The FORGE is pleased to announce our upcoming internal speaker: Prof Paul J. Taylor (Psychology). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Email Physics: What can we infer about hierarchies, groupiness and deceit from everyday emails

ABSTRACT
Much can be inferred from the way an author changes his or her language during social interaction. I will describe our efforts to measure linguistic accommodation (or verbal mimicry if you’re a psychologist) and how these measures can be used to infer social position and social motive. I will report one study that demonstrates how mimicry in email replies varies as a function of recipient closeness in a way that fulfills Dunbar’s social brain hypothesis. I will report a second study that shows how a reduction in language mimicry amongst coworkers may be used to detect workers attempting an insider attack on their organisation.

TIME & PLACE
1400-1500, Thu 30th Oct, County South C89 (Meeting Room 7)

Lancaster University staff members and students are welcome to attend.