More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
You need to take the guesswork out of the equation, and filter out all of those global behaviors that do nothing to help you get to where you want to go: identifying deception. So, you need to limit your analysis to only those behaviors that come in direct, timely response to the stimulus, which is your question.
BEHAVIORAL PAUSE OR DELAY. You ask a person a question and you initially get nothing. After a delay, he begins to respond. How long does a delay have to be before it’s meaningful, before you would consider it a deceptive indicator?
Try this exercise on a friend: Ask her the question, “On this date seven years ago, what were you doing that day?” The person will invariably pause before responding, because it’s not a question that naturally evokes an immediately response—the person has to think about it, and likely still won’t be able to offer a meaningful response. Now ask her, “On this date seven years ago, did you rob a gas station?” If your friend pauses before responding, you probably need to choose your friends more carefully. Much more likely, there will be no pause—your friend will immediately respond, “No!” or “Of
...more
VERBAL/NONVERBAL DISCONNECT. Our brains are wired in a way that causes our verbal and nonverbal behaviors to naturally match up. So when there’s a disconnect, we consider that a potential deceptive indicator. A common verbal/nonverbal disconnect to watch out for occurs when a person nods affirmative...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
HIDING THE MOUTH OR EYES. A deceptive person will often hide her mouth or eyes when she’s being untruthful. There is a natural tendency to want to cover over a lie, so if a person’s hand goes in front of her mouth while she’s responding to a question, that’s significant. Similarly, there’s a natural inclination to shield oneself from the reaction of those who are being lied to. If a person shields her eyes while she’s responding to a question, what she might well be indicating, on a subconscious level, is that she can’t bear to see the reaction to the whopper she’s telling. This shielding may
...more
THROAT-CLEARING OR SWALLOWING. If a person clears his throat or performs a significant swallow prior to answering the question, that’s a potential problem. If he does it after he answers, that doesn’t bother us.
HAND-TO-FACE ACTIVITY. While you’re in L-squared mode, be on the lookout for anything a person does with his face or in the head region in response to your question. This often takes the form of biting or licking the lips, or pulling on the lips or ears. The reason goes back to simple high school science. You’ve asked a question, and the question creates a spike in anxiety because a truthful response would be incriminating. That, in turn, triggers the autonomic nervous system to go to work to dissipate the anxiety. One of the ways it does that is by kicking in the fight-or-flight response. The
...more
If a person is sitting in a chair, his primary anchor points would be his buttocks, his back, and his feet. We always consider both feet as anchor points, even if he has his legs crossed and one foot is in the air. In fact, if everything else is locked down, that foot in the air might be the most likely anchor point to move as the body works to dissipate anxiety, because it’s the point of least resistance. Secondary anchor points might be an elbow on the arm of the chair, or hands resting in the lap. Bear in mind that we do not consider each anchor-point movement as a separate deceptive
...more
when responding to a question, a deceptive man might adjust his tie or shirt cuffs, or maybe his glasses. An untruthful woman might move a few strands of hair behind her ear, or straighten her skirt. We’re also concerned with sweat management. That a person might be sweating doesn’t bother us, but if he takes out his handkerchief (or, perhaps more likely, a hand sans kerchief) and wipes the sweat off his brow when responding to a question, that’s significant. Tidying up the surroundings is another form of grooming gesture. You ask a question, and suddenly the phone isn’t turned the right way,
...more
I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won’t deceive you except in matters of this sort. —Spiro T. Agnew
If a deceptive person finds himself in a hole because he’s been asked a question about a matter in which the facts are not his ally, he’s obviously not in a position to respond with the facts. In the process of developing a response, then, he makes a conscious decision to take a particular tack. Perhaps he’ll concentrate on convincing the questioner of his morality; maybe he’ll go the evasive route and try to deflect the question; or he might feel compelled to go into attack mode as a means of getting the questioner to back off. What he’s not aware of, however, is that often in that process,
...more
Applying the model, we see an unintended message in Cain’s statement: The sexual harassment allegations were “baseless” and “false” not because Cain didn’t commit the sexual harassment, but because his accusers couldn’t prove it. It’s interesting that it was in that context that Cain added, “The same is true of the one that is supposed to be reported on later today.”
So how can you train yourself to spot this truth in the lie, or unintended messaging? Understand that when you’re dealing with a situation in which truth matters, literalness becomes very important.
When you’re speaking with someone with the aim of obtaining truthful information, it’s critically important to capture exactly what the person says, and to consider what’s literally being communicated to you.
On the other hand, our experience has demonstrated that if a suspect’s response reflects an abnormally lenient punishment, that raises a red flag that suggests we’re dealing with a deceptive person.
An apology seems fairly lenient, wouldn’t you say? But getting back to those unintended messages, consider that statement, “I would not want jail time.” He thinks he’s telling Michael that he would not want whoever did it to have jail time. But by focusing on literalness, we get the unintended message: “I did it, but I don’t want to go to jail.”
The unintended messaging was clear: With his statement that “he definitely doesn’t deserve life, but he deserves punishment,” the suspect was negotiating his own sentence. When he said, “I truthfully can’t answer that,” what he was telling Michael, without realizing it, was that he couldn’t bring himself to answer the question truthfully because he would be sentencing himself. He later confessed to taking the truck without permission.
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. —Galileo Galilei
So as you begin the interview, the most important piece of information you want to know is obvious: Did Simpson commit the murders? But if you were to go straight for the jugular and ask him that question, you might have a problem. If O.J. did it, he knows he’s going to be asked that question in one form or another. If he’s made the decision to lie about it, he only has to get one word out of his mouth to accomplish his goal: “No.” He has the advantage.
To prevent that, your approach needs to focus on questions that Simpson is less likely to be prepared for, and more likely to compel him to provide information you want—or, failing that, to exhibit behavior that you can read.
consider what your mind-set would be if you were a guilty Simpson. You find yourself in a nightmarish situation: You did something unspeakably horrific last night, and you’re not even sure why you did it. You just lost control, went crazy for a few surreal moments, and now you’re scared to death. Your only strategy at this point is to try to figure out how this whole investigative and legal process is going to unfold, and you’re simply trying to stay one step ahead of the game. You’ve found yourself having been summoned to the LAPD headquarters to be interviewed, and you know you’re a
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
To understand why presumptive questions are so powerful, take your “guilty Simpson” hat off, and put your “innocent Simpson” hat on. If you were innocent and you were asked precisely the same question, you would immediately know the answer—you wouldn’t have to hesitate. You might say something like “All I know is that she was killed.” But with your “guilty Simpson” hat on, you have to process that. Now you have to factor in what the detectives might know, and determine how that will impact your game plan. That’s going to take some time, so you’re likely to pause, and attempt to buy yourself
...more
after Simpson gave you a deceptive response to your question about what happened at Nicole’s last night, your next question went something like this: “Okay, O.J., I understand. Let me explain to you that obviously, this is a very important case because of who you are. I know you would want us to have every available officer working on this case, and I can assure you we do—every resource we can muster is being tapped to resolve it. As a matter of fact, as we speak, we have officers scouring Nicole’s neighborhood, trying to figure this out. O.J., is there any reason that any of the neighbors
...more
People often make decisions on the basis of this viral thinking, and baits take advantage of that fact by posing a hypothetical question. A very effective phrase to use is, “Is there any reason…?” Bear in mind that the more implicit your language, the stronger the mind virus—when you become more explicit, the person has more of a chance to evaluate it. If you were to ask Simpson if there’s any reason the next-door neighbor will say he saw him there, you’re giving him a better chance of overcoming it. He might happen to know the next-door neighbor is out of town, so he immediately responds,
...more
Now, it’s important to distinguish between a bait and a bluff. Contrary to what we often see from Hollywood, bluffs very rarely work. Suppose that with your detective hat on, you say to Simpson, “We have somebody who says he saw you in Nicole’s neighborhood last night.” O.J. may know or strongly suspect that you’re bluffing, so he responds accordingly, and asks, “Who?” And the moment you show reluctance or refuse to share that information with him, you become the enemy. Instead of getting cooperation, you now have likely widened the gap between your interests and his interests. When you stick
...more
If Simpson is guilty, what might his response be to the question, “Is there any reason that any of the neighbors will tell us that they saw you there last night?” He may feel it’s in his best interest to allow for that possibility, so he might say something like “I do occasionally pass through the neighborhood and sometimes I stop to check on the kids, and now that I think about it I did drive through last night, but I didn’t see any lights on, so I didn’t stop.” If he does give you an answer like that, you’ve asked two questions and already you’re fairly confident he’s
Second, while all questions should be delivered as neutrally as possible, neutrality is especially important with presumptive and bait questions—the person needs to feel that you have no preconceived notions about how he’s going to answer each question. This neutrality is conveyed by the words you use to frame the question, and the tone or demeanor you use to deliver it. It needs to be delivered in a very matter-of-fact manner, with no additional emphasis whatsoever placed on the question.
There’s another reason that neutrality is especially important. You want to ensure that if there’s a deceptive response to the question, the deceptive behavior is related to your question, and not to your delivery.
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual. —Thomas Jefferson
the person you’re questioning starts off with an inherent advantage over you, because he’s the one with the information—he already knows what you need to know, but don’t.
When you’re requesting information from someone, and he has information he doesn’t want to share with you, often what he’s saying to himself is, “I can tell them this, this, and this, but I can’t tell them all of that, because if I told them all of that, I would suffer consequences.” It’s the equivalent of him standing on the edge of a cliff—if he takes one more step, he’s a goner. So he says to himself, “I can only tell them up to here.”
When you sit down to interview an individual, he likely has come into the interview with some idea of what he wants to say, and has reasons for wanting to say it. If the truthful response to your question is “yes,” and he says, “no,” he has lied, and he has a reason for doing so. If the person is put in a position of having to respond to the question again, the psychological entrenchment begins; he’s forced to dig his heels in and repeat the lie, otherwise he’s exposed as a liar. Every time you allow the deceptive person to verbalize the lie in response to your hammering on the question, his
...more
that once a person commits to a response, that sort of reaction is likely to make psychological entrenchment unavoidable.
There are several elements that can be included in this mini-monologue. One key element is a legitimacy statement—an explanation that asking the questions is an important step in the accomplishment of a resolution.
people respond to legitimacy statements, even if those statements lack a great deal of substance.
Rationalization is also valuable in a question prologue. A socially acceptable reason for an action, like “Nobody’s perfect,” or “Everyone makes mistakes,” can have a tremendous impact on a person’s willingness to open up in response to a question.
Similarly, minimization can be an effective tool in preventing psychological entrenchment, so a statement like “No one wants to blow this out of proportion” might be helpful.
Remember, don’t overuse question prologues. Reserve them for key questions when discussing the most important topics.
OVERCOME PSYCHOLOGICAL ALIBIS. It can be quite frustrating to hear, in response to a question, “I don’t remember,” or “Not that I recall.” As we pointed out in chapter 5, selective memory is a problem, because if it’s an alibi, it’s a tough alibi to crack.
A very effective way to do that is to follow up with a bait question. If we hear an “I don’t remember” in response to a question, say, about whether a person had ever met a particular individual, we might follow up with, “Is there any reason anyone might tell us that he saw the two of you together?”
“possibility strategy.” An example might be “I know it was a while ago, but is it possible that the two of you might have met?” There are no guarantees here, but people often recognize the conundrum you’re putting them in: It’s often nonsensical to claim that something is impossible. So, if you’re able to cross that first hurdle by getting the person to acknowledge it’s possible, you might continue to use the possibility strategy, or you may be able to shift it to reality: “Okay, what do you remember about that meeting?”
Another powerful tactic you might use as a means of increasing the volume of useful information you collect, and one you should use routinely, is to broaden your focus in a way that makes it more d...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The last piece of information the person gave you is likely to be the most serious piece, the one he was most reluctant to share. The bottom line is that you don’t accept the first thing someone tells you. It’s almost as if you didn’t hear it.
Truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived ideas. —Japanese proverb
there is no specific microexpression for deception.
Eye contact as a behavior can’t be applied universally, moreover, because the behavior varies from culture to culture, not only in different countries, but in different regions within the same country.
Consider what prolonged eye contact between two people signals: It’s a message that’s most typically conveyed either at a time of intimacy, or at a time of challenge—two diametrically opposing situations. That tells you that precisely the same behavior can signal two completely opposite messages. So we need to be extremely careful in trying to interpret what any eye activity really means.
The idea that a closed posture is a deceptive behavior has some merit, because an isolated logical point can be associated with it. If a person doesn’t want to cooperate, that may be equivalent to shutting down, and a closed posture is seen as a sign of a shutdown.
You can’t attach significance to a behavior if you don’t know its cause.
Responding to a question before the questioner has finished asking it is sometimes considered to be indicative of deceptive behavior. We don’t accept that. Our experience has demonstrated that this is a behavior routinely exhibited by both truthful and deceptive people,
