My final blog is dedicated to pink elephants, green dragons and deceptive children. Oh yes, I am talking about prof. dr. Marc Swerts. He is an expert in non-verbal communication and lies. Lies (do you get the irony? J) , Desiree, Kim, Evelien, Maayke and I interviewed Marc about his research. We did this for the course Business Information Technology. Marc has done research regarding children’s awareness of being deceptive. You probably wonder how you get children to lie without making it somewhat unethical… I could tell you, but why spoil the surprise? To make it even more interesting, Marc discusses (among other things) the truth behind the tv-show ‘Lie To Me’, the pink elephant phenomenon, theory of mind, detecting lies as a parent and president Obama.
Watch our interview right here and please leave a comment! Personally, I really liked doing the interview with Marc because he had fascinating things to tell. Special thanks to Marc for taking the time to do the interview and giving us some material of his research to use for our webvideo!
Together with three other students (Lies , Desiree and Kim) I researched the perception of emotions through lyrics and lyrics accompanied by music. This research was done for the course ‘Onderzoekspracticum’.
I will not bore you with all details regarding our research (such as first and second research subject), so I will just state what we did, how we did it and what the results were. First, we selected the six basic emotions. These are happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear and surprise (remember those). Consequently, we searched for English pop songs that were relatively unknown and fitted one of the emotions. As you might think, it was hard (if not impossible) to find two pop songs that could be associated with disgust. However, we did manage to find two! Subsequently, we selected ten second parts of every song and wrote down the lyrics.
Design
The design was as follows (I will not describe the generic parts such as introduction and audio test): First, the lyric was shown to the respondent. The respondent had to indicate which of the six basic emotions fitted best. In addition, the respondent had to rate the chosen emotion in how much they believed it was applicable. The second part was actually the same as the first part, except for the addition of music and one extra question (yes, we actually added the song to the lyrics). The extra question consisted of stating whether the respondent already knew the song before filling in the survey.
Test
Afterwards, we analyzed the results. Before I am going to state what these results were, there is one thing I would like you to do. Play the song below this part of text (press the ‘play’button in the media player). Please think for yourself which of the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear and surprise) you believe it belongs to:
NOTE: Due to a so-called 'watermark' the player will first play a three second commercial jingle of the site were I got the player from (podsnack.com). Afterwards, the ten second song will play:
We also used this song in our survey and you probably want to know which emotion is belongs to… Well, read this blog and you will find the answer!
Results
In the mean time, I will continue with the results. The mean age of the respondents was 21.9 years, whereof 10 were male and 38 were female (N-48). All respondents were students are the University of Tilburg. We performed a dependent t-test on two songs of the same emotion and the difference between the two conditions (which were ‘lyrics’ and ‘lyrics with music’). For example, we calculated if there was a difference between the assigned emotion for lyrics in Anger 1 and in Anger 2. Since all respondents also had to rate the degree of which they believed the emotion fitted the emotion, we also have results regarding that. We found significant results for Anger 1, Happiness 2, Fear 2, Sadness 2 and Disgust 1. This means that all respondents rated, for example, the song in Anger 1 as ‘anger’. However, the degree of which the respondents believed it fitted the emotion, differed.
Interestingly, we found some significant differences between man and women. Regarding the first condition (just lyrics) and what emotion fitted that lyric, differences were found for Disgust 1 & 2 and Anger 2. In addition, in the second condition (lyrics and music), significant differences were found for Happiness 1, Fear 1 and Anger 2. The survey itself had no significant influence on the current emotional state of the respondents.
Some of the music we used in our survey was familiar to respondents. The song for Disgust 1 ‘Gives You Hell’ by ‘The All-American Rejects’ was known to 38 respondents. However, this number was rather high and fortunately it was the only high number. The song for Disgust 2 ‘Shallow Be Thy Game’by ‘Red Hot Chili Peppers’ was unknown to every respondent. This was also the song you heard when playing the audio file, so know you know which emotion it belongs to J
Conclusion
Finally, the conclusion. We had a H0 and H1 hypothesis for every emotion. When there were significant differences between both conditions (lyrics and lyrics with music), the hypothesis was rejected. This was not the case for Anger and Disgust. We found that the emotions ‘anger’ and ‘disgust’ were labeled by the respondents as respectively anger and disgust, for both lyrics and lyrics with music. This means we found that there were significant differences in the assigned emotions between the two conditions of either emotion.
All songs
Perhaps you would like to know which songs we used? Well, here they are:
Lets Have A Party by Backstreet Boys
Something Kinda Funny by Spice Girls
Mudshovel by Staind
Missing You by Steve Perry
I Hate Everything About You by Three Days Grace
Here Comes The Rain Again by Eurythmics
Maybe I'm Amazed by Paul McCartney
Shallow Be Thy Game by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Circle Of Fear by HIM
Amazed by Vanessa Hudgens
Gives You Hell by The All-American Rejects
Boris The Spider by The Who
Note that the respondents did not see the title of the song, nor the artists!
Thus, now you a know a bit more about the perception of emotion in lyrics and in lyrics with music. Please comment on my post to let me know what you think, what you expected and which emotion you thought the audio file belonged to.
Computer crime or cybercrime, most of you probably know or have dealt with this problem. People install anti-virus programs to ensure the safety of their data, but what exactly is computer crime? It can actually be described in one sentence: Computer crime is the unauthorized use, access, modification and destruction of hardware, software, data or network resources. However, there is more to it. An example is the unauthorized copying of software, which happened (and still happens) a lot since the popularity of the internet increased.
Criminal exploitation of the internet, is called ‘netcrime’. Examples are copyright infringement and hacking. Large companies protect themselves against cybercrime by using anti-virus programs, virtual private networks, intrusion-detection systems and content filtering/monitoring.
Hacking
Hacking is the unauthorized access and use of networked computer systems. Perhaps you have experienced problems regarding hacking. Here are some important need-to-know terms:
1.Scans: Widespread probes of the internet to determine types of computers, services and connections. The scans are used to look for weaknesses.
2.Sniffer: Programs that search individual packets of data as they pass through the internet. Passwords or entire contents are captured.
3.Spoofing: Faking an e-mail address or web page to trick users into passing along critical information like passwords or credit card numbers.
4.Denial of service: Hammering the equipment of a website with too many request for information. This clogs the system, slows down the performance and might even lead to crashing if the system. Watch this 2 minute video that explains exactly what denial of service is (and learn something extra about the internet):
A computer virus/worm is a program that is able to copy itself and infect a computer. I actually had to deal with viruses several times, most of the time by just formatting my computer. A Trojan is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but steals information or harms the system. I can elaborate in this subject, but fortunately there is a 2 minute video about pests on your PC. Watch and learn:
Software piracy
Again, this is a common problem and many internet users participate in software piracy. Did you know that a third of all software industry incomes are lost due to software piracy? I was wondering what the most pirated software is. Here are two lists from 2007:
Software most frequently pirated by companies
1.Symantec Norton Anti-Virus
2.Adobe Acrobat
3.Symantec PC Anywhere
4.Adobe Photoshop
5.Autodesk AutoCAD
Software most frequently pirated on the internet
1.McAfee Virusscan
2.Symantec Norton Anti-Virus
3.McAfee Internet Security Suite
4.Intuit TurboTax
5.Adobe Photoshop
Computer criminals
As a final word, I thought it would be nice and educational to state some convicted computer criminals. One of them is the Facebook hacker… here they are:
1.Samy Kamar (a.k.a. samy): Pled guilty for creating the ‘Samy Is My Hero’ XSS worm that spread across the MySpace online social network. This happened in 2007 and his penalty was three years of formal probation, 90 days of community service, restitution paid to MySpace and restrictions on computer use.
2.Cameron Lacroix (a.k.a. cam0): Pled guilty hacking into the cellphone of Paris Hilton and attacking the data-collection of the LexisNexis firm that exposed more than 300.000 personal records of customers. This happened in 2005 and his penalty was 11 months in a Massachusetts juvenile detention facility.
3.Ehud Tenenbaum (a.k.a. analyzer): Admitted to cracking U.S. and Israeli computers, also pled guilty t conspiracy, wrongful infiltration of computerized material, disruption of computer use and destroying evidence. This happened in 2001 and his penalty was six months of community service, one year probation, two year suspended prison sentence and a fine of approximately $ 18,000.
4.William Reed (a.k.a. servercancer): Pled guilty to hacking several city emails, sending illegal messages, and is also known as the Facebok hacker. This happened in 2009 and his penalty was five years of probation and ten-thousand dollars in fines and court costs.
5.Jan de Wit (a.k.a. onthefly): Spreading data into a computer network with the intention of causing damage as the creator of the Anna Kournikova Virus. This happened in 2001 and his penalty was 150 hours of community service.
