Certain emotions align with specific neurological patterns, which then align with specific fractal patterns in our voices. Sharecare has developed a voice recognition application that doesn’t analyze what someone is saying, but its algorithm looks at how it’s said in order to specifically monitor stress – a major contributor to our health and well-being.
The company claims that the app has accuracy levels of 92% – 94% – this comes after a lot of academic research and over a decade of experimenting, prototyping and testing.
Although anyone could use this on their own to see when stress is triggered during different conversations, Sharecare decided to take an interesting approach and see the ranges detected in Republican candidates during last night’s debate. The company also displayed the product on The Dr. Oz Show.
Sharecare’s Chief Innovation Officer, Erik Feingold, took some time to discuss the results they saw from the debate performances (videos of results below) and to explain more about the technology.
Can you explain more about how the technology works?
We look at spectrum data. It functions the same as technology that is used to measure the dispersion of energy, such as light, for example. It visualizes how the frequencies are distributed and creates a picture, which is not dissimilar to a stock market graph. We look at shapes and patterns that are created, and we see that when a certain pattern repeats itself (a fractal pattern), we know that we are looking at something that is correlated to a stress or emotional signal from the brain.
Using the app is like taking an emotional selfie.
The application takes data from only on the users end and gives feedback after a call to demonstrate stress and emotional health in a relationship based on the call. It is so correlated to your health.
For the debate, we took the same algorithm and fed the video into it. Using the app in its normal function [not how it was done for the debate] will provide even more details and information.
How would you compare this technology to a lie detector test?
There are many manifestations to stress – some of them are physical and some are psychological. All of them have an emotional trigger, though. What we analyze is the emotional state. We look at six different stress types over five different intensities and three behavioral triggers. We go to the source.
The heart rate goes up when stress is present, but stress is not created because the heart rate has gone up. The heart is the symptom. With this technology, we are looking at the trigger. What a lie detector detects is the fear of getting caught. That’s why it’s easy to lie to a 3-year-old and difficult to lie to a 42-year-old.
With the Republican debate results, do increased stress levels imply that a candidate isn’t confidant or isn’t firm in their stance on a subject?
This is something we debated a lot. Stress is neither good nor bad – it depends on the intensity of the stress, the type of stress and how often it comes up. If stress is in the productive zone, you can actually use it to your benefit. But the problem is that too much stress and not enough of other emotions, you may come across as a bully or insensitive.
Passion, on the other hand, is really correlated with caring and empathy or sympathy. But the line between being passionate about something and stressed about something – this line is very thin, and if you cross the line from passion to stress you can appear weak. A successful candidate has a healthy mix of low stress in high stress in the right moments.
There is something about the power of the bully that is impressive to some and very scary to others.
I’m assuming you are talking about Trump.
Trump is the master case, yes. I’m not saying he is a bully, not applying any value judgement. Trump does have his moments where he gets stressed, but his moments are very rare and very specific. When he gets stressed it’s usually when he reaches the anger zone.
So would you say his stress is likely low purely because of his high level of confidence?
Absolutely. This could be one of the reasons why he does so well. Even though he says things often that are controversial, he still inspires in many a lot of trust. There is something comforting for people when they listen to someone who is willing to take on a challenge in a confident and calm manor.
Were there any other standouts in your findings from the other candidates?
Cruz has a remarkable ability to control his stress. He does have spikes, but when he’s challenged he goes straight to the facts or a reference. As soon as he does that, you can see the stress go down. It must be part of his skill and training as a successful debater because this ability is a very powerful tool, and he does it very well. He also uses humor to regulate his stress, just like Hillary does. They have that in common, using humor as a stress deflector.
Rubio is very interesting, too. He can get himself very worked up. Sometimes he’ll go on for a certain amount of time and we found it can be difficult for him to get back into the green (low stress level).
This sounds like it would be a great tool for entrepreneurs who are pitching to investors.
Yes. This technology has been commercial since 2010 and has been used by some of the bigger pharmaceutical companies and banks, as well as other companies. It’s been used by sales and service professionals as a training tool, a behavioral simulator. They got result scores and could learn from that data. This was the first commercial use of the technology.
What can people get as a take-away after using the application to improve their health?
Stress is associated with things like insomnia, indigestion, back pain, headaches and high blood pressure. It’s important for people to be aware of the stress that they don’t normally pay attention to because it’s not always very high or so low that they fall asleep – it’s in the in-between zone. Our first focus is to give them awareness and then health literacy with the content they get to understand what it means. Over time, as part of the content feed, you well get different kinds of physical or mental exercises, breathing tips and other advice and ideas of how to control stress.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Sharecare’s application is currently available for Android users – an iOS version will be out later this year.
