows rise, your eyes widen, your mouth opens as you gasp, your lips pull back, and your face and body get tense.

Figure 5-2 All the classic signs of fear

Note the tightness of the raised upper eyelids that show the white of the eye above the iris, and the horizontal pulling of the lips. If you saw this facial expression on a target, you probably could identify the emotional content within. However, someone who is afraid doesn't always display all of the physical responses just mentioned. Sometimes the signs of fear are much more subtle. Maybe the fear emotion doesn't actually scare you but instead worries you—an emotion closely linked with fear.

As I mentioned in the preceding section, feelings can define this emotion in more depth—feelings such as scared, afraid, petrified, terrified, worried, and panicked.

Suppose you are trying to gain access to a building while working as a professional social engineer. Your request needs to be approved, and the person you are talking to is worried about making the wrong decision but is trying to conceal his feelings. After you make your request, you might see the expression shown in Figure 5-3.

Figure 5-3 Signs of worry

When someone is worried, his eyebrows rise, and you see some tension in his forehead. In Figure 5-3, Ben is showing signs of worry that can confuse his fear with sadness. While the eyes, upper lids, brows, and mouth differ, a common feature is the isolated wrinkling of the central area of the forehead. His eyes may widen as he contemplates his decision. Since you now know that worry can be related to fear, an emotion that doesn't help us in this situation, how would you adjust your communication style to redirect the emotional content, or the script being run in the target's mind?

Because the script of fear/worry is already injected, stopping it may be hard. Therefore, you must alter or add to the frame to redirect the target's fear. For example, you may surmise that your request created worry in your target: “Should I let him in? What's the right decision?” Redirect the target's fear by saying something like “I understand this is an odd request, but management asked me to rush down here because of a situation. I don't like it any more than you do, but I need this job.”

A statement like this may redirect the target's fear to his job, to upsetting management. This relieves him of responsibility and helps him make his decision.

Research has helped us understand that if we show fear/worry/panic on our faces, we only add to other people's emotions and raise more psychological red flags.

In these situations it is best to display a happy but not overly happy expression—a slight smile and head tilt indicating that you can be trusted.

The key point here is that you picked up on the emotional trigger—you saw a flash of worry or panic—and you must react to that emotion. Even though you are not completely sure why the person is feeling that emotion, you need to ensure that you can redirect it to another reason or emotion.

The Breakdown

Let me break down fear into each major part. This will help you notice this expression more clearly, reproduce it to influence others, and notice if you have a habit of showing this expression.

Here are some tips from PK and I to help you understand the movements involved in fear:

· Raise your upper eyelids as high as you can. If possible, tense your lower eyelids at the same time. With fear, one of the key distinctions is the wideness of the eyes, as shown in Figure 5-4.

· Pull your lips horizontally, as shown in Figure 5-5. Try saying the word “Eeek!” like you just saw a mouse—that expression draws the muscles of the mouth laterally

· Raise your eyebrows while tensing your upper eyelids to reveal the white of the eye above the iris.

Figure 5-4 The upper eyelids are raised, and the eyebrows are raised and pulled in.

Figure 5-5 The mouth is laterally open, and the lips are stretched horizontally.

The fact that Selena's forehead and eyebrows are covered by her hair brings up an important point: Even with the face partially covered, we can clearly see that this is fear when we see both the eyes and mouth.

Practice these aspects of fear in a mirror, and notice any physiological changes that occur. If you have a hard time reproducing fear, stand in front of a mirror, open your eyes wide, and say “Eeeeeek!” while pushing your head back. That will create the mouth shape of fear and the neck tension that will help you see how this looks and know how it feels.

Surprise

Closely linked to fear, surprise has some similar displays. Fear and surprise are often confused. Suppose you have been traveling for a week on business. On the way back you have a nagging feeling that you have forgotten something important. You figure that you'll remember later, so you go home to rest.

You pull into your driveway. Your house is dark. You unlock and walk through the door and flip on the lights. Thirty people jump out and yell “Surprise!”

What happens? With surprise, the eyes open wide, the eyebrows rise, and the mouth drops open with an audible gasp (see Figure 5-6). Often the emotion of surprise causes the person to lean away at first, and then toward the object of surprise when he realizes he is safe.

Figure 5-6 The differences are subtle, but this is surprise, not fear.

What happens with this emotion? The body prepares for fight or flight, but in a situation like a surprise party, the other senses quickly see a nonthreatening scenario. The body leans toward the object of surprise. This can be followed by laughter and a smile. Dr. Ekman calls surprise a “gateway emotion” because it can lead to a number of other emotions, such as anger, happiness, and sadness when the result, or consequence, of the initial surprise is realized.

The implications for a social engineer are important. Surprise can be a gateway to a nice feeling after fight or flight determines you are not in danger. It is often followed by laughter, smiling, and some happiness. Therefore, this emotion can give you the upper hand when you're trying to influence someone.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that you hide in a closet and then jump out and yell “Surprise!” at your next social engineering penetration test. Let me illustrate the concept in another way.

In one engagement, I entered the building and walked up to the front desk to try to gain access. As I neared the counter, I noticed that the receptionist looked sad. Instead of going with my usual approach, I asked her, “Are you okay?” She told me she had lost one of her earrings. She was very upset because they were a gift from her husband and were expensive. I told her I was sorry and started to help her look for it. In a stroke of luck, I saw a glimmer in her hair; it was the earring. As she reached up and felt her hair, her facial expression was just like the one shown in Figure 5-6.

The receptionist was so happy that she never asked me who I was. After thanking me profusely, she just said, “Where were we?” I replied, “Oh, I was supposed to meet with HR. I just need a badge so that I can head over there for my meeting in five minutes.” She handed me a badge and showed me the door in. In this case, surprise and the happiness that followed led to my success. Looking for ways to surprise your targets that don't entail jumping out of a closet can lead you to a successful ending.

The Breakdown

Taking the time to practice the steps in the breakdown will help you to gain experience in making, feeling, and seeing the expression more clearly.

The muscular movements involved in surprise are as follows:

· Raise your eyebrows while widening your eyes as much as possible, as shown in Figure 5-7. In surprise, however, the eyebrows are more arched/curved than in fear.

· Your jaw may unhinge slightly to open fully, as shown in Figure 5-8. (Think of the term “It was a jaw dropping experience!” or “When I told him, his jaw almost hit the floor!”)

· You may audibly gasp while making an “Oh” sound.

Figure 5-7 The eyes are wide, but even more so in fear.

Figure 5-8 Notice the mouth opening: The lips are not pulled back.

Eyes displaying surprise are more relaxed, whereas eyes displaying fear are more tense and show more of the white. The eyebrows are more arched/raised in surprise.

In fear the teeth may clench or the mouth may drop open, but either way the lips are pulled back. Yet here in surprise we see that the lips are not pulled laterally toward the ears. Although it is not as pronounced in this picture, a classic expression of surprise would be shown with more of an “Oh” expression in the mouth, and the jaw would drop down more.

Surprise can be hard to distinguish from fear at first. But with practice, it can help you to understand the person's frame of mind.

Sadness

Some of my family is from Thailand, so I keep up with news from that part of the world. I was reading a story about a refugee camp in northern Thailand that caught on fire. A 15-year-old girl lost both her parents and a sibling in the fire. Not only was she in a refugee camp, but she was now all alone in the world. In a picture accompanying the story, her expression was one of extreme sadness.

As I read about this, I felt a sense of grief and emptiness, all for a person I have never met. Sadness can do that to us. Our human tribe mentality is so closely linked to empathy and compassion that these emotions come naturally to us and can easily influence our emotional content.

Sadness can range from mild discomfort to agonizing grief. Learning to read this emotion will help you communicate better and understand other people's emotional content. Learning to control slight displays of this emotion also can go a long way toward creating a feeling of empathy (closely linked to sadness) in the people you approach as a social engineer.

I once was hired to try to gain access to a building electronically. My goal was to load some malicious software onto the company's computer network using a USB key. The company wanted me to test its corporate policy that forbade employees from inserting foreign devices into any company machine.

I put on a shirt and tie, grabbed a manila folder, and filled it with a few “resumes” I had printed. My partner and I loaded a USB key with a resume that was also encoded with a piece of malicious code that would give us remote access to their network if clicked, or what is known as a “shell.” I also had a good resume on there so when that one “failed,” the target would have a good one to click.

I pulled up in the parking lot, opened my car door, and dumped a cup of coffee all over my folder of resumes.

As I entered the building, I knew I had to display true and appropriate levels of sadness for my ploy to work. I needed to show neither agonizing grief nor mild irritation. My expression was similar to the one Amaya is showing in Figure 5-9. As I walked up to the front desk with my dripping folder, the secretary greeted me with, “Oh, no, honey. What happened?” I quickly scanned her desk pictures and saw one of a small child with a cat.

Figure 5-9 True sadness is complex but also creates an emotional bond.

“I've been out of work for a while, and I finally got an interview here today. I was driving here all nervous, and a cat ran out in front of me. I love cats, and I didn't want to hit it, so I swerved, and my coffee fell out of its holder onto my seat and drenched my resumes. Fortunately, I missed the cat, but I killed my resumes.”

“Oh, that's terrible. What can I do to help?”

“I have my resume on this USB key. Could you print me just one copy, please?” I showed true sadness on my face as I handed her the USB key.

Moments later I had one resume printed, and I had received a text message saying “Shell” from my partner. The secretary then said, “What's your name? I can tell Ms. Jones you're here.”

“Paul Williams. I have an 11 o'clock appointment with XYZ.”

“Oh, sweetie, you are having a bad day. This is ABC. XYZ is next door.”

“I'm so embarrassed! You've been so helpful, a lifesaver. I need to run so I won't be late. Thank you.”

I was out the door with a smile, a good feeling, a clean resume, and a remote connection to the company's network.

Was my facial expression the only reason I succeeded? No, not at all, but my expression added weight and believability to my story. If done right, this expression can make the person viewing it feel sadness, empathy, and compassion.

The caveat with this facial expression is that sometimes when we feel nervous, we can show sadness or fear. If your pretext is that you are confident, self-assured, and ready for action, but you show sadness, this can send mixed messages. Be cautious about leakage on your facial expressions.

The Breakdown

Sadness is a complex facial expression with many components. Understanding how to read, re-create, and display this facial expression is a powerful ability for any social engineer.

Sadness is composed of the following:

· The mouth may drop open, or remain closed but the corners of the lips are pulled down, as shown in Figure 5-10.

· Hold your lips in that position while raising your cheeks, similar to squinting.

· Look down while letting your upper eyelids droop, as shown in Figure 5-11.

· Another aspect in these photos is that the head may drop and the forehead may be tense, creating some isolated wrinkles there, as in Figure 5-11.

· Also, note that in classic expressions of sadness, the inner corners of the eyebrows come up and together, forming an inverted “V” shape (see Figure 5-11). Dr. Ekman notes that few people can direct this combination of AU movements intentionally. PK notes that those who can are likely to influence others favorably in evoking sympathy. He cites the actors Woody Allen and Nathan Lane as masters of their eyebrows, and now Amaya.

Figure 5-10 Even slightly downturned lips and raised cheeks create a clear picture of sadness.

Figure 5-11 If the rest of the face shows nothing, sadness is still in the eyes.

In extreme grief we can see the mouth opened more and the lips turned down. In Figure 5-10, the sadness is subtle, yet you can see the corners of Amaya's mouth turning down.

One important point to remember is that sadness can be seen clearly in the eyes. Even if the mouth is not downturned, or the face is partially covered by clothing, we can see the emotion in the eyes.

One very hard aspect of sadness to control is the eyebrows, as shown in Figure 5-12. In some cases of sadness you see the following:

· The inner corners of the eyebrows go up, not the entire eyebrow.

· The brows are pulled up and together in the middle.

· The eyes still droop.

· A pouting protrusion of the center area of the lower lip

Figure 5-12 Eyebrow tension can indicate sadness.

The eyebrows alone can create a connection of sadness or empathy. This is a difficult skill to master. Dr. Ekman has stated that not many people can do it without feeling real sadness. Practice can make perfect (and an empathic link).

Contempt

In Emotions Revealed, Dr. Ekman says that “Contempt is only experienced about people or the actions of people but not about tastes, smells or touches.”

Yixue Zhou, a researcher from the University of Pennsylvania, in the paper “Contempt and Self-Esteem,” defines contempt as “an emotional reaction to a target individual or group who is perceived to be either morally or socially inferior to oneself.”

Fischer and Roseman, in their research paper entitled “Beat Them or Ban Them: The Characteristics and Social Functions of Anger and Contempt,” defined contempt further by saying that the purpose of contempt is to reject the object of the contempt from our social group or class.

From these various definitions, it's easy to see that contempt is a negative emotion that in a social engineering engagement we want to avoid displaying and definitely hope we never see in those we interact with.

In one interaction I had with a group of salespeople, I overheard a guy named Jim telling a group how many sales he had made that month. He didn't just point out his success, though. He also made sure that everyone knew he beat Ralph by mentioning Ralph's low sales numbers for the month. As the others walked away, I saw Ralph's face flash the emotion shown in Figure 5-13.

Figure 5-13 The unilateral display of contempt

Ralph quickly caught himself, smiled, and caught up with the group. He didn't want to be ousted from the tribe. I walked up to him and said, “Ralph, I'm new to the company, but listen, what that guy did was really stupid. He seems like an arrogant jerk.”

Ralph looked at me as if I could read minds and said, “He isn't that bad. He just thinks more of himself…” and his voice trailed off.

“Well, either way, I'm sure you'll kick his butt next month.”

By then we had approached the front door, which he held open for me as I tailgated into the company. He thanked me for the ego boost. He went his way, and I went mine. Being able to quickly read and react to facial expressions helped me see an opportunity to interact with someone on an emotional level that made him feel accepted. That interaction led me to success, and I was able to infiltrate the building.

Contempt is one of those emotions that I do not recommend mirroring. As a social engineer, I may see contempt and use it (as in the case of Ralph), but I do not want to add to that feeling. Contempt, if harbored, can turn into anger. Because it can lead you down a negative path, I like to leave this emotion behind.

The Breakdown

Contempt can include feelings such as superiority, smugness, or arrogance, and it is always unilaterally shown, or shown just on one side of the face, with one corner of the mouth pulled up, and the cheek and/or dimple on that same side accentuated. A social engineer needs to be able to pick out the signs and even subtle hints that a person may be feeling contempt. Look for these signs:

· One side of the face is raised, as if the cheek is pushing up to squint, as shown in Figure 5-14.

· The chin can be raised, as shown in Figure 5-13, making it easier to look down at the object of contempt.

· In many cases, contempt displays a raised cheek muscle on the same side of the face as the upturned asymmetrical lip, as shown in Figure 5-15.

· One you learn to recognize contempt, it is perhaps the easiest emotion (after happiness) to observe. You may be surprised at how often you see it, but remember the “why” question!

Figure 5-14 Notice the raised cheek.

Figure 5-15 In this contempt expression, notice the asymmetrical turning of the lips.

When one side of the mouth and cheek is raised for contempt, it sometimes creates a sort of smirk. This unilateral display can be followed by a nod or another gesture indicating the feelings of arrogance.

I can't say this enough: Contempt is an easy emotion to miss for the untrained, but it's an important one to pick up. Once you learn to recognize contempt, it will jump out at you.

To illustrate the point about contempt, I'll relay a story PK told me of when he was able to see and use this expression. Once, while he was in an Arab country, his host invited PK to dine with him, but pointedly asked that they not order alcohol while at his table. This is a very common request in Islamic cultures. However, PK told me he noticed a micro of contempt appear on the face of one of his colleagues. Later, after developing rapport with the assistant he was told that the host was a “hypocrite” because he himself often imbibed alcohol while traveling abroad. The assistant, though junior to the host, likely felt he was the more devout Muslim because he never drank alcohol.

If you see it during an interaction and you are unsure why, reevaluate and assess quickly if you need to change something about your approach or body language. Ensure you are not being too aggressive in your approach or speech, and that you do not use any offensive language or jokes. In addition, before you even go out on an engagement make sure your appearance is not offensive in any way for the crowd you are targeting.

Disgust

While contempt is always directed toward a person, disgust can be triggered by a smell, taste, touch, sight, or even thoughts of something or someone—even yourself or your own actions. Disgust can trigger a strong physiological response in someone. When things disgust you, how do you feel? Some people gag at the sight of blood. Others feel sick when they think about vomit. Maybe while reading this short paragraph you started to display the expression shown in Figure 5-16.

Figure 5-16 In this disgust expression, we can see both disgust and hints of anger.

In my discussions with PK, he told me that disgust is often missed when people are tested on it and in real life because they don't recognize it for what it is. Yet training ourselves to see disgust when interacting with others can change our communications profoundly. When asked to name Ekman's seven universal emotions, most people list happy, sad, surprise, fear, and anger quite quickly. They seldom mention disgust or contempt, yet both are important to the social engineer. Though disgust is often confused with anger, each has its own unique characteristics.

Imagine a law enforcement officer interviewing a suspect, asking about a missing person, and seeing a flash of disgust on the suspect's face. What would that tell you? The officer needs to head down this avenue of questioning more deeply. The officer needs to find out if the suspect is disgusted at the officer or is imagining a scene of violence or something else that can bring up that emotion.

Once you are trained to see this expression, as PK puts it, “You will see it a lot more than you want to.”

The Breakdown

Disgust is broken into a few different areas that the social engineer can try to pick up and use in interactions. Try to notice these signs:

· The nose wrinkles, as shown in Figure 5-17, almost as if to shut off the nose to an offensive smell. Often, wrinkles will appear on the bridge of the nose.

· The lips become furled and in some cases can even open, showing part of the teeth. Figure 5-18 shows disgust with both closed and open lips. In classic disgust, the upper lip is drawn up to the nose, exposing the upper teeth.

· The brow can become furrowed to an extent that the offensiveness of the object of disgust can cause irritation, as shown in Figure 5-19.

Figure 5-17 Notice the nose wrinkling.

Figure 5-18 With disgust, the lips may be closed or open. Either way, you can see the lips furl, exposing the upper teeth almost in a snarl. The cheeks often sharply crease to form a large inverted “U” shape going from one cheek across the bridge of the nose, to the other.

Figure 5-19 Disgust can be followed by anger or irritation, as shown in the eyes and eyebrows. Though the eyebrows may come somewhat down and together, as in anger, no glare of the eye is evident as in anger.

It is hard to breathe through the nose when this expression is in play. The body tries to block this offensive object from our smell and sight.

Disgust, obviously, is an unpleasant emotion. Even viewing someone who is showing it (as in Figures 5-17 through 5-19) can make you feel uneasy and irritable. As a social engineer, learning to see this expression can help you understand your target's emotional state and adapt your style.

Anger

Anger is an intense emotion that causes physical muscular tightness, In addition, increased heart rate, breathing, and feelings of irritation all follow. In Emotions Revealed, Dr. Ekman states, “One of the most dangerous features of anger is that anger calls for anger, and the cycle can rapidly escalate” (111). Later on in that same chapter he defines anger as one of the most dangerous emotions because it can cause someone to hurt the target of their anger.

When we are angry we lose our ability to think clearly and our reactions are ruled by this negative emotion. Chapter 8 discusses how strong emotions like anger can shut down our logic centers.

In one engagement, I pulled into the target company's parking lot and parked far from the front door. As I walked closer, I saw a man get out of his car parked in the VP parking spot. He was talking into his Bluetooth headset. I was too far away to hear the conversation, but what I saw was very close to what is shown in Figure 5-20.

Figure 5-20 All the classic signs of anger

I could tell this man was angry. As I got closer, I pulled out my phone to pretend I was answering, and then I slowed my pace so that I could hear what he was saying.

I overheard what sounded like a minor argument between the man and a vendor. This was a good opportunity for me to make a pretext change. From the comments he was making, I knew that the vendor he was talking to manufactured time clock systems. I walked in the door and up to the front desk and said, “Hi, I'm Paul. I'm here to check out your time card system. The boss told me you're having some major issues with your present vendor, and you wanted a competitive quote. Can you tell me where I can check the server?”

The receptionist took me through the locked doors to the server room and yelled to one of the IT guys: “Roy, Paul here needs to get in and check the time card system. He'll fix all our problems.”

This is an instance in which seeing anger led to my success. Another example where I didn't do so well was one time when I was interacting with a target and he started talking about a female coworker in a derogatory way. I felt myself getting a little heated, and he must have seen something similar to what is shown in Figure 5-20, because he ended the conversation and walked away. As hard as it is, sometimes the social engineer needs to remove personal feelings and prejudices from the situation and allow the target the freedom of his or her opinions, no matter how contradictory they are to your own.

I once had a chance to interview a law enforcement interrogator. He told me about a case in which he arrested a suspect who was accused of peeping into women's bedroom windows and then pleasuring himself. He had a cowboy boot fetish, so if the woman had boots, that turned him on.

A few officers tried to get him to confess. We can almost picture the scene—an officer slamming his fist on the table or making threats. But all this anger in the room did not make the suspect open up. Then my friend went in and sat down calmly, no anger or disgust on his face. He said, “You know, I love when a woman wears cowboy boots too. My favorites are the natural brown ones.”

After looking at the officer for a few moments he exclaimed, “Brown?, You haven't seen anything till you've seen red boots.”

From then on the conversation was open, and the suspect confessed to all his transgressions. A social engineer has to work hard to remove traces of anger from his facial expressions, or this can lead to judgmental feelings and a disastrous outcome for his engagements.

The Breakdown

A lot of things happen during the emotion of anger. Just think about what happens when you feel angry. Do you breathe heavier? Do you get tense? All of this is normal. The body is preparing for a fight, so the muscles tense up, breathing may get heavier, the chin lowers to protect the neck, and the hands may clench.

In addition, the face displays a lot of tension and furrowing. Recreate these with caution, as you will feel angry:

· Pull your eyebrows down and together, almost like you're trying to touch your nose to the inner part of your eyebrows, as shown in Figure 5-21.

· While you are doing this, try to create a glare (shown in Figure 5-21.

· Your lips are pressed together tightly. Or, if they are open, as in Figure 5-22, your teeth are clenched, with a tight jaw.

· The chin often is lowered to protect your neck. (Fight not flight!)

Figure 5-21 The brow furrowing and stare are intense.

Figure 5-22 A tense jaw and clenched teeth are indicators of anger.

These pictures don't show intense anger, but these subtle hints are still important to notice. When you look at this expression, even with its subtle hints, as a whole it is much easier to pick up this anger emotion.

In Figures 5-21 and 5-22, Ben is showing classic but subtle signs of anger. The brow is not as furrowed as it may normally be when someone is intensely angry. Learn to recognize and, even more importantly, control this emotional display, and it can truly help you influence your targets.

Happiness

One thing I learned from Dr. Ekman that profoundly affected me was that microexpressions are muscular movements in reaction to neurological responses to emotional triggers. Yet the reverse is also true. If I make facial expressions on purpose, I can create a neurological response and emotion.

That is why I chose to end this chapter with the emotion of happiness. I hope that as you finish this chapter you will have a smile on your face.

A smile, linked to true happiness, is a powerful tool. Happiness is the most readily recognized emotion. Perhaps you're smiling now, just reading these words. Can you see yourself smiling when you look at a laughing baby? Don't you find it interesting how, when you hear other people laughing, it makes you laugh or at least feel happier?

Happiness triggers happiness in a powerful way. It is because of this that learning the difference between a real smile and a fake one is so important.

In 1862 a doctor named Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne wrote The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy, which is about a series of tests he performed across France. He used portable electric machines to shock some muscles on people's faces. He could get them to show all sorts of expressions just by stimulating the muscles that controlled those emotions.

His research gave rise to the term “Duchenne smile.” It is characterized by raising the corners of the mouth, controlled by the zygomatic major muscles, and raising the cheeks, which produces crow's feet at the eye corners, controlled by the orbicularis oculi. See the contrast between Figures 5-23and 5-24.

Figure 5-23 With the Duchenne smile, the mouth is raised, and the eyes are involved.

Figure 5-24 The “social smile” does not involve the eyes.

Dr. Ekman often refers to the sincere smile versus the polite smile. In a sincere smile, shown in Figure 5-23, we can see that Selena's mouth and eyes are engaged. The wrinkles on the outer corners of the eyes, sometimes called “crows' feet,” are a characteristic of the sincere smile. In fact, you can see happiness in her eyes even if you can't see her mouth. In addition, there is a “twinkle” in her eyes that just doesn't exist with the “social smile,” shown in Figure 5-24.

If you display a social smile, the average person may not look at you and think, “Wow. That person is using only her zygomatic major and not the orbicularis oculi. That smile is definitely fake.” But the person may feel uneasy because she senses that you are not displaying a true emotion.

A social engineer wants to make her target smile, feel good, and always view her as trustworthy. A sincere smile does all that. In their study “The Value of a Smile: Game Theory with a Human Face,” researchers Scharlemann, Eckel, Kacelnik, and Wilson indicate that the simple act of smiling creates a bond with the person you are interacting with, telling him that you are trustworthy and want to encourage his happiness. To read the full article, visit www .sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487001000599.

Knowing all this, it behooves the social engineer to ensure that he or she can master this emotion despite nervousness, fear, anger, and other feelings. What helps is mixing in other aspects, such as a head tilt (discussed in the next chapter), open ventral displays (discussed in Chapters 3 and 4), and a lower tone of voice (discussed in Chapter 2).

The Breakdown

Follow these steps to create a sincere smile:

1. Start by thinking about something that makes you happy.

2. Raise your cheeks while bringing up the corners of your lips, as shown in Figure 5-25.

3. Without squinting, raise your cheeks. Doing so pushes up your eyes, giving you crow's feet (see Figure 5-26).

Figure 5-25 Notice the way the cheeks are raised bringing the lips up in a smile. The sincere smile involves much more of the face—the mouth, the cheeks, the chin—and some blushing may even occur.

Figure 5-26 The eyes are where we see the true happiness.

The more you look at the eyes of someone who is smiling sincerely, the happier you will be. This is because of how our brains take in emotion. The more we view an emotional display, the more easily we can feel this emotion.

After reading all the information in this chapter, you might be wondering how you can practice recognizing these emotions.

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

Part of being a social engineer or protecting yourself from malicious social engineers is learning how to mimic and recognize the skills they use. Learning to read faces is not as hard as it sounds. Researchers such as Dr. Ekman have spent their lives studying this topic and developing tools to help people learn how to recognize the meanings behind facial expressions and body language. I have used training tools such as Dr. Ekman's Microexpression Training Tool (METT) and METT Advanced Tool to continually hone my skills. I also use them in my training classes to help my students learn.

These are not the only methods, though. My learning began with Dr. Ekman's Emotions Revealed and a mirror. I sat in front of that mirror and moved my face in the way described in each section of the book. I did this both looking in the mirror and not, trying to see if I could feel the difference in my face. I did this repeatedly until I thought my facial movements resembled what was shown in the book. After that, I began to analyze the emotions those movements brought up in me to make sure they matched.

From there I began to watch people close to me to see if I could notice macro facial expressions. From there I began trying to find one microexpression at a time. For example, after I finished practicing anger in the mirror, I knew about the angry stare, the brow furrowing, the tight lips and jaw, the chin being lowered. I began looking at my family and friends for subtle hints of these signs. I was amazed at what I saw. It was like a new world opened up. I could look at a family member and discern a true emotion during a conversation. Then I started making the classic rookie mistake: I believed that because I saw the emotion, I knew why the emotion was happening. Making that mistake led to a lot of frustration at first. Once I learned to reign in that impulse, I began to see the emotion and realize I needed to learn more about it. I improved my ability to communicate with my kids, wife, friends, and others.

Then I saw the business implications and began to realize that I could use my nonverbal communication skills to influence other people's emotions.

I found that the more I practiced, the quicker and more accurate I became. After one five-day class I taught, a student asked me if this ability can be shut off. It can't. Although I don't always have to react to or use the information I gather, once you know something, it's hard to turn it off.

I liken this to learning a foreign language. I traveled to China and Hong Kong a few times, and to make the trips easier, I started to study Chinese. After a few lessons I was amazed at how often I would hear the handful of words I knew when at a Chinese restaurant or the Asian market.

It's the same with facial expressions. The more you know, the more you will start to pick up and “hear” without trying. This is why there are really two rules about learning to read faces: The old adage is usually “practice makes perfect,” but practicing the wrong way won't make you perfect. So let's change that to “perfect practice makes perfect,” and secondly don't think you know the why behind someone's emotion.

Summary

The face reflects your emotional content both in conscious macros and involuntary micros. Learning to read that content—and recognizing “hot spots” (contradictions) can enhance your skill as a professional social engineer and your ability to catch a malicious person in action.

On a more personal level, learning about the face can help you learn more about yourself and how you interact with others. It will help you create long-lasting relationships, communicate better, and understand those around you more deeply.

In one class I was running in Dublin there was a very energetic young female student from Germany. She loved the psychology behind human interaction and had a natural talent for interaction. When I took them out on engagements I caught a picture of her “focus” face. It showed classic signs of anger.

I was able to work with her to show her what she was doing and it helped her in future communications. This self-awareness can really help to hone your skills and control your emotional content.

Sometimes when I am training people on facial expressions they feel overwhelmed. There are so many moving parts, and so many aspects to look for. When people say that, I start off with a lesson on something a little easier before we launch them into the more detailed work.

That lesson is the difference between signs of comfort and discomfort and that is the topic for the next chapter.