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August 16, 2005
Jerk-O-Meter: Empathy Crutch or Empathy Trainer?
Do you ever wish you knew how annoyed you sound when you speak or whether you're really interested in what someone else is saying? For those of us who have no social skills or the ability to gauge how others interpret the verbal and non-verbal cues we toss out during standard social interactions now there's the "Jerk-O-Meter".
MIT researchers conducted a study entitled "Voices of Attraction", which examined the conversations of people involved in speed-dating sessions. They found they could realiably gauge a subject's interest level by the tone of their voice. Enter another MIT researcher with a VoIP phone, add a complex algorithm and you have a phone that anaylzes your voice to determine your emotional state. So far, it has the capability to warn others that you're pre-occupied or tell you if it senses you're becoming too angry.
Commercial applications are already in the offing including a "wearable 'social signaling meter'" (mood rings of the new millenium?) or more sophisticated applications which would allow advertisers to more accurately gauge the effectivness of their pitches.
My question is, if you messed around a bit with it could you use it to train people to believe they were interested in something when they weren't? Could you use it to manipulate someone's interest or anger levels by intentionally giving alerting them to the wrong cues? Does it seem somewhat odd that we're developing elaborate systems to tell ourselves (and outside parties) how we "really" feel?
To read more, check out:
Software helps you stop being a jerk
Posted by Matt Markovich at August 16, 2005 03:29 PM