Detect Deceit: Reveal the Truth by Exposing the Lie

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DETECT DECEIT

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DETECT DECEIT

CONTENTS - PROLOGUE Lies We Tell: An Introduction to the World of Deceit The 3 Reasons We Fail to Spot Lies The Freedom of Knowing the Truth - SECTION ONE: THE BODY Body Language & Tells Collective Tell Detection The Body Language of a Liar The 7 Types of Body Language That Signal Deceit: ♦ Uncontrollable Body Signals ♦ Lateral Eye Movement: - Using Lateral Eye Movements to Expose Dishonesty - More Information on Using Lateral Eye Movements to Aid in Accurate Lie Detection ♦ Facial Expressions: What you can and cannot tell from the look on someone’s face: - Eye Contact - Smiles: Separating the real from the fake ♦ Torso and Body Shifts: How people move their midsections and alter their body direction when they lie



DETECT DECEIT - Facing Direction - Fidgeting (Minor Body Shifts) ♦ Hand tells: How the use and movement of their hands reveal a liar’s deceitful intentions - Hand Gesture Frequency - Hand-to-Face Actions - The Hand Shrug ♦ Leg and Feet tells - Foot Tapping/Jiggling - Leg and Feet Direction & Adjustments - Leg Squeezing as a tension release mechanism - Leg Crossing - How to interpret leg tells correctly and accurately - SECTION TWO: The Voice ♦ Speech Tells: Pinpointing and understanding the changes in someone’s voice and communication style when they speak dishonestly ♦ Why do speech alterations occur when people lie? - Internal Conflicts & Adjustments - Detection Prevention ♦

The Faker’s Dozen – The 12 most common verbal deceit indicators:

- Cloaking



DETECT DECEIT - Negativity - Self-referencing - Verbal Evasion - Description Depth - Verbal Disclaimers - Formalness - Breaks, Pauses & Vocal Fillers - Speech Speed - Tonality and Pitch - Response Speed - Role Balancing ♦

Other conversational signs of deceit

- The Block Out - Sudden Mood Changes - Passing the Blame - SECTION THREE: The Psychology ♦

Using powerful psychological techniques to put the final nail in any liar’s coffin.

- Discreet Detection - Overt Detection ♦

Discreet Detection Techniques: The best ways of extracting the truth from someone without accusing them directly:

- The Loaded Question Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


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- The Advice Approach - Fact Manipulation: Fact Inquiry False Fact Contribution Fact Development ♦

Overt Detection Techniques: The best ways of confronting someone you think is lying to you, while simultenseouly acquiring extra proof of his or her dishonesty

- False Acceptance - Downplay the Deceit - SECTION FOUR: The Action Plan – ♦

How to use the information in this book to easily, reliably and repeatedly detect deceit

♦

Establishing motive: Do they have something to gain from lying to you?

♦

Collective Tell Detection: The order and execution of the most powerful natural lie detection system in the world



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Lies We Tell: An Introduction to the World of Deceit Most people lie every now and then, usually just to make day to day life easier to live. On the most part, and thankfully, the majority of people choose only to tell white lies – statements that avoid or twist the truth in a deliberate but always well-intentioned manner. White lies can be anything from a husband telling his wife that her new evening gown looks good on her when perhaps it doesn’t, to a girlfriend telling her boyfriend that he performed well in the basketball game when in reality he actually played well below par. Or, perhaps, an employee saying to his boss that he thought the speech he made earlier was really helpful and informative. The purpose of white lies is to keep relationships of any sort running smoothly, and to keep those in the relationships happy and easy to live with. And that’s why most people agree that telling little white lies usually isn’t a bad thing – it’s the norm.

But telling white lies isn’t the only way people bend, hide and alter the truth. Millions of lies across the world are told every day that harbour more sinister motives. It’s the intention of the person telling the lie that ultimately decides how harmful or deceitful it is. For example, a crooked car salesman, in an effort to secure a sale and earn his commission, might tell a prospective buyer that the car they’re interested in is reliable, has excellent gas mileage, and is widely considered by those that know about cars as a great investment. However, none of those plus points might be strictly true – they may purely be fabricated to raise the perceived value of the car in the customer’s mind, and thereby improve the chances of them buying. So in that scenario the reason for the car salesman telling



DETECT DECEIT lies is to gain something for himself. And there are other reasons people deceive others:

A man, married for 22 years, is having an affair with his secretary, who’s younger, raunchier and more attractive than his wife, the mother of his 3 kids. Every night, he returns home to an evening meal prepared by his wife, and tells her how his nightly hour-long session at the golf driving range went. In reality, he hasn’t played golf in 4 months. He’s instead been seeing his secretary. The reason he tells his wife otherwise is to preserve what he has at home: a warm family life, while continuing his affair with another woman, from whom he receives the excitement and sexual pleasure he really craves. He lies to his wife to hide that truth. Another type of deceit is the spur of the moment lie – something made up on the spot that hasn’t been thought out or planned. For example, a friend promises to call you at 2 O’clock on Sunday, to arrange what time they’ll meet you the following day for lunch. By 6 P.M., having not received any calls, you decide to get in touch with the friend. When asked why they didn’t call you, they explain that they did call as promised, but heard a recorded message that said the line they were using was down for maintenance, sorry for the inconvenience, please try again later. Truth be told, calling you completely slipped their mind, and they were only reminded of their promise to you the second you called and asked them about it. So, to avoid appearing a forgetful, bad friend, they made something up.

Having read the examples of dishonesty above, you may think that you, and perhaps most people, would be able to spot the lies and dishonesty in a second. But research has shown that people – male and female, young and old alike – only detect 56% of the lies they’re exposed to, which is Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT only a little above a 50/50 guess. So why do the vast majority of people never realise they’re being lied to?

The 3 Reasons We Fail to Spot Lies 1. Ignorance is Bliss

A lot of the time, people who are being lied to, for whatever reason, fail to realise they’re being deceived. Subconsciously they’d prefer to remain in the comfortable position and place they’re in, as opposed to entering the unknown – which is where they’d go if they mentally accepted the possibility of being lied to. In the man cheating on his wife example above, the wife might be unaware of his disloyalty because she wants to believe that he’s faithful and that their situation is healthy and stable. The acceptance of the possibility of him being a cheater is too harsh a reality for her to deal with, so she unknowingly blocks it out. We do this on a smaller scale ourselves, probably almost daily. For example, if our partner tells us they were late because they were bogged down in traffic, the chances are heavily in favour of us believing them – simply because we’d rather they were telling the truth than lying to us. It’s not because we truly, unconditionally, trust what they tell us.

2. Personal Trust Thresholds

Some people are better than others at separating lies from the truth. How good you are at doing just that partly depends on your personal trust threshold – how much you generally trust, or are suspicious of, the people you talk to, regardless of who they are. Two example types of people who have very different personal trust thresholds are nuns and policemen. Nuns, generally speaking, tend to be more trusting of people and suspect Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT them less of lying than policemen. Policemen, though, have lower personal trust thresholds, and therefore suspect people of being deceitful more often – after all, their job is the prevention of crime, and crime and liars often go hand in hand. Regardless of how high or low your personal trust threshold is, though, as mentioned earlier, you’re only ever going to spot the liars around half the time (without this book).

3. Use of Misinformation

In the last 30 years, the general public has learnt more and more about sociology and psychology. They’ve learnt more about the way our minds work, how society functions and how we converse as people on a day-today basis. Unfortunately, people often tend to misremember or misunderstand some of the scientific knowledge they’ve picked up. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to how people think they can spot a lie. Instead of using sound, effective techniques to gauge a person’s truthfulness, they’ll instead use snatches of things they’ve remembered, and thus tend to form conclusions that cannot be trusted.

They are the 3 main reasons people fail, time and time again, to spot liars and the lies they tell.

So, here lies the problem we all face on a day to day basis: Distinguishing between truth and fiction. When we talk to our friends, family and strangers, how can we know for sure that what they’re telling us is true? And how amazing a skill would it be to, reliably and unequivocally, be able to tell when someone isn’t telling us the truth?



DETECT DECEIT

The Freedom of Knowing the Truth Other people’s lies often make our lives more difficult – they create uncertainty, they misrepresent the real situation we’re in. Their untruths, quite simply, are something we could do without. I think you’ll agree that things in your life would flow much more smoothly if you always had the option of knowing the truth. Things like knowing that the car you are about to buy is a pile of junk, that your husband or wife is cheating on you, or that the friend you thought was reliable and trustworthy is actually the opposite. The truth, in its purest form, is how things are, whereas lies are the way others want you to believe they are. Unless someone’s telling a white lie that is designed to make you feel good, the vast majority of people don’t want to be lied to.

So, with all that said, how can one achieve the ability to spot a lie, time and time again, without fear of being wrong or misjudging the person they think may be lying? The answer is body language. No matter who it is, where they are, or how big or small the lie they tell is, their body language will – in some way or another – betray them, and inform you of their dishonesty. Imagine a lie as a type of energy. Once spoken and declared, it flows through a person’s body like blood, revealing itself in the way they move, sit, stand, speak and look. Pushing down and trying to conceal the lie merely forces it out in a different, equally interpretable, gesture or bodily nuance. While their mouth may tell a lie, their body will reveal the truth. But before we delve into the subject further, it’s important you know what body language is and what it can and cannot do to aid in the detection of deceit.



DETECT DECEIT

Section One: The Body Body Language & Tells As a scientific subject, body language is vast and sprawling. As such, most people have a fair understanding of what it is and the things it consists of. However, very few people are adept at spotting a lie by properly interpreting body language. The explanation for this, as briefly outlined in the third reason we fail to spot lies, is because their understanding tends to be limited to only a few basic areas of body language, and even then, the way they use what they do know leaves a lot to be desired. That’s understandable though; it’s not easy to tell if someone’s lying using only the information on body language you pick up from the mainstream media.

So, what is body language in its most general form? Body language is the way we express ourselves using actions instead of words. Some of our body language we’re aware of, such as giving someone the thumbs up or waving goodbye to them, but most of what we do with our bodies – the way we sit, stand, point, look, speak etc. – goes on unbeknownst to us. And the fact that we don’t realise how we’re constantly expressing the way feel and what we think using our body is to your advantage as a human lie detector.

The process of detecting a lie involves analysing the way a person uses their body before, after and during the action of lying. The difficulty for most people is that they don’t know which actions and gestures signal dishonesty and which are unrelated to lie telling. This won’t be a problem for you, as all of the most important body language gestures and tells Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT related to lie detecting will be explained carefully, along with which order you should look for them in etc. A ‘tell’, to clarify, is a term that’s derived from the game of poker. Any action, gesture or movement made by the body that reveals how the person is feeling or what they’re thinking can be described as a tell. From here on in, the term tell will be used to describe these revealing gestures, in whatever form they may take and at whatever point during, before or after the telling of the lie they’re revealed. To use a well known body language tell as an example:

A person sitting at a bar with 3 friends might reveal their feeling of awkwardness through the folding of their arms – this ‘tell’ displays a subconscious desire to comfort one’s self, which manifests itself in the form of folded arms, which is almost like a self-hug. As well as a form of self-comfort, the crossing of one’s arms is an act of submissiveness. Dominance is often made obvious by the action of taking up extra space with your body. For example, a man sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, leaning back, with his arms up and hands placed behind his head (imagine a high-powered boss at his desk) takes up lots of the space surrounding his body. He thereby establishes a certain amount of dominance over that domain. It’s like he’s saying: “I’m confident and a leader, therefore I’m allowed to take up more space than I need or than other's around me use.”

However, this example leads to an important point – something that relates very closely and powerfully to the detection of lies through the interpretation of body language. In the above example, it’s very likely that the person sitting with their friends, crossing their arms did feel awkward and self-conscious. However, the fact that someone crosses his or her arms cannot alone be used to form an opinion on how that person Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT feels. It’s simply not a strong enough sign to gauge how they are truly feeling. The same applies to the detection of lies: You cannot decide whether a person is lying or telling the truth based solely on the presence of one tell (body language gesture) that’s often connected to lying. The method you use to truly decide whether a person is lying involves looking for multiple instances of body language tells commonly associated with lying – quite simply, the more signs there are that they are lying, the more likely it is that they are. This theory is called ‘collective tell detection’ and forms the main system you’ll use to ascertain whether someone is telling you a lie, or speaking the truth.

Collective Tell Detection You can never tell where you’ll be or whom you’ll be speaking to when you encounter a lie. Because of that fact, it’s essential to use a system of lie detection that can be used anytime, anywhere, even if you’re speaking to someone on the phone and not face-to-face. When properly learned and practised, this system of lie detection is up to 90% accurate. Translated into a real life scenario, that means you’ll be able to detect and deal with 9 out of 10 lies you’re exposed to – whether they’re 9 lies told by 9 separate persons, or 9 lies told by one. 9 tenths of the time, you’ll detect the deceit. Now, onto the system itself:

As briefly mentioned earlier, one body language tell alone, even if it’s closely associated with lying, cannot be used to judge fairly whether someone is being dishonest or not. Instead, you must look out for multiple instances of lying tells, which collectively mount up until the scales tip towards a lie and away from the truth. Only then, when enough lying tells are present, can you make an informed, accurate decision on the truthfulness of the person you’re dealing with. It’s also important to Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT remember that 5-10% of the time, you won’t be able to spot the lie – because doing so is an impossibility. Even advanced lie detecting polygraph machines are only around 93% accurate. This scenario can occur for a couple of different reasons: ♦ The person lying truly believes their own falsehood, and therefore does not exhibit any detectable signs of deceit. Most people who fall into this category are socially different to the average citizen because their honesty/morality threshold is so skewed and abnormal. They are often found as high-flyers in professions that require, as a prerequisite, an ability to persuade and influence through playing with the facts and twisting of the truth: politicians, certain sales professionals, and outright con-men are just a few examples. ♦ The person knows they’re lying, but (as above) is suitably wired for the lie to evoke no physical or outward signs of deceit. Their body language does not change as they move in and out of their lies.

Now, as stated above, the chances of meeting these people, them lying to you and you not being able to detect that lie (after reading this book) is very, very small. It’s less than 10%. But, as an added countermeasure to their lies, the detect deceit system includes some non-body language related methods of lie detection. They can be used alongside normal lying tell detection, or – as in the two bulleted scenarios above – if there are no outward signs of deceit but you still feel they may be lying. This ups your chances of lie detection even further, to finally form the most effective and reliable system for the detection of deceit that you can carry around in your mind – no equipment, no charts, no written tests the liar must take…just know-how and knowledge. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

Before moving into the methods, let’s recap on what you’ve learnt so far. After each important section of this book, you’ll notice a similar ‘Strategy Recap’ box to the one below. Each one sums up the main points of the preceding section that you should remember. - Strategy Recap ⇒ People tell lies on a daily basis. While some lies are harmless, having the option of detecting a lie and knowing the truth is always an advantage in life. ⇒ Most people can’t effectively detect a lie because they subconsciously don’t want to admit the truth, are naturally a trusting person, or simply don’t have the required knowledge of how to spot deceit. ⇒ The best way of knowing, over 90% of the time, whether you’re being lied to, is by having an advanced knowledge of tells – the body gestures and actions that reveal our true thoughts, feelings and intentions without us realising.

The Body Language of a Liar It’s time now to look at the specific body language gestures and tells that are most closely associated with the act of lying. These are the ways people move, look, stand, sit, shift, talk and generally behave during and straight after they’ve told you something that isn’t the truth. To better interpret them, it helps to know the two reasons why lying tells emerge in the form of body language. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

1. Internal Conflict Unless medically insane, or, as mentioned earlier, a rare breed of person that populates the small percentage of really difficult to detect liars, everyone knows that telling lies is fundamentally wrong and looked down upon in civilised society by most people. Regardless of whether the liar cares about it being wrong or not, there’s always a certain amount of hesitation or a feeling of guilt that appears a moment before, during and immediately after telling a lie. It’s that guilt or, as is more often the case, the fear of being caught, that the liar has to suppress; and ultimately, it’s the internal conflict that effort to suppress the lie creates that causes leakage of the truth in the form of lying tells and gestures.

2. Hiding of the Truth At its most basic level, a lie is an effort to hide the truth. For a lie to be successfully believed by those who hear it, it must be delivered effortlessly and believably. Doing so involves constructing an alternate story that, depending on the specifics of the lie, will differ from the truth either in some small way, or in absolutely every way. That’s where the difficulty arises for most liars; it takes a lot of concentration and memory to ensure the story is told believably the first time, and repeated later on if necessitated by questions from the person or people the liar is trying to deceive. The pressure of doing all of that together oozes out of the liar usually not in their exact words (because they’re putting all of their effort and concentration into choosing them) but their body language, which ultimately betrays them through its gestures and tells.



DETECT DECEIT They are the two reasons deceitful body language exists when people lie, and now you know them you’re ready to learn exactly what that revealing body language consists of.

There are 7 main categories of deceitful body language, many of which are named according to where on the body the lying tell occurs. They are:

The 7 Types of Body Language That Signal Deceit 1. Uncontrollable Body Signals. - These tells are things we as people have no control of whatsoever, like sweating and blushing. In short, Uncontrollable Body Signals are those that we cannot bring about on demand.

2. Lateral Eye Movements. - The direction in which a liar looks when lying, as opposed to telling the truth.

3. Facial Expressions. - The looks on our faces – smiles, frowns, grimaces, pouts etc.

4. Torso and Body Shifts. - How we move our midsections and body direction while lying.

5. Hand and Arm tells. - The movement and use of both while, during and after telling a lie.



DETECT DECEIT 6. Leg and Feet tells. - The shifting and motion of both when attempting to deceive.

7. Vocal Tells. - Not what we say but the way that we say it.

Uncontrollable Body Signals At some point or other in our lives, we’ve all been extremely embarrassed and self-conscious in front of others. We know we’re acutely embarrassed because of two reasons: Firstly, because of the way we feel. After doing or saying something wrong, we get a sudden tightness in our chests and a pang of embarrassment in our minds, often accompanied by thoughts like, “Oh God, this is embarrassing!” or something along those lines. The second way we know we’re stuck in social mud is from physiological state changes. The most common ways are a bright red, blushing face; dry throat; and flash sweating (a sweat that isn’t caused by the temperature of the room or surroundings, but is instead your body’s reaction to the social pressure you’re suddenly under). All of these outward changes can be attributed to one thing: anxiety. It’s the anxiety of the situation that makes your body change its physiological state in an attempt to cope. Unfortunately, it’s that red face and the sheen of flash sweating that clues others in around you on your embarrassment – and knowing that fact tends to make you even more embarrassed.

These uncontrollable body signals can sometimes also be noticed when people lie, because internal anxiety is often created within the person doing the lying. However, only truly awful liars, or people lying under extremely high pressure go red and start to sweat when they’re dishonest. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT The reason for this is because most people have practised lying from a young age – the ages of 11-16 are particularly formative in terms of developing an ability to lie without showing extreme anxiety. It’s then, in their early teens, that many people find they lie to cope with mounting social pressures, such as sex, masculinity/femininity and social experience. Consequently, the vast majority of people will not break out in a sweat or blush profusely when they lie as adults – simply because they know it would instantly reveal their attempt at deception. - Strategy Recap ⇒ Social anxiety can cause changes in our physiological states such as flash sweating, blushing and a dry throat. ⇒ However, because it takes a massive amount of anxiety to bring about these changes, most people won’t exhibit them when they lie. ⇒

As such, never rely on sweating, blushing or a dry throat in the potential liar to influence your lie detection results. Only terrible liars and those under life-changing amounts of pressure will exhibit them while lying. The chances are, they’re being caused by anxiety that cannot reliably be associated with dishonesty.

Lateral Eye Movements Many people would find it hard to believe that the direction we look in when we talk can represent very specifically what we’re thinking. But it’s true – by simply looking at the way a person’s eyes move when they talk or reply to a question you pose them can give you not only a clear insight



DETECT DECEIT into their thought process, but also – most usefully – tell you whether they’re lying or being truthful.

The way we look around when talking is called lateral eye movement, literally meaning “sideways” eye movement. Its roots as a scientific principle lie in the work of William James, who first wrote about the subject in his book Principles of Psychology (1890). The subject wasn’t picked up, researched and expanded on, however, until the 1970’s. It was during this decade that Neuro-Linguistic Programmers Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Robert Dilts and others experimented further in the area of lateral eye movement, and discovered specifically how the direction of our glances related to our thoughts and feelings. The principle goes like this:

When we talk (and therefore think) about things, we tend to move our eyes in a certain relative direction. The direction we look in depends on the type of thought we’re having. There are 6 different types of thoughts that we can interpret from the direction in which people look while talking – each thought type is represented by a different direction: left and right, up and left & up and right, down and left & down and right. The diagram below shows each type of lateral eye movement and its associated thought type.



DETECT DECEIT

N.B.: The diagram shows the 6 types of lateral eye movement as you face the person. When memorising each movement and its associated meaning, it’s important to remember this.

Created Visual Images

If someone’s asked to imagine the living room of their dream home, they’ll probably look up and to the left (see note above). Their eyes move in this way because they’re accessing and using a certain part of their Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT brain to picture the scene: the area associated with constructing (and inventing) visual images.

Remembered Visual Images If you find yourself in a conversation with someone and you talk about each of your families, the other person will probably briefly look up and to the right before and while describing his sister, mother, brother etc. This is because he’s accessing a special part of his brain to do so – the memory and recollection area. He’s not inventing an image of a person; he’s remembering one.

Created Sounds Asking someone to imagine something they’ve never heard before, such as the sound of someone burping underwater, a piece of music made only by the slapping of a fat belly, or what their voice might sound like in 20 years, usually triggers them to glance straight to the left.

Remembered Sounds “What’s the loudest noise you’ve ever heard?” and “Describe the sound of your girlfriend’s voice,” are two questions that would probably elicit lateral eye movements to right from the person you’re talking to.

Feelings, Sense of Touch Lateral eye movements to the lower left usually indicate the person is thinking about how something feels – like the texture of a shaggy rug, or the smoothness of a silk sheet.



DETECT DECEIT Internal Dialogue When thinking things over in your head to explore a topic and form an opinion, you tend to glance to the lower right. This lateral eye movement, therefore, represents your internal dialogue – your feelings and emotions.

Using Lateral Eye Movements to Expose Dishonesty Having read this far, you’ll have realised – if you didn’t know so already – that spotting a lie successfully and reliably isn’t a case of noticing a single lying tell and forming a conclusion. Likewise, detecting deceit using only the interpretation of a person’s lateral eye movements isn’t reliable enough by itself to decide for sure if a person’s lying. Instead, you use the collective tell detection system, that searches for multiple instances of deceit related body language before finally forming a conclusion on the honesty of a person.

Using lateral eye movements as one form of lie detection, along with the others that follow this section, is extremely powerful and reliable. The reason it’s so effective is because so few people realise that the direction in which they move their eyes whilst talking says something about what they’re thinking. In that sense, it’s an uncontrollable tell – which makes it a more reliable way of detecting a lie.

The most famous and well-known way of traditionally detecting a lie is the polygraph test. It consists of measuring the perspiration levels and changes in blood pressure & respiration of the subject being tested. Once all the equipment has been hooked-up to the subject, the tester begins the process of lie detection – the most common of which is called CQT (Comparison Questions Test). The fundamentals of this testing procedure Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT consist of an initial stage of question asking that does not relate to the main subject of the investigation. They ask the person being tested questions that they know will evoke an honest response; how old they are, where they live and work, and other innocent subject areas are all covered. The purpose of this ‘pre-test’ is to record the bodily reactions the examinee produces when telling the truth and not trying to be deceptive. Doing so allows them to later compare those results with the bodily reactions produced when they think the examinee may be lying and intentionally deceptive. In essence, the pre-test is a yardstick of truth to which the bodily reactions the subject later produces, when asked about the robbery, murder etc., can be compared. If there is a marked difference between the two, the subject is most probably lying.

The reason for me telling you this bit of background information is because the same principle described above is used when detecting lies without machines – the way you can do it. It’s one of the most important aspects of natural lie detection: Comparing what a person does with their body and voice when you know they’re telling the truth, with that which they do when you suspect they’re not, is the most reliable and effective way of detecting their lie. Try and remember that principle, it’ll be picked up on throughout the rest of this book, starting right now with lateral eye movements.

Before learning specifically how to use lateral eye movements to detect deceit, it’s vital you have a solid base to work from in regards to the subject as a whole.



DETECT DECEIT First and foremost, you must memorise each lateral eye movement and its associated thought type. Learn one at a time until you can quickly and efficiently recall them accurately. It’s really important to know them like the back of your hand – there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to detect a lie while simultaneously attempting to recall which way means what.

Soon after learning all 6 of the lateral eye movements and what they represent by heart, make a habit of looking out for them while talking to people on a day-to-day basis. To do this, listen to what they say and separate each statement into the category of lateral eye movement it best falls into. For example, someone might say something along the lines of:

“Yeah, I’ve been there before, a few years ago. I went with my husband, but he didn’t really enjoy the place. The scenery was beautiful though – rolling hills, blue sky and all that. The beach was only a few miles from where we were staying, so we – at least I did – lots of sunbathing. Only problem was the seagulls, they were constantly crowing, or cawing or whatever it’s called, which was annoying.”

In this example, there are two main instances where lateral eye movements could be noticed. First, when she’s describing the scenery. Look out for remembered visual images (glances up and right) at this point. Second, when she mentions the annoying sound of the seagulls – at this point, she’ll probably produce a darting glance straight to the right, because she’s remembering the way they sounded.



DETECT DECEIT After a week or so of that kind of simple practice, you’ll be ready to learn the best part of understanding lateral eye movements – using them to spot lies.

To have the best chance of interpreting lateral eye movements to spot lies correctly, you must use a set system of analysis. It includes two separate phases: observation and comparison.

The observation stage of this lie spotting technique throws up a small, but easily remedied, problem. You see, when talking to someone – no matter who it is – it’s impossible to know whether they’re about to lie to you in some way, small or large. Therefore, how can you possibly know when to begin observing their honest lateral movements, to later be compared to the way they move their eyes when you suspect they could be lying? There are two options, both highly effective and easy to do:

1. Whenever you meet someone for the first time, obverse and remember how he or she uses their eyes while talking about things that you’re sure are honest. Which direction do they tend to glance in most when talking about the things that fall into each lateral eye movement category? When describing visual and audio orientated scenes, do they adhere to the LEM diagrams?

Once you know how they glance and in which direction they look in when you’re sure they’re telling the truth, you’ll be in a strong position: whenever you suspect they’ve uttered a lie, you’ll be able to compare their new lateral eye movements with what you initially observed.



DETECT DECEIT Example:

You’re talking to a car salesman about a sports car you’re interested in. You’ve had your eye on it for a while, but have only just decided to venture into the dealership and check it out further…perhaps even buy it. You know it’s important to get all the right facts on the car before committing to a purchase, and you’ve also heard of how crafty some second-hand car salesmen can be when it comes to telling the truth. So, when you first get talking to the salesman about the car, you make a point of observing and remembering how he moves his eyes when talking about things that you’re sure are truthful. You distinguish in your mind between things he says which involve visual images, sounds, a sense of touch, and internal dialogue – taking note of which lateral eye movements he makes alongside each description or statement. Which does he make most often? Does he usually break eye contact with you, glance to the right and upper right (remembered visuals and sounds) then resume eye contact again etc.? Get a good general feel for how he glances from you, to the sides, when you know he’s telling the truth about simple, uncontested, innocent subject matter.

Once you’ve watched and taken mental note of his truthful lateral eye movements, you can continue to talk to him normally. You now have the information you’ll later use to compare to his lateral eye movements when you think he could be lying.

But what about situations where you aren’t necessarily expecting to be lied to or deceived in some way? For example, day to day conversations with friends, loved ones and co-workers? For these times – which make Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT up the largest part of your social interaction – you can use the second lateral eye movement observation technique. Using this technique, you don’t need to take note of everyone’s own personal usage of lateral eye movements (as the first thing you do when you meet them) in order to use LEM to spot potential lies.

2. Imagine you’re in a conversation with someone and they say something you suspect isn’t strictly the truth. However, for whatever reason, you didn’t use the LEM observation technique above to observe how they move their eyes when speaking about visual and sound related things honestly. To learn how they move their eyes when telling the truth, put the main issue, the lie, to one side for a moment. Ask them some seemingly harmless questions, either indirectly related to the lie or completely unrelated to the suspect statement they’ve made. Doing so will allow you to gauge how they move their eyes when they’re not making things up, so that you can more easily distinguish the contrasting lateral eye movements – the glances that signal deceit.

Example: You’re talking to a friend/work colleague about sport and he mentions that he used to box professionally and was very successful at it for a time. He goes even further by saying that he was honoured as fighter of the year in his weight category. You have your doubts as to whether what he’s saying is true, however. The plan at this point is to ask him a few questions that’ll evoke natural, honest LEM responses. Then, once you’ve seen and remembered them, you can go back to the subject of him being a boxing big shot in his heyday.



DETECT DECEIT You: “Boxing? That’s interesting – I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who’s boxed professionally before. Like most people, I’ve obviously seen a few matches on T.V. though. Do you watch any of the big boxing fights on television now you don’t fight yourself?”

Firstly, posing a question like the one above doesn’t insight a new lie (if he’s lying at all), which is important when trying to evoke natural LEM responses. He’s under no pressure to lie and say he does watch boxing, if (as he does) he thinks you believe he used to box professionally himself – he’ll gain no extra recognition points for lying about watching the sport if in fact he does not. Secondly, to answer the question he has no option but to think back to the times he’s watched sport on T.V. As an extra method of getting him to visually remember something, you are specific in saying: “any of the big boxing fights.” By asking about the big fights specifically, you lessen the chance of him answering your question without thinking visually about a remembered time he watched some of the big matches. The split second you finish asking your question, his mind will automatically flash back to remembered visual imagery – which will cause natural LEM responses. The chances are he’ll glance up and to the right while thinking about his answer, then look back at you to answer the question verbally. This is all you need. Now you move back onto the direct topic of him boxing himself as a professional fighter. You now ask him another question that, if he’s lying, will force him to make something up in his head. For example:

You: “…yeah, that was a great fight – really close till the last round. Back when you fought, though, how did you cope with the crowds? I



DETECT DECEIT always imagine the immense noise they make – the shouting and cheering – surely it threw you a little? Put you off?”

If he really did fight professionally, he’ll know what the crowds sounded like all those years ago, as if it were yesterday. In order to answer your question, he’ll either think back to those times and then construct an answer to your question, OR, having never fought and heard a massive crowd shouting his name, he’ll think of how he imagines it’d sound. The second you finish asking the question watch for his lateral eye movements. If he glances to the left, then back to you, the chances are he’s creating a thought, not recalling one. He’s probably lying. If, however, he looks to the right, he probably is remembering the good old days. The comparison phase of using lateral eye movements to detect possible deceit is over and you can now form a conclusion. The conclusion is based on the differences between his glances when telling the truth and his glances when talking about what you suspect may have been a lie. If there’s a stark difference in glance direction (basically, if they’re opposite to each other), there’s a strong chance he’s lying.

More information on using Lateral Eye Movements to aid in accurate lie detection The information you’ve read so far on implementing LEM to spot deceit is reliable enough to use with most people, most of the time. However, there are a couple of instances when you should be extra careful in what you deduce from a person’s lateral eye movements when you think they might be lying. The first is when talking to lefthanders. People who are predominantly left-handed tend to use LEM



DETECT DECEIT in the opposite way to right-handed men and women. However, this needn’t make the process more difficult. There’s a simple way to change strategy when talking to a left-handed person.

It’s very simple, reliable, and effective enough to be trusted in most cases. All you do is swap each glance direction around. So, a visually remembered thought in a left-handed person would cause a glance to the upper left, instead of the upper right. A created visual thought, conversely, would trigger a quick glance to the upper right. Chances are, though, you’ll notice straight away their LEM’s are reversed when observing how they talk naturally and truthfully, so all you need do is look out for LEM’s in the opposite direction to signal a lie (created imagery and sounds). What if the person I’m talking to stares straight ahead at me and doesn’t glance to the sides when talking and answering my questions? The vast majority of people conform in some way, small or large, with the LEM diagrams, but every now and then, you may come across someone who doesn’t. The reason can always be attributed to one of two things:

1. They have developed a natural habit of always maintaining eye contact when talking to people. In this case, you simply resort to using other deceitful body language detection techniques.

2. They’re increasing their eye contact with you because they’re lying – so lateral eye movements aren’t noticeable or present. The full explanation for this is explained in the next section of deceitful body language: facial expressions. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

Bare in mind, a person who uses no lateral eye movements when talking to you truthfully or when lying is very rare, so you needn’t worry about coming across one and not being able to detect their lies. The reason? You can use any number of other methods of interpreting their body language to sniff out a lie. After all, collective tell detection is what it’s all about when it comes to correctly deciding on whether you’re being lied to. - Strategy Recap ⇒ When we think different kinds of thoughts during conversation, we move our eyes in different directions. Interpreting these lateral eye movements can give a strong indication of whether someone’s lying or telling the truth. ⇒ There are two phases when using LEM’s to spot lies: observation and comparison. First, take note of the glance directions made by the person you think has or may tell a lie, when you know they’re telling the truth. Then, coax them into talking about a visual or sound related detail of the possible lie. ⇒ Remember to phrase your questions so that you don’t appear as if you’re testing them or are suspicious of what they’ve said. If their lateral eye movements are opposite to those made during your initial observation, there’s a good chance they’re lying. ⇒ Reverse the LEM directions and associated thought types for lefthanded people.



DETECT DECEIT

Facial Expressions: What you can and cannot tell from the look on someone’s face. Humans have the most highly developed and intricate facial muscles of any species on the planet. Couple that with the fact that our social world is also the most complex and advanced, and it’s not surprising that just a single human facial expression can speak volumes on how we’re feeling – or, how we want to appear to be feeling – to everyone around use that witnesses it.

We use hundreds of facial expressions a day for a massive variety of purposes – to let others know we’re angry, upset, interested, bored, happy or confused etc. The list of emotions that can be expressed through the way we use our eyes, mouths and other sets of facial muscles is seemingly endless. As well as genuinely expressing how we feel at any given moment, facial expressions can, and regularly are, faked and fabricated to affect the people around us in ways that’ll help use get their attention, sympathy, kindness, or even love. In short, everyone is a master at social manipulation through manufactured facial expressions.

For example, feeling left out, a girl who’s jealous of her boyfriend having a long, interesting conversation with one his male friends on a night out, might – using just her facial expressions – communicate a feeling of annoyance and boredom to him. When asked by her boyfriend what the matter is (who can’t help but notice the sour look on her face), she’s placed in a strong position, able to verbally create any reason for feeling angry or upset. Her facial expressions were used as a tool to insert herself into his immediate thoughts – a manipulation of that specific social situation. Another case of manufactured facial expressions: It’s Christmas Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT morning, 9 AM. Jake, a 19-year-old student, has just finished unwrapping a present from his folks, who are sitting on the couch in front of him with big smiles of expectancy on their faces. Before the festive wrapping paper has even touched the floor, he’s caught sight of what the present is: a cheap bike helmet that’s a poor imitation of the one he’d asked and hoped for. Not wanting to upset or embarrass his parents, he beams a bright, pearly smile and looks at the shiny blue helmet wide-eyed, excited and pleased. He may not feel happy, but he sure does look it to his parents – all thanks to his talent of using facial expressions to mask his true feelings.

But it’s not just a select few people who have a skill for using facial expressions to control social situations; we all have that innate ability. The reason is because of how aware we are of what our faces look like and how our different facial expressions are interpreted by others, which improves our ability to control them for our own means. Looking at photos and videos of ourselves, watching sitcoms and movies full of close-ups of the actors’ faces, and even gazing at our reflections in the mirror before we go to work in the morning: all of these things heighten our perception and understanding of our facial expressions. And, therefore, increase our ability to control them convincingly.

As a result of this expert self-awareness and control, we’re also able to very authentically control our facial expressions while lying. And that’s a vital thing you need to remember:



DETECT DECEIT Because we know people are always looking at our faces for clues on how we’re feeling, we’ve become experts at controlling our facial expressions and thereby tricking others into assuming we’re in one mood, when in fact we’re in another. As such, you should never trust a potential liar’s facial expressions unquestioningly. Instead, you should look out for the two sub-categories of facial expressions that people find most difficult to fake convincingly: ♦ Eye contact ♦ Smiles

These are two types of facial body language that can, regardless of our expert ability to fake expressions, be used to gauge the truthfulness of any person.

Eye contact You can tell a lot about how a person feels about you from the amount and kind of eye contact they give you during conversation. Noticing very little eye contact may suggest they’re feeling bored. While a heavy, unbroken gaze can bring about intense feelings of attraction, or even love. Numerous scientific studies have shown that the act of two strangers simply staring into each other’s eyes for 2 minutes was enough to create passionate feelings for each other (Kellerman, Lewis, Laird, 1989). So, it’s clear that eye contact is a strong indicator and reflection of how a person feels both about the situation they’re in while talking to you, and how they feel towards you at that time. Combining both of these points, it becomes obvious that the type of eye contact a person gives while lying Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT differs greatly from that which they give when telling you the truth. It’s the detection of those differences that will allow you to watch how they gaze or don’t gaze at you during conversation, and use that information to gauge accurately whether they’re being deceitful or telling the truth. There are two main eye contact deceit indicators you should look out for: aversion and amplification.

Eye Contact Aversion Averting the eyes and lessening the amount of eye contact given during conversation is often a noticeable trait in liars of low to intermediate skill level. The reason they tend to look at you less while being dishonest is because of the internal anxiety they’re feeling – it’s almost as if they feel you’ll be able to see right through their charade if given the chance to look deep into their eyes. They are, after all, commonly known as the windows to the soul because of their expressiveness, and many people are subconsciously aware of this fact and unknowingly decrease the amount of eye contact they give while lying to try and avoid being betrayed by their eyes.

Eye Contact Amplification Liars who are more skilled deceivers tend to do the opposite to eye contact aversion, and actually increase the duration of their gazes while talking to you. They do this subconsciously to counteract the widely held belief that people, while lying, become shifty-eyed (aversion). The problem for those that subliminally increase eye contact to offset the revealing effect aversion can have, is that they usually overcompensate – they increase their eye contact with you too much, making it detectable and therefore a good indicator of deceit. Most people while lying tend to Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT amplify and increase their eye contact with you, as opposed to averting their gaze, simply because the vast majority of people are subconsciously aware of the shifty-eyed principle just mentioned.

Using changes in eye contact to detect distortions of the truth People who are fair to intermediate at telling lies are likely to use eye contact aversion to help increase their chances of not being detected. Those that are naturally better at telling convincing lies, or that have rehearsed and told the same lie many times, tend to increase eye contact with you to offset the revealing effect they know shifty-eyes can have. So, how can you know which to look for and take into account when determining for sure whether or not someone’s manipulating you by telling a lie? The answer lies in comparison – just like the analytical system used when interpreting lateral eye movements.

1. Take a mental note of how the person generally looks at you while talking about different topics, most of which will probably be the truth. Do they hold your gaze for longer than they avoid it? Do they consistently glance around you, rather than at you? Get a good feel for how they commonly use eye contact while both in the listening and speaking role of conversation.

2. When talking about questionable topics that may in fact be lies, do they use eye contact aversion or amplification? Compare their new gaze behaviour with what you originally noticed.



DETECT DECEIT - Strategy

Recap

⇒ When lying, people tend to either decrease their eye contact with you, in an effort to avoid being uncovered, or increase and overcompensate their gazes to avoid appearing shifty-eyed. By noticing changes in how they look at you while talking, you can use eye contact indicators to detect deceit.

⇒

Compare how they usually look at you against their eye contact when you suspect they could be lying. If there is a noticeable difference, either signalled by aversion or amplification, there’s a strong chance they’re trying to deceive you.

Smiles: Separating the real from the fake The act of smiling can be noticed across the world – regardless of race, age, culture or sex – as a highly recognisable emotive facial expression. It’s the most powerful type of facial expression humans can communicate with their faces because it has so many incarnations, each with subtle differences that together form the type of smile produced. In fact, the power of smiles is so great that many sub-smile categories have been established and given specific names to aid their accurate description. There are grins, smirks, sneers, snarls, grimaces, pouts and simpers – each one with its own meaning and common response. Furthermore, there are dozens of different situations where smiling may be used a social mechanism. Here are three instances where 3 different smiles are used for 3 different reasons. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

♦

A watchful woman, waiting at an airport arrival terminal, catches sight of her long lost sister, who’s flown thousands of miles to see her for the first time in 25 years. As a massive mix of different emotions swell inside her, she spots her sister coming out of the pedestrian tunnel and spontaneously breaks out in a joyous smile, from ear to ear.

♦

Arriving at a restaurant, where they have a table booked for a romantic meal, a couple are greeted by the maître d', who gives them both a cursory smile before directing them to their table by the window. After seating them, the maître d' returns to his post near the entrance, ready to greet and smile at another arriving party.

♦

A middle-management employee is giving his first company presentation, but has forgotten to properly order his information slides. As he fumbles through them, trying to separate and re-order them as quickly as possible, he glances up at the seated crowed in front of him and gives a fleeting, anxious smile – “I won’t be a moment!” he says.

The list of smile variations goes on and on – in fact, it’s potentially infinite, as every person has an individual portfolio of smiles, each with its own minute differences and connotations. The only unifying fact that ultimately can be attributed to the act of smiling is that they’re so easily manufactured by all members of society. Just like most other facial expressions, we as people are acutely aware of how to create smiles to lubricate and control social situations. In fact, we’re so advanced at counterfeiting them that we’re even able to convey a feeling of sadness and discontent simply through smiling in a certain way – by producing a tense, closed lip smile, with the corners of the mouth slightly turned Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT down. People around us get an immediate sense of how we feel from this smile: “They feel upset or uneasy, but are putting on a brave face and trying to hide how they feel.” In actuality, the chances are the person isn’t simply hiding their inner feelings badly, by producing an unconvincing smile, but instead uses an obviously faked smile to let others know they’re uncomfortable but staying strong, to elicit some attention from those that notice. In this manner, we all use carefully chosen and constructed smiles to alter how people react to us in social life, and thereby improve the situation and guide it on the path we’d most like it to follow.

The fact that everyone has this ability to easily produce smiles – to disarm someone, to appease them, to fake being in a good mood, etc. – makes spotting counterfeit smiles produced while lying much more difficult for those that aren’t trained in the interpretation of mouth tells. In fact, most people, when presented with a counterfeit smile, will react in just the same they would if the smile they were given was genuine and heart-felt. That’s how bad most people are at telling apart real smiles from those that are fake. Fortunately, there are a few very distinct differences between a real smile and one that’s counterfeit that practically all people exhibit when lying and smiling at the same time.

As well as those interpretable differences, there are also variations in the amount of smiling a liar does when talking to you, compared to when they’re telling the truth and feeling comfortable in themselves. Before looking at the main differences between real and fake smiles, it’s important to understand why counterfeit smiles are produced at all when people lie. Why don’t they simply smile for real when trying to deceive you? Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

The 2 main reasons people change the way they smile when lying As we’ve already established, the internal anxiety people experience while lying leads to leakage of the truth through their body language and general behaviour. Even if they morally couldn’t care less about lying to you, the fact they know that’s what they’re doing, coupled with the fact that lying takes a different kind of concentration and focus than are used when telling the truth, is enough to clearly reveal their dishonesty. The reason people change the way they smile when lying to you is represented fully by that leakage principle. Put simply, when they lie to you, they cannot maintain their usual, honest method of smiling because they’re focussed too intently on telling you their constructed lie. Here are the two ways liars tend to change the way they smile:

1. Volume of smiles

2. Smile authenticity

Volume of smiles

A lot of people think that when someone lies, they smile more often, in an effort to mask their dishonesty. They assume this because they’re know that smiling, as in the employee giving his first presentation example, is a common way of hiding internal anxiety. And that lying often causes that kind of anxiety – so they conclude that the volume of smiles someone uses when lying will increase, in an effort to hide the internal anxiety



DETECT DECEIT lying can induce. In fact, scientific studies have proven the exact opposite.

Just like eye contact, most liars are aware that others will assume a certain type of change in a liar’s behaviour will occur – so they instead go in the opposite direction. In the case of smiling while lying, that means decreasing the number of smiles they give you. However, that doesn’t mean they won’t smile at all.

Smile authenticity

Liars tend to use counterfeit smiles when they’re being dishonest. The reason they don’t produce authentic smiles is because the situation they’ve created isn’t for real – it’s constructed, and that fabrication takes a certain amount of effort to maintain.

So, their constant effort to keep up that façade inhibits their ability to feel at ease and comfortable – which are the two criteria anyone needs to produce genuine, warm smiles. Now you know why a liar is most likely to use fake smiles, it’s vital you know how to tell apart a fake smile from one that’s real.

How to quickly and easily spot a fake smile There are 4 potential differences between a real smile and the kind of fake smile used by liars who are preoccupied with the act of being dishonest. How many of these 4 signs a liar exhibits depends on their ability to lie well; the poorer they are at lying, the more signs they’re likely to produce. The better they at twisting the truth, the fewer they’ll produce. But, regardless of their lying proficiency, they’re always likely Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT to produce at least a couple of them. And it’s these differences that you can detect and consider when ultimately deciding on the truthfulness of the person you’re talking to.

1. Region

Fake smiles are initiated by a different part of the brain to real smiles, therefore subtle differences between the facial regions involved when fake smiling, to those used when smiling for real, can be noticed. Counterfeit smiles are predominantly confined to the bottom-half of the face – the mouth region. This is because the liar is consciously manufacturing the smile. As well as the main activity noticed in the mouth region of the face, real smiles involve the muscles around the eyes, which tighten up, producing small wrinkles and pulling down the eyebrows slightly. With fake smiles, this does not happen.

2. Duration

When people smile while lying, they aren’t genuinely feeling the type of emotion that warrants a smile (hence the reason for faking them). Because of this, they find it difficult to judge how long to let the smile Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT last for, and tend to maintain the counterfeit smile for too long. Real smiles are reflections of a dynamic moment during a conversation or situation that usually appears quickly then evolves. Therefore, authentic smiles aren’t typically maintained for more than a few seconds in their full, beaming form. Fake smiles, however, remain for a disproportionate amount of time when compared to the stimulus that supposedly brought them about.

3. Symmetry

Because, as just mentioned, the neural pathways associated with voluntary (fake) smiles and those associated with involuntary (real) smiles are different, you can often notice differences in the symmetry of each smile type. Fake smiles often appear more lop-sided and asymmetrical than real smiles – with the largest part of the smile most often appearing on the right side of the mouth. Real smiles, however, appear on both sides of the face.

4. Composition

Fake smiles are produced as a conscious way of fooling someone into believing you’re feeling one way, when in fact you’re feeling another. As such, they tend to be composed and constructed much more rapidly than real smiles, which are unconscious reactions to a situation. Real smiles appear to fade in and fade out, whereas the point at which a fake smile appears and disappears is much more pronounced and definable.



DETECT DECEIT They are the 4 differences between authentic and counterfeit smiles that can be used to gauge the truthfulness of someone you’re talking to, or even when watching them from a distance. However, you can further increase the accuracy of smile interpretation by using the observation and comparison principle detailed in the lateral eye movement section. Simply take note of how the person you’re dealing with smiles most often – how long they last, the regions of the face that are involved in the smile, its symmetry, and how quickly it’s composed and disassembled. The differences between their fake and authentic smiles will then be highlighted further when you come to compare their usual smiling technique with the way they smile when you suspect they could be lying. - Strategy Recap ⇒ Smiling is the most powerful form of facial expression, with hundreds of different variations, each able to be used in different circumstances to achieve different social results. As such, people are highly adept at faking smiles to lubricate and control their interactions

with

others.

For

most

people,

this

makes

differentiating between counterfeit and authentic smiles very difficult. ⇒

However, there are 4 differences between real and fake smiles that can be noticed in the vast majority of liars. They are region, duration, symmetry and composition. Look out for all 4 of these tell tale signs of smiling deceit when detecting lies. And, to further aid in the accurate detection of dishonesty, compare the person’s usual method of smiling with the way they smile during potentially deceitful statements and conversation. As always, a marked difference between the two is a strong indicator that the truth is being manipulated.



DETECT DECEIT

Torso and Body Shifts: How people move their midsections and alter their body direction when they lie Another way in which the internal anxiety created by lying leaks out of a person in the form of body language is in torso shifts and alterations to body direction.

When we talk to one another, regardless of where we are and whether we’re standing or sitting, the way we face the other person reflects how interested we are in them and what they’re saying. In one-on-one conversations, changes in the way someone faces you or directs their body can signal a change in interest or rise in internal anxiety – especially the kind of anxiety and uneasiness deceptiveness can bring about. It’s the analysis of these torso and body direction alterations that can be used as another body language indicator of deceit. There are two main ways in which a liar might shift their bodies:

1. Facing direction

2. Fidgeting

Facing direction

Two office workers are standing next to the copy machine, discussing a company memo that was sent by higher-management to all employees in their department. It “reminded” all staff that email access is for work related reasons only and cannot be used for recreational purposes – the minimal punishment for doing so is an official reprimand, the maximum: Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT permanent layoff. Max, clearly worried about the knock-on effect one person’s rule breaking could have on him, is talking to his fellow worker, Alex, who’s a new, inexperienced employee, having only been with the firm a few weeks. Max voices his opinion on the person who’s potentially putting others’ jobs in jeopardy by breaching the company regulations. Alex agrees; whoever’s using the email services for anything but work is being reckless and irresponsible. As he replies in agreement, Alex turns away from Max to glance to his right at nothing in particular – Max takes over the speaking role and continues expressing his strong opinions. Alex, though, doesn’t turn back to properly face Alex for 30 or more seconds. Instead, he maintains his angled standing position, facing Max at at least a 30-degree angle. Max fails to notice this change in Alex’s facing direction, and continues to talk.

When analysing why Alex changed the direction of his body, it’s important to consider at which point in the conversation he altered his angle of stance. Crucially, it wasn’t when the topic of rule breaking was raised, but rather when Max mentioned how irresponsible and at fault the rule breaker was. It’s unlikely an honest person (not the person breaking the rules) would feel self-conscious or at risk when Alex mentioned the employee at fault. It’s much more likely they’d engage in the conversation further, and heartily express their discontent to Max and thereby become more socially accepted by him – a more experienced, respected worker. Instead, Alex was the culprit and suddenly felt under pressure when Max mentioned the person breaking the rules. So his natural reaction was to escape the awkward situation. He couldn’t simply run away, because that’d seem very strange and possibly incriminate him more than if he stayed talking to Max. So, he did the closest thing he could to fleeing by turning his body away from Max, in an unconscious Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT attempt to seek an escape route and distance himself from the uncomfortable situation.

Fidgeting (Minor Torso Shifts)

Two women are sitting in the leather corner seat of a trendy wine bar. They work together during the week and see each other socially at the weekends – if asked, they’d probably consider each other good, but not particularly close, friends. Jessica changes the conversation topic to a guy who works at their company, and continues on to say how, a few weeks ago, she thinks he was making advances towards her, but just recently seems to have stopped – he’s now friendly, but otherwise cold and business-like. Claire, who’s actually just recently begun seeing the very same “guy from work” immediately feels she’s in a difficult dilemma. Before she has a chance to decide whether to be honest or to lie to her friend, Jessica asks: “Has he come-on to you at all?” Taken by surprise, Claire – quite convincingly – says: “No. To be honest, I’ve hardly seen him around. Is he the tall one? Brown hair?” “No, he’s blonde. Well, I don’t know, I guess I was wrong about him liking me.” Claire feels relieved: her friend believed her and the question about his hair colour, even though she knows it very, very well, seemed to do the trick. Jessica didn’t suspect anything. However, since the moment the issue was raised – and despite the success of her lie – Claire’s felt a fair degree of internal anxiety, which is now, as Jessica continues to talk about the guy from work, showing itself in the way she’s moving her body. She can’t face slightly away from her friend, as in the example above, because of the way they’re seated, so to lessen the intensity of the situation and subconsciously “escape” the issue, she’s fidgeting. Every 10 seconds or so, she rocks her body slightly, re-crosses her legs, or squirms in some Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT small way with her mid-section. Jessica, still thinking and talking rapidly about the guy she thought wanted her, fails to notice the way Claire is fidgeting in an attempt to dissipate the internal anxiety telling a lie created.

- Strategy Recap ⇒ Internal anxiety caused by lying can reveal itself externally in many ways. One common way is changes to the facing direction of the body and in an increase of unexplained fidgeting.

⇒

Shifts in the angle of one’s stance occur as a subconscious attempt to escape or flee from a situation made awkward by one’s own lie. So, when a sensitive issue is raised (one that relates to a possible lie a person has told) keep a look out for subtle alterations in body direction as a sign of deceit. If you can think of no other reason why a person would suddenly feel anxious or rapidly disinterested during the conversation, other than because they’re being dishonest in some way, there’s a strong chance they’re attempting to deceive you. Bear this in mind for when you come to decide on their ultimate trustworthiness.



DETECT DECEIT

Hand tells: How the use and movement of their hands reveal a liar’s deceitful intentions Stretching right back to the time when we first freed them up as humans by walking on two feet, we’ve been able to use our hands as tools – to pick up, push, pull, lift, twist, punch and pass. And as our societies evolved and inter-personal communication flourished, so did the complexity and expressiveness of our hand gestures. Instead of just using them for strictly practical and physical applications, we began to pair the way we moved our hands – our gesticulations – with what we said verbally. In this way, we were, and are, able to underscore, highlight and reinforce the things we say. In fact, the visual clarity of our hand gestures can be so strong, that we can express a very specific thought or mood without saying anything at all: a triumphant sportsman may clench and shake his fist in the air to signify his victory. Or a master chef, after tasting a difficult-to-master soup dish cooked by one of his students, may pinch his index finger and thumb together in a circle to give a positive ‘OK sign’. Or, clasp his index and middle fingers together with his thumb, with his other fingers folded in, and bring them to his lips with a light kiss, to show his satisfaction with the well-prepared, perfectly seasoned soup dish.

There are thousands of other hand-gestures that all have individual meanings and applications. Along with the two examples above, many of them are easily interpreted and understood as reflections of a certain mood or thought – someone who gets “flipped the bird,” for example, rarely fails to identify the intention of the person doing the “flipping.” But when it comes to noticing more subtle movements of the hands Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT during conversation, and realising how they relate to what a person is saying, most people are less adept at accurate interpretation. The chances are, after talking to someone for a while, most people will only be able to give a very broad description of how the other person used and moved their hands: “They were very animated” or, “They were quite wooden and lifeless.”

These descriptions don’t fully represent what the other person did with their hands and most importantly, why they used and moved them in the way they did. So, it‘s not surprising that the vast majority of people fail to notice the subtle differences in the hand gestures a person makes while lying. It’s these revealing tells that we’ll look at in this chapter.

There are two main signs of deceit that can be noticed from the way in which someone changes their hand gestures. They are:

1. Hand Gesture Frequency

2. Hand-to-Face Actions

Hand Gesture Frequency When we talk, we wave our hands about to visually illustrate and emphasise our statements – it’s like we’re painting an abstract picture in the air to better help the person or people we’re talking to understand the concepts we’re covering. For example, a government speaker, during an important point in their speech, might form an open, upturned claw with their right hand and gesture with it in front of their body. This is a way of emphasising how important it is for the audience to grasp the particular



DETECT DECEIT concept the gesture’s paired with – so, the hand is used in a grasping motion, like it’s tightly holding an invisible ball.

When someone lies, though, they feel it’s important to communicate as little as possible on the dishonest subject, so limit themselves to just a few basic, verbal descriptions and statements. Subconsciously, this attempt to limit what they reveal to the person they’re lying to means they gesticulate with their hands less. It’s as if they know, deep in their subliminal mind, how much hand movements express and intensify statements, so – worried their lie will be revealed if covered in too much detail – they lessen the movement of their hands.

Example:

Sitting in the living room in front of the T.V., two buddies are passionately talking about the football game that’s just finished. Simon, who’s a long time sports fan, is describing the skill and finesse of one of the players, as he sprinted through the opposing side to finally score the pivotal game goal. As he articulates the player’s run, he moves his hands – jabbing and sweeping them in the air to visually illustrate his words, and to match the rhythm of his enthusiastic description.

Frank then picks up the speaking role and comments on what Simon just described as a textbook example of football skill and technique – he disagrees, however. “He clearly got lucky, the other players’ positions allowed him through, it didn’t take any skill. It’s just like what he did in last week’s game – the very same thing, just sprinted through by chance. Did you even see that game?” Simon didn’t. But, not wanting to concede Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT the point he just made about the player’s skill and also not wanting to undermine his standing as a knowledgeable, hardcore sports fan, he decides to lie. “Yeah, I saw it. It was skill then too! You just don’t understand. The way he got control of the ball and weaved his way through the opposition and even his own players, striding and turning up the field…it was probably a better example of skill than even this game! You’re completely wrong.”

While Simon’s description of the player’s performance last week, even though he didn’t see it, was convincing, a change in his hand gestures revealed his intention to deceive. Unlike during his first passionate articulation of the player in the game they’d just watched, the frequency of his hand gestures – the waving, pointing and cutting of the air using the blade of his palms – was vastly reduced. As explained earlier, in his mind he was less confident and sure about making the false statement than he was about describing something he’d actually seen. So, in an effort to limit the information his friend could potentially use to uncover his deceit, he unknowingly lessened the frequency and power of his hand gestures.

Hand-to-face Actions As just explained, when people lie they tend to decrease their hand gesticulations and movements while talking. However, when someone lies, one type of hand movement tends to increase – hand-to-face actions. These are times when the person touches their face with either of their hands for no reason other than because they are lying. There are many forms a hand-to-face action can take, but there are 2 main kinds that most



DETECT DECEIT strongly signal the presence of deceit. They are the mouth cover and the nose tap/rub.

Mouth Cover

We all touch our mouths every now and then when in conversation – to brush away some dust or a hair, to soothe sour lips, or just for just to occupy one of our hands for a brief moment. But liars have different, subconscious motivations for covering or touching their mouths. Their false stories are communicated to others via their mouths, in the words that they use – as such, it’s their voices that carry the deceitful message. Subconsciously, their brains are aware of this and, knowing the social impact being discovered as dishonest can have, want to stifle the lie in some way. So, the liars increase the frequency of their hand-to-mouth gestures, periodically covering their mouth in a half-hearted attempt to gag themselves and halt the lie, thus eradicating the chance of being caught. In an ideal world, they’d stop lying by ceasing to talk – but as they’re already committed to describing a falsehood, the best they can do is futilely block their mouths with their hands.

This gesture of covering one’s mouth, however, can often prove very noticeable to the person being conned, as it’s the most obvious way of stifling one’s deceitful words. Because of this, another hand-to-face action has evolved which less obviously blocks a liar’s untruth. It is the nose tap/rub.



DETECT DECEIT Nose Tap/Rub

The purpose of a liar casually tapping or gently rubbing his nose while lying is the same as with the covering of their mouth directly with their fingers

or

whole

hand.

It’s

a

way

of

subconsciously interrupting the flow of the lie, thereby – in their mind – lessening the chance of being caught.

But a better way of doing this is by touching or rubbing the nose, which much more stealthily covers the mouth without it being obvious to anyone watching the liar’s hand actions. In the mind of someone listening to them lying, a simple rub or tap of the nose could be because of an itch, tickle or for some other innocuous reason. In reality, it’s a disguised mouth cover – and a good indicator that dishonesty is present.

Both the nose tap/rub and the mouth cover can be made using a wide variety of hand configurations and variations: sometimes a liar will use a single finger to rub their nose, while other times they’ll cover their mouths with almost their whole hand.

Likewise, there are other ways liars obstruct their verbal lies by subconsciously blocking or covering their mouths – some of the most common are described below. Remember, though, that it’s the action of mouth covering that can signal deceit, not necessarily the specific way in which they go about blocking their words.

♦

Stroking of the Chin: A casual rub of the chin using the hand, while the fingers lightly spread over the mouth.



DETECT DECEIT

♦

Cheek Graze: A rubbing of either cheek using the opposite hand (left cheek, right hand/right hand, left cheek). The hand crosses over to block the mouth.

♦

The Eyebrow Scratch: One or more fingers are used to casually scratch an imaginary itch – the real purpose of the hand-to-face gesture being a subconscious obstruction of the mouth.

♦

The Nose Pinch: A curled index finger and extended thumb are used to lightly pinch or tug on the nose for split second – similar to when a person touches their nose when they have a cold, to suppress the tickling sensation they’re feeling.

There’s another reason people tend to touch their noses when lying, completely separate from the disguised mouth cover explanation – although they often both go hand in hand. It involves physiological changes in blood flow, caused by the slight increase in tension telling a lie creates.

This increase causes blood to initially drain from the liar’s face, then, after a few moments, the blood flow to their face returns to normal. It’s the blood flow to the deep tissues in the nose, however, that creates a tickling sensation the liar is not even aware of.

This vaso-congestion of blood creates an almost irresistible urge for the person to reach up and touch their nose – either with a rub, gentle tug, scratch or some other form of caress.



DETECT DECEIT Coupled with the mouth-cover, this second sign of deceit makes Nose Taps/Rubs one of the best gesture types to look for when detecting a lie. It’s also the most common hand-to-face action associated with deceit because it’s a discreet way of covering the mouth.

There’s one final type of hand gesture that you should look for as sign of dishonesty, called the Hand Shrug. Although it’s not a hand-to-face action, like mouth covers and nose taps/rubs, it is a trait that can often be noticed in even the most convincing of liars.

The Hang Shrug When people don’t know the answer to something

or

want

to

convey

the

messages: “I’m not sure,” or “I don’t care,” they often lift and quickly drop their shoulders in a shrugging motion. We all do this as way of telling the person asking us a question, or telling us something we aren’t interested in, that we’re not the right person to be talking to about the topic they’ve raised. A variation of shoulder shrugging is the hand shrug: a quick lifting and dropping of one or both upturned hands.

Like shrugging with the shoulders, it’s a way of expressing a type of diminished responsibility in regards to an issue or topic – and that’s why liars tend to overuse the hand shrug while being dishonest. Instead of using it only to accompany words that express a feeling of uncertainty or ambivalence – the way people do when being honest – liars use the hand Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT shrug alongside verbal statements that don’t relate to “not knowing” or “not caring”. They do this subconsciously to distance themselves from the lie they’re telling. - Strategy Recap ⇒ We use our hands to visually add impact to the things we say: waving them, pointing and drawing imaginary objects in the air…there are hundreds of ways we underscore and emphasise our words using the movement of our hands. ⇒ Subconsciously, liars are aware of the expressiveness of hand gestures and therefore unknowingly reduce the amount of hand gesticulations they make while lying, in an attempt to protect themselves and lessen the chances of being caught. ⇒ While the frequency of general hand gesticulations may be reduced when someone lies, their hand-to-face actions actually tend to increase. Look out for mouth covers and, particularly, disguised mouth covers in the form of nose, cheek and eyebrow touching.

⇒

Lastly, liars tend to overuse hand shrugs in an attempt to distance themselves from their lie and therefore diminish their overall responsibility and accountability. Keep an eye out for large increases in the use of this particular hand tell as a sign of dishonesty.



DETECT DECEIT

Leg and Feet tells The reason leg and feet tells occur when a person lies is the same as why hand tells are produced: they’re an external reflection of the liar’s internal anxiety. And, no matter how good a liar is, it’s nigh on impossible to fully keep that internal anxiety on the inside – in some form or another, it leaks out in an interpretable body language gesture or communication clue. So, why is it necessary to explain leg tells separately to hand tells if, after all, they’re both an external product of the same internal emotion? The answer lies in awareness.

Because our legs are more out of our sight than our hands, we’re less aware of the movements and tells we produce with them. And because people are less aware of what they’re doing with their legs than their hands, they tend to control and restrict their movement less when they lie. This means body language slip-ups in the lower half of the body are often more noticeable and reliable than those produced in the upper half.

There are 4 leg and feet tells you should look for:

- Foot tapping/jiggling

- Leg and feet direction & adjustments

- Leg squeezing as a tension release mechanism

- Self-comforting through leg crossing



DETECT DECEIT

Foot tapping/jiggling You’ve probably heard of the ‘fight or flight’ response – a scientific principle developed by Walter Cannon in the 20’s. In essence, it describes the psychological position someone is put in when under a lot of pressure (whether it’s social or otherwise), which is why it’s often known as the ‘acute stress response’.

Finding ourselves in very awkward and stressful situations, we all have two choices: abandon the situation (flight) or face the situation and tackle the threat (fight). It’s the times that we choose to remain in the stressful situation that often cause telltale signs of stress through our body language – revealing to those that can properly interpret physical gestures the fact that we’re anxious and under pressure. And it’s most often the case that liars, who have created the stressful situation they’re in through being deceitful, have no choice other than to stick it out and fight the threat – which, in their case, is usually having their dishonesty discovered. As such, their internal stress (caused by a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system) causes stress tells which you can observe and use as evidence of potential lie telling.

A common ‘stress tell’ is foot tapping/jiggling, and the reason for the presence of this kind of movement can be directly attributed to the flight or fight philosophy. If someone panics after telling a lie because they fear they’ll be discovered or asked impossible to answer questions on the issue they’ve invented, they could, theoretically, walk or run away from the person or people they’ve just lied to. But doing so would seem an incredibly strange and abnormal thing to do in the minds of those who see witness the liar run away after saying what they initially assumed was the Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT truth. The only reasonable assumption they could come to would be that the person panicked after saying what they said and ran away – and as most people don’t panic when talking about simple truths, it’d be a fairly safe assumption that they were lying. So, if the liar wants to maintain their pretence and protect their lie, they must remain in the conversation and situation as any honest person would. Unfortunately, the acute stress that initiated the flight or fight response in the first place hasn’t been allayed or alleviated by fleeing, so it instead manifests itself in the foot movements of the liar. It’s as if the subconscious mind of the deceiver is acting out the concept of escaping the situation through the shaking, jiggling and general nervous movements of their feet.

Leg and feet direction & adjustments There’s another, more subtle way liars move their feet and legs: directional adjustments. Just as touching your nose with your hand is a less obvious method of blocking your mouth than blocking it directly, adjusting your leg and feet direction is a less obvious way of signalling you’d like to escape the current situation than shaking or jiggling your feet.

As with body and torso shifts, changing the direction in which their legs face is a way for a liar to dilute the intensity of the situation. It’s also a way of subconsciously avoiding body symmetry with the person they’re lying to – which often spurs on and extends conversation, something the liar would like to avoid.

Also, a liar often doesn’t have the chance to adjust their body direction and shift their torso’s angle – either because they’re sitting down at a table, in a car, or even standing against a wall. So, to alleviate the social Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT stress, create body language asymmetry with the other person, and subliminally point at the exit they’d love to use if they have the option, they instead use their legs and feet. This often goes unnoticed to even those who know about this sign of deceit, because of physical obstructions such as tables and other objects, which block the liar’s legs, thus making leg and feet direction & adjustments more difficult to spot. So, be aware of these blockages and try to stay observant.

Leg squeezing as a tension release mechanism While watching a particularly gripping drama on television, many people tend to tightly grip the arms of their couches as a way of releasing the tension they’re feeling. The same happens with liars, except instead of wanting to release anxiety caused by excitement, they feel often feel a desperate need to discharge the internal stress caused by telling lies. And, instead of tightening their grip on an armchair or couch, they use whatever they have at hand – which, if they’re sitting down, is often their thighs.

It often looks like they’re trying to wring out their trousers/pants using their hand, or trying to flatten the fabric out with the flat palm of their hand, sweeping it over their thigh towards their knee, unknowingly, while talking to you.

Noticing this stress tell is also sometimes made more difficult because a person’s thighs and hands are below the table line when sitting down to eat or talk at a board meeting etc. However, in this case the chances of a liar using this method of stress release are actually increased, because



DETECT DECEIT subconsciously they know they able to do it out of sight. Take advantage of this by casually moving your position and thereby improving your line of sight with their lower body – it’ll make it easier to notice leg squeezes, foot tapping, leg and feet direction & adjustments, and the next and final lower body tell: leg crossing.

Leg Crossing Near the beginning of this book, I described how someone sitting in a bar with their friends might fold their arms as a form of self-comfort to help them cope with the feeling of awkwardness they’re experiencing. Liars also often fold their arms, for a related, but slightly different reason. A liar, describing false facts and explaining invented situations, cannot help but be at least slightly concerned with their position. Granted, they’ve decided that what they can gain from lying outweighs the risk of being caught doing so, but nevertheless they know there’s a chance they’ll have to respond to questions quickly and believably. It’s a little like they’re in court, being questioned – except that the person doing the questioning, who’s being lied to, doesn’t realise (at least, yet) that they’re talking to a dishonest person. So in that sense, the liar is on the defensive. And that’s the reason they’ll often be seen crossing their arms: firstly, because telling and retelling a lie naturally puts them on the defensive, and secondly, because it’s a stressful situation to be in, which the crossing of their arms – as a form of self-comfort – can also help alleviate.

As you know, the legs are often a better place to look for telltale signs of deceit because liars are less aware of what they’re revealing through their movements. Likewise, someone fabricating a story that’s sitting down is more likely to cross their legs (either at the ankle or in the traditional Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT knee-over-knee fashion) as a form of self-comfort than they are to cross their arms. Subconsciously, they know that crossing their arms would be more obvious and noticeable to the person or people they’re lying to, so resort to a self-comfort, defensive action lower down on the body where it’s less conspicuous. You may be wondering why, if they know a selfcomforting action could reveal their dishonesty, they perform one at all? Wouldn’t it be better to not cross their arms or their legs? Technically, yes – it’d up their chances of getting away with the lie unchallenged. However, in reality, they’re unable to avoid performing at least one selfcomfort tell because of two reasons:

1. Most people are only around 5% aware of what they reveal with their bodies while lying.

2. They have to find a way of coping with their internal tension and the social situation they’ve placed themselves in. Finding a way to vent their anxiety and stress improves their ability to think clearly, mentally construct

plausible

statements,

and

verbally

express

them

convincingly.

How to interpret leg tells correctly and accurately By themselves, the presence of foot and leg tells such as foot tapping/jiggling, leg squeezing and leg crossing are very strong signs that someone’s feeling agitated, stressed, and that they’d probably rather be anywhere else than in the situation and conversation they’re in with you.



DETECT DECEIT After all, the longer they talk to you on the subject of their lie, the higher the chances are it’ll be discovered and their potential gain taken away.

But to be sure they’re related to lie telling specifically, it’s important to look at when they occur during the conversation and in what context. By doing so, you’ll improve the accuracy of their interpretation 10-fold. The process involves two simple steps:

1. Think about the situation and conversation you’re both in, as well as how comfortable you are with this person and how well you know them. Can you imagine the topics you’re covering in any way causing anxiety in them for any reason other than because they’re lying about certain details and inventing extra information?

For example, the person you’re talking to tells you about a friend they have who recently won the lottery – they matched 5 numbers and won over fifty thousand. If they’re telling you the truth, they should theoretically have no reason to suddenly become anxious or internally stressed. If anything, it’s likely they’d become even more excited and animated because of how great a story it is to tell others – after all, not many people know someone who’s won big on the lottery. In this situation and covering this topic, leg tells (and, for that matter, all other stress tells) should be considered very significant, because it’s likely they’re indicators of deceit.

On the flip side, imagine they’d told you that one of their friends, who was a keen huntsman, was killed by a grizzly bear last summer. This situation, however seemingly unbelievable, could – if true – understandably be a difficult thing to talk about for them, and carry Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT with it a fair amount of negative emotion. If they produce leg stress tells while telling this story, unlike with the lottery tale, it’s possible they could be attributed not to lying, but to real emotional stress. As such, in this set of circumstances you should place less value in the presence of leg stress tells and instead focus on other body language signs of deceit, such as a decreased frequency in hand gesticulations, lateral eye movements etc.

2. Once you’ve decided on whether it’s likely they have a reason to be stressed, other than because they’re lying, you can look at when the leg stress tells occur. The closer they are initiated to the possible false statement, the more likely it is that they’re indications of lying. For example, the crossing of their legs halfway through making a potentially dishonest statement is a stronger indication of deceit than if they’ve had their legs crossed for almost the entire conversation.



DETECT DECEIT

- Strategy Recap ⇒ A person’s legs and feet often reveal more about their truthfulness than the parts of the their body they’re more consciously aware of. This is because they’re more out of their sight than, for example, their hands. Also, tables and other objects often obscure them, which makes the liar concentrate less on controlling their movements while they lie. ⇒ As such, they often provide valuable insights into how truthful a person is, in the form of leg and feet tells. The main ones to look for are: foot tapping/jiggling, leg direction adjustments, leg squeezing, and crossed legs. ⇒ To make your interpretation of leg stress tells more accurate, remember to consider the context they appear in. Does the person you’re talking to or watching have any reason, other than because they’re lying, to be overly anxious, stressed or nervous?

⇒

Also, pay attention to when they occur. The closer they’re matched to the statement or statements in question, the more you should rely on them as strong signs of deceit or of something being not quite right with what the person is telling you.



DETECT DECEIT

Section Two: The Voice Speech Tells: Pinpointing and understanding the changes in someone’s voice and communication style when they speak dishonestly There’s an expression so widespread that it’s now almost become a conversation cliché:

“It’s not what you said, it’s the way that you said it.”

People use this phrase when they’ve interpreted something contradictory to what someone actually says through their choice of words. For example, when asked by his wife what he thinks of her new hairstyle, a husband might reply: “Yeah, it looks good.” If written down on paper, his statement would give a clear message: that he likes her new hairstyle and that she has nothing to worry about. But spoken out loud, the same four words can have a completely different meaning, maybe without the husband even realising. From the flow, speed, pauses, inflections and overall delivery of his reply, his wife might easily interpret that he thinks it doesn’t look good on her. In fact, that it looks so bad he needs to lie simply to avoid hurting her feelings.

The lesson that can be learned from this all-too-common example of speech style interpretation is that the way we say something can send out



DETECT DECEIT a completely different – and often stronger – message than what we say and the words we choose to verbally express our statements.

Often, to avoid having to actually come out and say it directly, people consciously alter the style in which they say something to let others know they feel a certain way. For example, a young guy wants to go out for the evening for a meal and maybe a few drinks, so puts the idea across to his girlfriend. She, however, would rather have a quiet night in. So, what’s the best way for her to tell him this? She doesn’t want to simply state: “No. I want to stay in tonight,” which is her true sentiment, because it could easily be seen by her boyfriend as demanding and selfish. So, she structures her reply more craftily: “Yeah, we could, I suppose. Umm, yeah…okay.” Once again, her words say one thing while her speech style says another. No one could fail to notice the hesitancy and uncertainty in her voice. So, she’s let her boyfriend know that she’s not keen on going out that night, while effectively side-stepping the possibility of sounding like a controlling, self-interested partner. Her boyfriend, hearing her reply, knows she doesn’t want to go out but can’t accuse her of being selfish – as she seemed to at least try and agree with the idea. It was only the sound of her voice and delivery of her reply – both manufactured – which clued him in on her real feelings.

But there are also times when people don’t realise the contradictory message their speech style gives out – most notably, when they lie. Instead of consciously using pauses and special tonal inflections to get their own way, they’re produced naturally, uncontrollably and, 99% of the time, unknowingly. Just like the production of body tells that signal deceit, liars also give audible clues to their dishonesty. And, just like facial expressions, movement of the eyes, gesticulations of the hands and Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT the actions of the lower body, they can be read and ultimately used to gauge how truthful or dishonest a person is.

It’s this type of natural lie detection (using the person’s voice as a guide) that’ll be covered in this section of the book.

Why do speech alterations occur when people lie? Regardless of what they’re saying, the story they’re telling and the words they choose to use, speech components such as tonality, special inflections and speed of delivery can all reveal extra information to you in regards to a person’s ultimate truthfulness. Differences between the speech style and word delivery associated with false statements to those linked with the truth occur for two reasons.

1. Internal Conflicts and Adjustments

2. Detection Prevention

Internal Conflicts and Adjustments

The first cause of speech alterations when lying, ‘Internal Conflicts and Adjustments’, is very similar to the reason liars produce different physical gestures when being dishonest than when telling the truth – In essence, it’s because their minds are working in different ways. Because they’re not simply retelling something that’s already cemented in their minds – the truth – they’re forced to work along a completely different thought plane. First, if they haven’t done so already, they must mentally Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT figure out what they want the person or people they’re interacting with to believe. Whether it’s that they aren’t stealing office supplies, are a retired heavyweight boxer, or an innocent person who didn’t commit the murder they’re charged with, their goal is invariably the same: to gain something. For the accused stationary thief, lying is a way of regaining the respect of their co-workers and avoiding punishment. For the person bragging about their fictional sporting past, lying is way of gaining respect and admiration – something they crave but cannot seem to achieve through telling the truth. For the killer on trial, lying is a way to gain, or regain their freedom and avoid permanent incarceration.

So, every liar has a message or false fact they want others to believe. The second thing all liars do, after establishing a false fact, is work out the most believable way to relate it to their specific audience – whether it’s their boss, friends, or a jury of 12. In their minds, they’re wondering: “How would somebody talk about this topic or describe this situation if it were real?”

As you can imagine, this elaborate thought process has a massive effect on the internal condition of all liars, which is why it so often leads to external leakage of the truth in the form of revealing body language gestures. And, crucially, speech tells. Vocal deceit signals such as adjusted speed and altered pitch etc. are produced because of the demanding thought process just outlined and the internal conflicts it creates in those that lie.



DETECT DECEIT Detection Prevention

The second cause of speech alterations in liars isn’t a result of internal conflicts, but is instead attributed to the liar’s attempts to prevent their dishonesty from being detected. When we tell the truth, we have no problem with going into detail, directly referencing ourselves and generally talking in depth about the subject at hand. The reason we don’t is because telling the truth is easy and comes naturally to us – even a little kid is able to retell everything they know about an event or situation, because it’s a fundamental function of the human brain. Liars, on the other hand, relate invented information, so naturally have problems when it comes to speaking in the same way honest people talk about the truth. They introduce speech and conversation traits that are obvious signs that there is missing information in their story (because it’s false). And because they severely lack relatable facts, they try to prevent interrogation and detection by using defensive speech styles. This is the second cause of speech alterations in liars.

Now, onto the ways in which liars unconsciously change the sounds of their voices (because of Internal Conflicts and Adjustments) and the special ways they describe fictional events (to prevent detection).

There are 12 verbal and vocal signs of deceit that you should always look out for when attempting to spot lies. They are called ‘The Faker’s Dozen’.

The Faker’s Dozen Either because of internal conflicts & adjustments or as a method of detection prevention, people make changes to the way they speak when Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT they lie. Although they themselves aren’t aware of these changes, someone who knows what to look for and when to look can use these speech differences as strong indications of deceit. The body gestures you’ve already learned, the techniques in the section that follows this one and this subject, ‘The Faker’s Dozen’, make up the system for natural lie detection – which, with a little practice and experience, has over a 90% success rate.

Now, onto the dirty dozen: the 12 verbal indicators of dishonesty that even talented liars use, unknowingly, at one time or another – and that practically all people slip up with every time they attempt to deceive you. Next to each type of verbal deceit is the reason it’s produced (Internal conflict/Detection prevention). Knowing why a liar produces each indicator can often give you a further advantage when untangling their lies, as you’re then better able to dissect their story and notice trends in the way they speak both honestly and dishonestly.



DETECT DECEIT

Cloaking All truly convincing, highly proficient liars share a common skill: they’re very quick-thinkers. Being able to think on their feet allows them to invent and reinvent stories, statements and information almost instantly and seemingly effortlessly – which gives the illusion that they’re telling the truth. After all, when we tell the truth we’re under no pressure, mental strain or obligation to provide facts convincingly, because by definition, truthful statements are completely believable.

But, luckily for human lie detectors – those with an advanced and detailed knowledge of how liars behave – most people aren’t master Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT deceivers. In fact, they’re practically the opposite. The vast majority of dishonest men and women only avoid having their lies detected because of the ineptitude of other’s to detect them. And it’s because most people aren’t artful liars that they use cloaking when not telling the truth. Cloaking is a conversational technique that buys liars time, so they can think and formulate their stories before verbally expressing them. Here’s an example of cloaking in its most common form. See if you can spot the sentence the liar uses to buy more thinking time; the cloak:

An office worker is told by their boss to talk to another employee about a highly important document that needed to be express mailed before noon the previous day. The responsibility fell solely on them, therefore if it didn’t get mailed as directed they’re the only one to blame. The employee forgot to fulfil their duty because they were engrossed in a long conversation with a female co-worker from 11 till 1. They know that if the boss finds out the truth, they could well lose their job, so decide to lie.

Employee #1: The Boss says that the profit report hasn’t arrived at HQ and wants to know why. Did you handle it?

- Pause -

Employee #2: What do you mean, “handle it”?

Employee #1: Handle…send it. Did you send it express?

Employee #2: Yeah, express yesterday.

Employee #1: Okay, I’ll tell him. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

As soon as employee #1 in his first question uttered the word “report”, employee #2 instantly realised that he’d forgotten to mail it. Caught completely off guard, he sought to buy some thinking time by essentially asking for the definition of “handle it.” By the time employee #1 had clarified what he meant, #2 had regained enough of his composure to lie about having mailed it by express as requested by his boss.

So, cloaking is a liar’s way of stalling your questions and buying themselves thinking time. Often their method of doing this, if analysed, will appear completely nonsensical. For example, if employee #2 had sent the report as he stated, he’d know exactly what #1 meant by “handle it,” because that phrase could have no other possible meaning – he would hear the word ‘report’ and clearly remember sending it the previous day.

A real-life example of cloaking is when Bill Clinton was asked about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. His reply: ‘Well that depends on what the meaning of “is” is’. He was using the cloaking technique to try and avoid answering the direct question and thereby give himself some time to think.

Negativity Even the most immoral and insensitive of liars realises that the instances when they’re dishonest create negative social situations. Often, though, at least while telling the lie, they’re the only ones aware of their dishonesty and its associated negativity. But this feeling of negativity finds its way out through the word choices of the liar, and can thus be noticed by



DETECT DECEIT anyone on the look out for such verbal signs of deceit. For example, an officer is questioning a person arrested under suspicion of car theft. After 40 minutes of questioning, the suspect proclaims: “I’m not guilty. I didn’t steal that car.” Their negative word choice provides an insight into their current thought process. Instead of saying, “I’m innocent. I didn’t steal that car,” they chose to use the negative alternative phrasing. Often liars unknowingly do this because the fact that they’re guilty – or whatever the negative issue may be – is at the forefront of their mind. It’s much more likely that at the forefront of a truly innocent person’s mind would be the need to prove that innocence, and not disprove their guilt.

Look for verbal signs of dishonesty in the negative phrasing of a person’s answers or statements. Here are two more examples:

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“I wasn’t there when the fire started,” instead of, “I was at home when the fire broke out.”

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“I never tell lies,” instead of, “I always tell the truth.”

Self-Referencing When we know we’re telling the truth, we have no reason to worry about being accused of dishonesty or of being asked to prove what we’ve said as real and authentic. If someone does question our reliability or trustworthiness, it’s them who is at fault and them that needs to deal with the issue – not us. Liars are the exact opposite because they know – even if nobody else does – that they’re being deceitful and one way or another face the possibility of being found out, exposed and humiliated or punished in some way. As such, they do worry about the responses of others to their falsehoods and, therefore, change the way they present Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT information verbally to avoid being exposed. One striking example of the way they alter their word choices while lying can be noticed in their reluctance to self-reference – that is, refer to themselves when they lie.

In the liar’s mind, the more distance they can put between themselves and their lie, the better – even if they are directly involved in the false statement. They do this by making fewer references to themselves and by decreasing the use of words that convey possessiveness and ownership. For example: ‘that car’ instead of ‘my car’, and using words like ‘I’, ‘mine’ and ‘me’ less often. In their heads, making fewer references to themselves in their lies makes it easier for them to tell the lie convincingly, as mental distance between themselves and the lie lowers their internal anxiety. Making many self-references, like: “My car was parked in my driveway. I don’t know how it could possibly have been on the road and caused an accident at the same time” constantly reminds them of how entwined in the lie they are and thus how accountable they’ll be if they’re found out to be lying. Instead, a liar is more likely to phrase their response like this: “That car was in the driveway. God knows how it could cause an accident at the same time.”

As well as a decreased usage of self-referencing words and phrases, look out for the overuse of words like ‘everyone’, ‘no one’, ‘never’ and ‘always’. Liars frequently use them to distance themselves from their false stories and statements, as they’re good ways of generalising a description and thereby weakening the connection between themselves and the dishonest facts.



DETECT DECEIT

Verbal Evasion Verbal evasion – the act of avoiding a person’s comments and questions, after telling them a mistruth – is a technique used by many liars. However, it’s most noticeable in liar’s who haven’t had much time to prepare and form their fictional stories into information that’s easy to express believably. For example:

A young man is sitting in a job interview, answering questions posed by two senior members of management, who are evaluating the suitability of Jim, the interviewee, for the position.

Interviewer: Jim, everything we’ve covered so far has been very impressive. You’ve got a really wide range of skills here. There’s one thing not on your résumé, though, that I’d like to ask about. In your new position, you’d be dealing a lot with international customers – clients from foreign countries that are interested in our product line. It’d be a large part of your job. Do you have much overseas sales experience – liasing with potential global clients? If so, what, specifically, have you had experience with?

Jim knows that having overseas sales experience is vital if he wants to secure this job. But, he has none – so decides to lie.

Jim: Absolutely. I’ve had quite a lot of international experience; in my last job I had to, you know, liase with many overseas customers. For example…yeah, I was instrumental in securing a contract with a Japanese Corporation – YenTek. I did the whole thing, took them through from open to close. That was in…2002.Yeah, in 2002. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

Jim continues to talk about the fictional international contract he secured for a minute or two longer. Finally, one interviewer interrupts:

Interviewer: Okay, Jim. That’s great – as I said, overseas experience is vital. Did you broker that deal using a support team?

Jim: Yeah, I did.

Jim waffled on and on about the fictional contract to retain the speaking role and provide the interviewers with plenty of information on the topic – and therefore lessen the chance of receiving further questions that could expose his dishonesty. When he was asked a question, he gave the quickest and least detailed answer his could, simply because it was easier than making up an alternate, more lengthy false response.

In essence, you can spot someone’s use of verbal evasion when they’re keen to talk at length about a topic – albeit it broadly – but, when asked further questions, give short, easy-to-form answers. If they were telling the truth when they initially answered at length, they’d be happy to expand further. Liars cannot quickly respond because they have to invent further false information, so instead resort to using the easiest reply.

Description Depth Things that happen in real-life have many describable layers: the time something occurred, the place where it happened, who was involved and how they felt. Sounds, visuals, times and feelings all find their way into an honest person’s account of any given situation. But when people invent fictional events, they don’t have any real memory to refer to as a Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT reference for a colourful description. As such, their descriptions are usually limited to only a couple of layers, usually what they did or said, with a few other non-important details – that are easy to make up – tacked onto or included in the lie. For example, if someone lied to you by saying they went to a sports event at the weekend, when in fact they were doing something else that they’d rather you didn’t know about, they’d be likely to describe it very broadly. Where it was and which teams were playing, but not finer details like the mood of the crowd, the food they eat or halftime show, would be included in their retelling of the event.

Also, liars very rarely include the thoughts or experiences of a third party in the lie, because they’re primarily imagining themselves doing or saying the fictional thing they’ve invented. An example of a third party’s perspective would be: “My wife thought it was a great time!”

Lastly, if, after describing in depth something that happened, you asked them a question that required more detail, they’d probably repeat themselves or skim over the topic you raised. An honest person, though, would no doubt appreciate your interest and not hesitate to elaborate further with new information.

Verbal Disclaimers There’s a type of verbal deceit signal that many liars use that actually occurs before they tell you a lie, rather than during or after. They are called verbal disclaimers. They consist of sentences that precede a lie, which ‘prep’ the person who’s about to be deceived in an attempt to lessen the chance of them suspecting dishonesty or becoming suspicious of the liar’s claims. Here are some common examples of verbal



DETECT DECEIT disclaimers that liars use to prevent the detection of their forthcoming false information:

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I know you probably won’t believe this…

♦

This is going to seem strange, but…

♦

I can assure you…

By stating that they realise the thing they’re about the say may sound unbelievable, a liar effectively says: “I wouldn’t believe this either if I heard it, but it’s true.” This puts them on the same wavelength as the person they are about to deceive and subsequently lessens the chance of arousing their suspicion. Remember: an honest person rarely expects their integrity to be questioned, because they know they’re telling the truth.

Formalness The number one priority in someone’s mind when they lie is effectively convincing the person or people they’re talking to that they’re being honest. Their whole web of deception relies on them being believed, and as such, they often change the way they speak to express their lie more believably. One of the most notable ways they go about this is by changing the formalness of their sentences and overall speech style. They do this for two reasons:

1. Lying, as you’ve learned, creates internal anxiety. This anxiety often makes people more serious when they lie, which is reflected in their choice of words.



DETECT DECEIT 2. We tend to take what others say more seriously when they use formal and precise language. Many liars are subconsciously aware of this, so formalise their speech styles to lend their statements more credibility and force.

One of the most common ways a liar increases the formalness of their speech style is by dropping contractions such as ‘don’t’, ‘won’t, ‘hasn’t, etc. Instead, they’ll use the full phrasing alternatives: ‘do not’, ‘will not’ and ‘has not’. Statistically, when a person chooses to not use the contractions, there’s only a 40% chance they’re telling the truth. That extra 10% of certainty (as a wild guess would only be 50/50) can often be what finally tips the scales in your mind, and helps you ultimately form an opinion on a person’s truthfulness.

Breaks, Pauses & Vocal Fillers For most people, lying takes a fair amount of brainpower and concentration. The lie must be properly created and structured in the mind, then verbally expressed convincingly for it to be effectively believed. Most people manage to carry this task off successfully, though, and the majority of their lies go undetected by those that hear them. However, traces of their increased mental exertion while lying and overall internal anxiety do remain and can be noticed in their speech styles. The three most common speech irregularities produced when someone lies are breaks, pause and vocal fillers.



DETECT DECEIT Breaks

As you know, the best liars are quick-thinkers. Reacting and responding quickly to questions and comments regarding their lies allows them to appear natural and gives the impression they’re telling the truth – as the truth flows easily and effortlessly. Liars of less skill – the majority – know that it’s important not to take too long constructing their lies and elaborating on them when asked questions, so often rush into verbally describing the fictional event or story before they’ve properly worked out in their heads exactly what they’re going to say. Because of this, they use more sentence breaks when lying than most people do when telling the truth. A ‘break’ is a sentence that’s started, but then quickly changed. To the uninformed, it just seems as if the person talking (the liar) changed their minds about what they wanted to say or how they wanted to phrase it, so thus broke off their initial sentence to begin another. In reality, the liar began the sentence but then thought of a better, more convincing way to put their fictional message across. Here’s an example:

A gambler has been caught on casino CCTV acting suspiciously at a card table and is called to the security holding room to be questioned:

Security:

You

were

seen

playing

on

blackjack

table

4

from…10:15…to…11:00, in which time you went into your shoulder bag 24 times. Why?

Gambler: My bag’s like that, it…I always touch it to make sure it’s not been opened. I know casinos often have, you know, pickpockets and I’ve had a bad experience with that kind of thing in the past.



DETECT DECEIT The cheating gambler started their lie, then broke off and begun a new line of explanation that they felt would sound more believable. An innocent person, honestly worried about pickpockets, would recognise that touching their bag so often might seem suspicious and offer the true explanation effortlessly and quickly.

‘Breaks’ used in mid-sentence are signs that a person has changed what they want to tell you or how they want to express it. Honest people use breaks too, though – so always look for a large increase in the use of breaks (and the two speech irregularities that follow) as signs of deceit, and not just the odd one or two.

Pauses

Pauses, like breaks, are a result of complicated thought processes. Liars often pause mid-sentence to ‘regroup’ their thoughts and ensure they’re not saying something or about to say something that could reveal their dishonesty. To take the casino scenario above as an example:

Security: Okay, so you were nervous someone was gonna steal something from your bag. If you were so worried, why didn’t you put it between your legs while you were playing, where you could see and feel it? Or even use the casino customer cloakroom – they’ll look after your stuff for free, you know, if you’re staying in the hotel.

Gambler: I know. I needed my bag on my shoulder, though. I was expecting a phone call from – short pause – my mother. She’s ill at the moment.



DETECT DECEIT The liar knew what to say, but hadn’t mentally ironed out the smaller details, such as who they were expecting a call from. So they paused for a split second to decide on a relative. This pause, to many people, would be quickly passed off, though. It’d probably just seem like the gambler had a sudden mental blockage or stumbled over their words.

Always treat pauses as suspicious when you’re dealing with someone you suspect is lying. Honest people know what to say, who’s involved in their stories and any other finer details, so rarely pause to gather their thoughts. Liars increase their pauses (and breaks & vocal fillers) because they find it difficult to quickly reel off fictional details convincingly.

Vocal Fillers

Vocal fillers are similar to pauses, in that they are methods of stalling our speech for a moment, so we can properly decide on the words we want to use to express our chosen messages.

Vocal fillers usually come in the form of sounds rather than words. The most common vocal fillers are sounds like ‘um’, ‘er’ and ‘ah’. Honest people use them when they’re asked questions to which they don’t have immediate answers ready, so need to think for a second before they can properly respond. Liars, though, use them when they should have answers ready and when they really shouldn’t need to think for very long to formulate a response.

Security: Okay, we understand. In future you should let a member of security know these things beforehand, so you don’t end up being hauled in here. But we’re sorry to have inconvenienced you like this. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

Gambler: That’s okay, I think my luck was starting to turn anyway!

Security: Yeah always seems to happen, doesn’t it? Sorry to hear of that your mother’s ill, though. My father’s been bad himself, too, recently. What’s wrong with your mother - If you don’t mind me asking?

Gambler: Oh, it’s a problem she has, err, with her heart. Yeah, she’s had it for a while, but it’s, umm, worse recently.

Security: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Well, anyway, have a nice rest of the day.

Vocal fillers, pauses and breaks are often used by liars when they’re inventing extra details in their minds or figuring out how to verbally express their lie in the most authentic, natural way. Keep an eye out for them and always use them as part of the collective tell detection system.

Speech Speed Because of the complicated mental task of constructing a lie and the equally tricky task of expressing it in words convincingly, liars often unknowingly slow down their speech speed to help their brains cope. As well as slowing down the speed at which they talk to give themselves extra time to think up what they’re going to next, liars also do it because – in a similar way to formalness – they know that speaking more slowly gives their statements more weight. It also allows the person or people listening to take in everything the liar’s saying, which decreases the chances of them asking further questions, thereby lessening the chance of the liar being caught out. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

Speech speed alterations are especially noticeable when someone’s telling a lie they haven’t previously rehearsed or thought about in-depth, as creating the fictional information completely afresh is more difficult than recalling something that was invented at an earlier date.

Tonality & Pitch There are two reasons people change the tonality and pitch of their voices when they lie. One reason can be linked to internal anxiety, while the other’s more closely associated with detection prevention.

Tonality & Pitch changes caused by internal anxiety

Just as the internal tension caused by lying can bring about external signs of tenseness, such as leg squeezing, it can also bring about changes in the tonality and pitch of a person’s voice. Our vocal pitch is very closely associated with our emotional state, which is why people’s voices usually sound higher when they’re upset and crying. Similarly, the pitch of person’s voice often gets higher when they lie, as a reflection of the nervousness and anxiety they’re feeling inside. To identify a rise in a person’s voice pitch – and link it to a possible lie – you need to listen to them when they talk at other times in a conversation, so you’ve heard their usual, honest voice pitch.

Tonality & Pitch changes as a method of detection prevention

Certain people, with certain world accents, have a tendency to sound like they’re always asking questions, as opposed to making statements. We get this impression because of a rise in the pitch of their voices at the end Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT of their sentences, which creates a questioning, uncertain tone. Liars often manufacture this speech trait as a way of lessening the strength of what they’re lying about, to help it slip under the other person’s communication radar. It’s similar to they way many liars turn their bodies away the person they’re lying to (see Torso & Body Shifts), to lessen the intensity of the situation and help themselves stay calm, composed and undetected as dishonest person.

Response Speed Using a person’s response speed to your questions as a guide is often a very reliable way of ascertaining their trustworthiness.

First, you need to ask them a question that relates to the possible lie they’ve told which can be answered with a yes or a no. For example, “Have you been using the office phone to make personal calls?” As soon as you’ve uttered the last word of the question, the person will know the response they need to give you, which – if they’re going to be dishonest – will be ‘no!’ However, when asked another question straight after that cannot be answered with a yes or a no, the person’s likely to take much longer to form an answer. For example:

You: “Have you been using the office phone to make personal calls?

Them: “Err, no.”

You: Someone in finance says they’ve heard you talking to your wife on the office phone on several occasions. What do you say to that?



DETECT DECEIT Them: – 2 Second Pause – I don’t know. They’re wrong, I guess.

A dishonest person will often answer a yes/no question with the same response time as an honest person. However, when asked a question that requires more thinking time, they’re much more likely to take longer than an honest person needs to formulate an answer. This is because they need to go through the process all liars do: creating a fictional standpoint, then devising a way of expressing it believably. Honest people don’t need to invent anything and can therefore answer harder questions much more quickly.

Role Balancing Liars hate dwelling on a fictional topic they’ve invented, simply because it raises the chances of their dishonesty being spotted and increases the mental work they need to do in order to maintain a convincing cover story. Because of their dislike for lingering on their fictional stories, they often tend to misjudge the role balancing in their conversations. For example:

A young, newly formed couple is in a car on their way to see a movie. They’ve been having a conversation about road safety and the police.

John: Have you ever been caught driving under the influence or anything like that?

Emma knows that many people have a strong dislike for people who regularly drink under the influence, so decides to lie. Emma: Absolutely not…



DETECT DECEIT She then continues on about how she always makes sure she hasn’t had too much, either by not drinking at all when she knows she’ll be driving later, or by sometimes carrying her own portable breath tester. Then...nothing. She doesn’t do what most honest people would, and ask John the same or a similar question, but falls silent, then starts a new subject.

Normal, honest conversations involve an equal balance of the roles of those that are talking. However, because liars dislike dwelling on their lies, they’ll often prematurely skirt aware from them and move onto something unrelated. Honest people ask and answer questions, whereas liars tend to answer more than they ask, for the reason just outlined.



DETECT DECEIT - Strategy Recap ⇒ Often the way someone says something is a better indication of their truthfulness than the exact words they choose to use. ⇒ In a similar way to body tells, alterations in speech can be used as indicators that a person may be lying. ⇒ When someone lies, speech alterations are produced for two reasons: Either because of internal conflicts and adjustments (the main cause of revealing bodily gestures) or as a method of detection prevention – a way of throwing people off their lies and avoiding being caught out as dishonest. ⇒ There are 12 verbal deceit indicators that you should look for when you suspect someone is lying to you. They are called ‘The Faker’s Dozen’ and consist of: cloaking; negativity; self-referencing; verbal evasion; description depth; verbal disclaimers; formalness; speech speed; breaks, pauses and vocal fillers; tonality and pitch, response speed and role balancing.

⇒

To improve the accuracy of your final judgement on their reliability and truthfulness, try to compare each verbal deceit indicator present in the person’s speech style with their usual method of talking. And always use verbal deceit indicators as part of the collective tell detection system – this ensures your conclusion is always over 90% accurate.



DETECT DECEIT

Other conversational signs of deceit ‘The Faker’s Dozen’ covers the 12 most common verbal indicators of deceit – the way people change their speech styles when they lie. But as well as the way they use their voices, there’s another way many liars reveal their dishonesty during conversations, and that’s through their behaviour.

Guilty minds think differently to those that are honest and therefore often cause irregularities in the behaviour of liars that cannot be noticed in reliable, trustworthy people. The three most common and reliable behaviour/attitude changes are:

♦

The Block Out

♦

Sudden Mood Changes

♦

Passing the Blame

The Block Out Many people begin lies that they cannot convincingly finish, which is the reason so many liars use ‘The Block Out’ as a way of ending their ‘interrogation’ and thereby avoiding being discovered as dishonest. The following example illustrates this principle:

A so-called friend has sold you a car that has recently completely stopped working. The worker at the car repair place has told you that the car must have been on its last legs when you bought it, and that you were lucky it



DETECT DECEIT didn’t die when you were on the freeway. Your friend, however, assured you it was in great condition and would last for many years to come.

You decide to confront your friend and ask them why they lied to you:

You: You said that car you sold me was in good condition and was safe when I bought it. You even said it had been taken for a full vehicle check the week before I bought it. But, as you know, it’s dead! Completely broken! The mechanic says the fuel system was completely clogged and it needs a new filter…and probably a lot more.

Friend: That car was fine when I sold it to you, just like I said. You must have clogged the fuel system yourself.

You: How could I have done that in two days I drove it? I bet you didn’t get the full check you said did. I’d like to see proof.

Friend: Look, I can’t believe you’re saying all this. Frankly, I think you’re completely out of order and I’m having nothing more to do this whole thing!

Your friend, who knew about the car’s problems when they sold it to you, initially tried to talk their way out of the sticky situation. However, faced with increasingly difficult to handle accusations and questions, they decided to stonewall you by making out they were insulted and by saying they wanted nothing more to do with you or the car.

An honest person that didn’t know of the car’s problems would be as shocked as you were at hearing about them. And they would certainly Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT want to get the bottom of the situation and maybe even offer advice or compensation.

Liars frequently use the block out when they begin to struggle to answer your questions with more lies and excuses. Honest people don’t need to escape negative situations, though, because they truthfully had no hand in creating them.

Sudden Mood Changes Sometimes a person’s dishonesty will be most clearly revealed to you after the subject has been changed from their lie to something they can talk honestly about – and it will often be made obvious by a rapid change in their mood.

The reason many liars often seem to have sudden changes in mood, from angry/neutral to happy/upbeat, is because their internal anxiety and feeling of awkwardness (caused by lying) is effectively dissipated when the conversation subject moves off their lie onto something they can talked easily about.

Honest people like to continue to exchange comments and thoughts, even on negative topics – as long they aren’t the root of the negativity. Liars, conversely, love to have the subject changed so they can relax and be released from the strain of having to mentally exert themselves to maintain a believable piece of fiction.



DETECT DECEIT

Passing the Blame Another way many people reveal their dishonesty through their behaviour during a conversation is by passing the blame. They most often do this when they’re accused outright of being dishonest or of doing something bad, but many people pass the blame simply as a way of taking the pressure off themselves and placing it onto others. Here’s an example:

A manager of a bank suspects a money teller of stealing cash from one of the registers, but as yet cannot prove it using CCTV footage. So, he decides to confront them in his office:

Manager: Jenny, I’m not sure how to put this, but I think you’ve been stealing money from your register.

Jenny: What? Stealing money? That’s…utterly ridiculous. I don’t know how you can even say that.

The manager is taken aback by her apparently genuine sense of outrage at being accused of thievery.

Manager: Well, we know someone’s been stealing from register 4 on Wednesdays. But…we don’t know who exactly. I just wanted to ask you about it.

Jenny: Well, it wasn’t me. Anyway, if you’re going to get strict on theft, you should be hauling Fiona in here. She’s always taking company supplies home for her husband’s home business, and she never gets any attention. Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

Manager: Well, I’ll have to check that out. Sorry again for this, you can go back to work now.

Just as Jenny did, liars often put the blame on others for doing similar things to what they’re being indirectly or directly accused of. Honest people, though, have no reason to take the pressure off themselves, as they’re being falsely accused. But liars, just as Jenny did, feel they have to make it clear that others are doing wrong, to reinforce the (false) fact that they themselves are honest and able to be trusted. - Strategy Recap ⇒ During conversations, liars often give valuable signs of their deceit through the way they behave, as well as the way they speak.

⇒

There are three common types of behavioural changes liars make when talking to. They involve blocking you and the lie they’ve told out and refusing to talk to you about the subject, becoming much more relaxed and happy when you move off the topic they’ve lied about, and passing the blame onto others in an attempt to make themselves appear more innocent and honest.



DETECT DECEIT

Section Three: The Psychology We’ve now covered every major sign of bodily deceit that 99% of people produce when they lie. You’re now aware of the causes of internal anxiety associated with lying, the body gestures it externally leaks out in, and the many ways in which liars frequently change their speech styles and behaviour before, during and after they lie to you. Every important visible or audible indicator that someone’s telling you something other than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth has been described, so you can always spot those that seek to manipulate and con you. But before summing up completely, there’s one remaining area of deceit detection that remains to be explained, which is how to extract the truth from people using psychology.

Imagine you’re in a situation where you are sure you’re being lied to. You may have already spotted multiple signs of deceit in the form of bodily tells, speech alterations and behaviour changes. However, you lack that last piece of evidence that’s needed to slam the final nail in the liar’s coffin – that one thing that’ll allow you to be 100% sure of their honesty or dishonesty. In this kind of situation, an actual extraction of the truth is needed. They’ve already unwittingly revealed to you a wealth of damning evidence, but you’d like one last piece of proof to convince the jury in your mind – can you trust this person, or are they trying to pull the wool over your eyes?

The method of extracting further proof of their dishonesty lies in using psychological techniques that exploit the flaws that exist in most liars’



DETECT DECEIT minds. There are two approaches when using psychology to reveal their lies: Discreet Detection and Overt Detection.

Discreet Detection

Sometimes it’s more effective and practical to use non-obvious psychological probing techniques to expose a lie, than it is to accuse someone outright of their dishonesty. There are two reason why being discreet is often an advantage. Firstly, the longer and more oblivious to your suspicion a liar is, the higher your advantage when it comes to successfully revealing their untruths. Often when dishonest people realise they’re close to being rumbled, they’ll clam up, run away or become angry and aggressive – all of which make lie detection harder. Secondly, there’s always a chance (however unlikely) that someone hasn’t been lying to you, despite displaying several signs of deceit in the form of body movements and speech alterations. Although the chances of this happening are low, you’re always going to be better off not accusing them directly until you’re absolutely sure of their guilt.

Overt Detection

Overt detection is the exact oppose of being discreet, and involves telling the liar exactly what your suspicions are. However, effective overt detection doesn’t only involve voicing your opinions on their trustworthiness. Hidden in every method of overt detection are further psychological techniques that evoke more responses from the liar and thereby give you even stronger evidence of their deceit.

Times when using overt detection is completely justified include: Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

♦

Situations where you know for sure someone is lying but cannot prove it using conventional evidence: such as video footage, taped confessions, or written statements. When you’re sure they’re guilty of being dishonest, there’s very little risk of accusing them outright.

♦

Times when everything else seems to have failed. The chances are, you’ll never run into a liar that cannot be rumbled using any number of other techniques in this book, but when all else fails, using powerful overt detection is often a very effective and reliable option.

Discreet Detection Techniques: The best ways of extracting the truth from someone without accusing them directly There are four highly effective ways of discreetly using psychological techniques to get someone to unintentionally admit their dishonesty. Each one can also be safely used on someone who isn’t lying to you, eradicating the possibility of them becoming insulted or angry.

The four discreet detection techniques are:

♦

The Loaded Question

♦

The Advice Approach

♦

The Praise Procedure



DETECT DECEIT ♦

Fact Manipulation

The Loaded Question A loaded question is a question that to an honest person sounds nonthreatening and unremarkable, but to a dishonest person is unnerving, because it has direct connotations with their lie. Asking someone you suspect may be lying to you a loaded question allows you to gauge their truthfulness by monitoring how they react and express their answer.

The reason loaded questions are so powerful and effective is 2-fold:

1. Because the question alludes, instead of accuses, an honest person cannot possibly realise that you suspect them of lying and therefore will not become insulted or angry.

2. Most people find it impossible to convincingly react to a loaded question in the way an honest person would. As such, spotting their unnatural reaction allows you to get a good idea of how truthful they are being with you.

Here’s an example of how a loaded question could be used to extract the truth, without potentially accusing and insulting an honest person:

You suspect a work colleague of gossiping about you behind your back. You think they may have even spread a rumour about you being unfaithful to your long-term partner. You approach them in a friendly, unassuming manner and ask them:

“Heard any juicy gossip recently?” Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

Now, if they have been spreading rumours about you, they’ll instantly take what you’ve said as a sign that you know about their backstabbing. As such, they’re likely to internally panic and produce external signs of anxiety. Look for the body language gestures you’ve already learnt about, such as body shifts and hand-to-face actions, but especially take note of how they verbally respond. If they use replies that include questions like: “No, why are you asking?” and “Why? What have you heard?” it’s very likely they have had a hand in bad mouthing you.

If, however, they haven’t, it’s highly unlikely they’ll react with verbal questions such as those above. And it’s an absolute certainty that they won’t suddenly produce external signs of internal anxiety such as speech alterations and leg adjustments.

Most people don’t truly appreciate the power of using loaded questions until they’ve witnessed the reactions liars give to them firsthand. Hinting at someone’s dishonesty using a loaded question often actually produces a stronger and more noticeable reaction from a guilty person than asking him or her outright. This is because if you accuse them very broadly and sloppily of their dishonesty, they can always resort to using the “I’m so insulted that you’re accusing me of such a thing!” card. Then they can clam up and make revealing their lie irrefutably much more difficult. Here’s another good example of how to use a loaded question:

You suspect a family member might be stealing money from you. Once again, you pose a loaded question in a friendly, harmless way:



DETECT DECEIT “Don’t you think it’s crazy that someone can steal from right under someone else’s nose and expect them to not even notice?”

An honest person, after hearing this opening question, is likely to immediately ask for more details. Who’s been stealing? Who’s had things stolen? Etc. A guilty person, however, will suddenly feel an enormous amount of pressure on themselves – they’ll suspect you’ve rumbled them and that they’re seconds away from being verbally savaged for their thievery. But, as so many liars do, they’ll follow their gut instinct by trying to evade the topic and change the subject. To a question like the one above, you could expect to hear responses from a guilty person similar to the following:

“Yeah. I guess so. – Pause – Did you hear about…”

“I don’t know. Some people, I guess. Did I tell you about…”

Good liars will change the subject to something that relates to stealing but that doesn’t directly expand on or reply to the story you were seemingly about to start. However, even proficient liars who change the subject well can be exposed simply because of the following fact. The majority of people like hearing a good story; especially if they feel they’ve been confided in by the person that’s telling them it. A story that involves gossip only heightens the interest further. So, if the person you suspect of lying changes or otherwise dodges your loaded question – or, if they produce any otherwise unexplained anxiety or detection prevention tells – you can safely assume they’re trying to deceive you.



DETECT DECEIT

The Advice Approach This discreet psychological detection technique works on the same principle as the one above. Once again, you raise the issue of their lie indirectly, as to evoke a telling response from them and thereby help you form a decision on their trustworthiness. And, just like loaded questions, this technique will never mistakenly accuse or insult an honest person.

What you need to do is take the thing you suspect they’re guilty of doing, hiding, or lying about and form it into a story that relates to a fictional third party. Then, seek advice from the suspected liar. Here’s an example:

A manager suspects someone in the office of shredding important files to get him in trouble with higher company authority. He has no hard evidence yet, so decides to use the advice approach.

Manager: David, could I talk to you for a minute? There’s something I’d like your advice on.

David: Yeah. What’s up?

Manager: I think someone’s been destroying important company documents recently without permission. What do you think would the best way to go about clearing this up?

David, who’s guilty, suddenly feels under enormous scrutiny and social pressure. The fact that his boss has asked him about how he could deal with the issue shows that he’s trying to close in on the guilty person –



DETECT DECEIT him. Liars in this kind of awkward pressure vary rarely have the ability to think quickly, clearly and respond believably as an honest person would.

Someone with nothing to do with the shredding of the files would ask more questions, give advice (however useful or useless) and generally be friendly and concerned. After all, it’s their boss who’s asking them – what better way is there to form a good impression than offering advice on such an important matter?

But David, who’s guilty and suddenly placed in a difficult situation, is unable to respond convincingly and knows as much. So, he – like so many liars in the same kind of circumstances, replies with: David: Oh, I don’t know, really. Sorry, yeah, not sure.

Remember that people love it when you ask them for advice – it shows you value their opinion and trust them. Subsequently, honest people will always try to offer some kind of helpful response to your problem. Liars, though, will panic and try to find a quick way out of the tricky predicament; they’ll use non-committal phrases like, “I don’t know,” and frequently display external signs of anxiety such as body tells and speech alterations. It’s these deceit indicators that prove to be their downfall, so always keep a close watch for them immediately after using the advice approach.

Fact Manipulation The hardest times to know when someone’s lying to you often involve opinions and emotions, as opposed to facts and undeniable details. For example, if someone was to tell you that that they really liked one of your ideas, it’d be slightly harder to know if they were being sincere than if Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT they told you that they were visiting a sick relative the previous day – hence the reason they weren’t at work.

However, the overwhelming majority of lies can be exposed using fact manipulation – methods of creating, clarifying and expanding on details that relate to someone’s lie that lead them to reveal their dishonesty.

There are 3 types of fact manipulation:

1. Fact Inquiry

2. False Fact Contribution

3. Fact Development

Fact Inquiry Even average skilled liars can usually handle most simple questions that relate to their lies. The reason they’re able to easily, and usually fairly quickly, form believable responses (to those that aren’t trained in lie spotting, anyway) is because of the types of questions they’re asked. Most inquires into their lies only scratch the surface of the their falsehood in a very broad, non-demanding manner, which allows the person lying to reply in an equally non-specific way. It’s this theory that the ‘fact inquiry’ discreet detection technique exploits.

Here’s an example:

A woman tells her husband that she went to the theatre the previous night with one of her girlfriends, but he suspects she may be lying. So, he uses Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT the fact inquiry technique to – if she’s lying – evoke a noticeable, dishonest response from her.

Husband: “So, the show!”

Wife: “Yeah, it was really good.”

Husband: “Ah that’s good. How many people were in – was there a big crowd?”

Asking a very specific question that requires a categorical answer one way or the other forces his wife to either recall the crowd size (which is an easy task that requires very little thinking time). Or, to invent an answer (which requires both more thinking time and a commitment to lie more if her husband asks further questions). Because of the marked difference between the reaction time of an honest person answering this question, and a dishonest person responding to the question with an invented fact, determining whether they’re lying to you is usually very quick, easy and reliable.

Remember to stick the following criteria when using the fact inquiry technique. Doing so will ensure a much stronger, more noticeable reaction from the person if they’re lying:

1. Always pose specific questions that relate to facts instead of emotions. In the example above, the husband asked about the crowd size, which is a much more concrete inquiry than asking something like, “Was the theatre good?” or “Did you enjoy it?” These less specific questions



DETECT DECEIT allow liars to answer with non-revealing, broad answers like, “Yeah, it was” and “I liked it, I suppose.”

2. Always ask the question in a friendly, non-accusatory manner. Doing so ensures you’ll never upset or insult an honest person and removes the liar’s option of pretending to take offence and using the block out technique to avoid any further lie detection.

False Fact Contribution This discreet detection technique is a favourite of many skilled natural lie detectors, purely because of its high level of effectiveness and reliability. In involves the adding of a fictional fact of your own that relates to their suspected lie, expressed as the truth, to evoke a verbal and gestural response from them. The authenticity of both their words and body actions will reveal to you their ultimate truthfulness.

Here’s how it’s executed:

A wife waits at home for her husband to return from a ball game he went to see with his buddy 6 hours ago. When he does arrive back, she suspects he may have been lying to her about where he’d been that evening, so she decides to use the false fact contribution technique to investigate discreetly.

Husband: I’m home, honey.

Wife: Oh, glad you’re back – was a little worried.

Husband. Why? Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT

Wife: I heard about the small fire at the ballpark. They got it put out okay, right?

A liar in the husband’s shoes at this point is in quite a quandary. His wife has brought up something he should – if he’s been at the game – know about. If he denies having any knowledge on the matter, it’ll be obvious he didn’t go, but how can he answer her without having all the details?

Honest people put in this position always reply immediately – because recalling whether they know about something as memorable as a fire doesn’t take long. If he had been to the game, the husband would reply with something like: “Fire? I didn’t hear anything about that.” The wife could then do one of two things:

1. Accept his answer and trust he went to the game.

2. Move onto a second detection attempt.

The second attempt, put into context, would go like this:

Wife: Oh, glad you’re back – was a little worried.

Husband. Why?

Wife: I heard about the small fire at the ballpark. They got it put out okay, right?

Husband: “Fire? I didn’t hear anything about that.” Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT Wife: You didn’t? The fire, the radio said they had to stop the game and everything while it was put out by the fire service.

This second false fact, if it was true, would make it absolutely impossible for the husband to have not noticed that there was at least an incident that slowed or stopped the game – after all, that’s the main reason he supposedly went.

An honest person who did go to game would remain as perplexed as they initially were when the fire was mentioned and would probably reply along the lines of: “No, the game wasn’t stopped, the radio must have been talking about somewhere else or something.”

A liar, however, cannot take the risk of replying in this way, so will probably do one of the following:

- Mumbled an incoherent yes and quickly change the subject.

- Invent a reason why they would, for some reason, have not noticed the fire, like: “We were right at the back,” or “must have happened after we left early.”

Responses similar to either of the above are highly indicative of dishonesty and should be duly noted in your mind for when you come to ultimately decide on their level of truthfulness.

If they do continue to deny knowing anything about the fire – or whatever the false fact you’ve introduced is – the chances are they were at the game. In this case, you can simply brush off the issue as your Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT mistake; you must have misheard the report, or misunderstood what someone told you.

Fact Development This technique involves taking a detail the suspected liar has already offered you, then observing how they react when you develop it into something that differs from what they initially described.

Let’s take the situation used earlier in this book of a boss who needed an important company report express mailed to headquarters by one of his employees. However, the employee forgot to send it and has been lying over the issue, whenever asked, ever since.

Boss: Daniel, did you handle that profit report like I asked? I needed it sending express by noon yesterday to company HQ.

Daniel: Yeah, I did, boss. Express mailed it yesterday.

Boss. Ah, thanks, Daniel. That’s a weight off my shoulders, those guys at HQ are all over me about these reports recently. You mailed it with the special delivery express labels as I asked?

Daniel: Yeah.

Boss: Okay, thanks, Dan.

As soon as Daniel confirmed the fact that he had sent the report yesterday, which was a lie, the boss was in a strong position to use the fact development technique. So, he expressed his thanks and then tagged Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT on a developed fact about using special express labels. Daniel, at this point, feels really close to succeeding with his lie (because the boss just thanked him for doing something he didn’t actually do). So when the boss raises what appears to be a trivial detail about some labels, he uses the easiest option out, he says “Yes.” It’s this answer that clues the boss in on Daniel’s lie, because there never were any labels and he didn’t ask him to use them – they were merely a developed fact, used to gauge Daniel’s honesty.

If Daniel had mailed the report as requested, he wouldn’t know anything about the labels and would tell his boss as much – after all, he was just following orders. At this, his boss would know that Daniel was telling the truth and could then easily brush off the label issue by telling him it wasn’t a problem.

When using the fact development technique yourself, remember to stick to the following criteria:

1. Make sure you confirm that you believe the lie they’ve told you before you casually develop a false fact.

2. Ensure the “extra” fact sounds believable and always put it across as if it’s almost an afterthought. Doing so will really coax the liar into confirming the developed fact, in an effort to get off the topic of their lie, and will thereby reveal their dishonesty to you.



DETECT DECEIT

Overt Detection Techniques: The best ways of confronting someone you think is lying to you, while simultenseouly acquiring extra proof of his or her dishonesty Now come the most effective methods of confronting someone you’re sure is lying to you – each one enabling you to, in the act of confrontation, gather extra, damning evidence of their dishonesty.

Here are 2 most effective overt techniques you can use to achieve this.

1. False Acceptance

2.

Downplay the Deceit

False Acceptance Most liars dislike the mental burden of carrying around their dishonesty, but for whatever reason, they’ve decided that what they can gain from lying outweighs what they can achieve from telling the truth. If they could, though, most liars would love to be released from the weary load that inventing and living fiction creates. Unfortunately, they rarely get the chance to do such a thing – unless, that is, the opportunity is given to them.

This forms the basis of the overt detection technique called ‘false acceptance’. What you do is confront them over their lie, tell them you know exactly what they’ve done wrong and that you’re not happy about Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT it, but most importantly, seek assurance that nothing worse will come from their lie at a later date. Now, at first glance, this sounds like a let off for the liar – accepting their deception is surely giving them a ticket to do it again in the future. But the real reason for pretending to accept what they’ve done or are doing is to ascertain that they definitely are or have been untruthful. Once they’ve confirmed for sure either way, you’re in the strongest position possible: you know for a fact that they’re either dishonest or honest and are free to decide on how you want to punish or treat them for what they’ve done.

So, you confront them directly about their lie and tell them you know exactly what’s going on. Then, most crucially, you say that you understand why they lied and want assurance that they’re not going to do something even worse in the future. In their minds, they’ve been offered a very attractive deal: they’re able to forget about the lie/s they’ve told and keep what they gained from doing so, and even avoid real punishment by simply telling you that they won’t do whatever you’ve asked them not to in the future. In actuality, them promising you this last thing is a direct confession that they lied about the original issue – the thing you truly care about and want to get to the bottom of. At this point, they’re all out of luck and you hold all the cards.

Here’s an example of how this technique might play out in real-life, using – once again – the important report scenario.

The boss has discovered that the profit report hasn’t arrived at HQ as it should have and there’s only one possible, plausible explanation: Daniel didn’t express mail it as instructed. However, he doesn’t have concrete



DETECT DECEIT evidence, so needs to use the false acceptance technique to extract the truth.

Boss: Daniel, can I have a quick word? It’s about that profit report I asked you to express mail for me. Now, before you say anything, I’d like you to hear me out. I know that you didn’t send it, and I’m not happy about that. However, I can let it go this time. But! I need you to assure me that if you see someone else fail to fulfil their duties as requested, that you’ll tell me as soon as you can.

Daniel: Okay, I will.

If the boss had initially come out with, “Did you send that report for me?” the chances of Daniel lying would be considerably higher. However, the boss explained that he knew for a fact that Daniel didn’t send it (which he didn’t), and that as long as Daniel kept an out for him for similar problems, he’d let it go. Daniel, by agreeing to his request, admitted that he didn’t send the report.

An honest person, having mailed the report, would never accept the boss’s accusation – they’d quite rightly see it as a stain on their character. As such, they’d probably reply with something like: “I did send the report, but I’ll keep an out for you, anyway.”

Daniel, though – as all people in the wrong often do when they’re presented with the false acceptance technique – jumped at the chance of apparently being so easily forgiven for his failure to fulfil his duty.



DETECT DECEIT You could see the example above as lie prevention, as opposed to detection, as Daniel hadn’t yet deceived his boss. However, the false acceptance technique can just as effectively be used on someone who you suspect to be actively lying. To take an earlier scenario as an example:

A man suspects his wife hasn’t been to the theatre as she said, so decides to confront her using this overt detection technique:

Husband: I know you weren’t at the theatre tonight and I’m not happy about it. But, I’m sure you had your reasons to lie to me, so I can accept it. But I need you to promise me that you won’t get anyone else involved in this by telling them. Okay?

The following criteria should always be met when using the false acceptance technique:

1. As it’s an overt method of detection, only use false acceptance when you’re sure that someone’s lying to you, but don’t have any solid proof.

2. Start by confronting them with what you “know,” and telling them that although you aren’t happy about whatever it is, that you can accept it. However, you can only accept it if they promise not to do something else. This “something else” can be anything, but make sure it’s an easy request for them to agree to, because as soon as they do agree, you’ll have the solid evidence of their dishonesty you were looking for.



DETECT DECEIT

Downplay the Deceit This overt detection method works on a simple principle of human nature. It states that if someone believes they share character similarities with someone else, they’re likely to feel a stronger connection with them than if they feel their personalities are very different.

For the final time, the boss wants to get the bottom of what’s happened to that important profit report.

Boss: Daniel, I’d like to talk to you for a minute. I know about you not sending that report yesterday. Maybe you forgot or something, I don’t know. I want you to know that I’m not happy about you failing to fulfil an important duty. But, I know how you probably feel. I remember when I first started here; I was getting things wrong all the time. I once shredded my boss’s files by accident! Can you believe that?”

By downplaying someone’s lie or potential lie, you give them less reason to worry about being found out as dishonest. Therefore, you maximise the chances of them directly or indirectly admitting to you what they’ve done.



DETECT DECEIT - Strategy

Recap

⇒ As well as using a person’s body movements and speech style as indications of their honesty or dishonesty, you can use powerful psychological techniques to extract the truth from them and get to the bottom of any potentially deceitful situation. ⇒ There are two types of psychological deceit detection: discreet and overt. Discreet detection involves extracting the truth from the person you suspect to be lying without accusing them of being dishonest, whereas overt detection involves confronting them with the issue. By confronting them using the special overt detection methods, you’re able to acquire additional evidence of their dishonesty. ⇒

Remember to always look for body tells and speech style alterations, as well as taking note of their verbal response, when using psychological detection techniques, both overt and discreet. Doing so gives you a greater chance of accurately judging their reliability and character.



DETECT DECEIT

Section Four: The Action Plan

How to use the information in this book to easily, reliably and repeatedly detect deceit You’ve come a long way since you first started reading this book. You’ve learnt about the internal anxiety lying creates, how people move and use their bodies when they’re dishonest and the ways in which they change their speech styles and interpersonal behaviour in an attempt to throw you off the scent of their untruths. And, you’ve read about other, more advanced methods of natural lie detection. The interpretation of lateral eye movements, the detection of subtle changes in the sound of a person’s voice and how to control a conversation and thereby extract the truth from someone – without accusing them and without causing an argument.

The information in this book is comprehensive, detailed and powerful enough to give you the rare ability of instantly being able to spot when someone’s trying to manipulate you, your friends, or your family - but only if you use it in the right way.

In this final section, I’m going to explain how to use what you’ve read in this book in a simple, reliable and repeatable fashion. And we’re going to start at beginning.



DETECT DECEIT

Establishing motive: Do they have something to gain from lying to you? Most people don’t lie simply for the hell of it. They do it to gain something. As such, you can save yourself a lot of time in life by only suspecting people of lying when you can think of a plausible reason for them doing so. What advantage, asset or upper hand will they acquire by telling you something that isn’t the truth? The reasons people lie are almost innumerable, but you can quite easily pigeon hole most people’s motives for being dishonest. Here are some of the most common:

♦

For monetary gain.

♦

To hide something that, if revealed, would bring about punishment or a lowering of their overall personal worth.

♦

For respect, social standing, adoration or recognition.

♦

To conceal their embarrassment or shame.

There are thousands of others; each custom fit to a specific situation and specially designed as a coping or gaining mechanism. If you can think of only one reason – one possible, realistic motive – for someone lying to you, there’s a chance that they are. How strong that chance is can only be decided by using collective tell detection in a clear and precise order.



DETECT DECEIT

Collective Tell Detection: The order and execution of the most powerful natural lie detection system in the world If you attempted to simultaneously spot every deceit signal in this book in the body, voice and behaviour of every person you suspected of lying to you, you’d never, ever be able to form a reliable and solid conclusion on their truthfulness. There are simply too many possibilities and not enough to time to look for each and every one. So, to make spotting lies a quick and easy task for you every time you feel you’d like to know the truth, we use an established order and execution system.

The first thing you need to do is completely immerse yourself in the information provided in this book. One read through gives you an excellent general knowledge on the subject of lie detection. Two read throughs will cement what you’ve already learnt in your mind and reveal new pieces of information you may have missed or forgotten the first time round. By your third read through, each and every indicator of deceit will be indelibly written in your mind, able to be accessed instantly whenever you need to know the truth. Once you have the knowledge set immovably in your mind, it’s simply a case of ordering how you use it when you come across someone who both has a motive for lying and that rouses your suspicion.

Move through the types of deceit in a set order, starting with the easiest to notice and most commonly produced deceit signals: body tells. Then, regardless of how many bodily gestures that indicate deceit you spot, look for speech style alterations. If the person you suspect of lying produces Copyright © DetectDeceit.com


DETECT DECEIT any of the body tells and speech alterations associated with dishonesty, it’s safe to assume they’re lying. But, as an acid test, you can then use one or two psychological lie detection techniques – either discreetly or overtly, depending on the situation and your general preference. By the time you’ve finished looking for body, voice and mind related indicators of deceit, you will – without even realising – have formed a definite opinion on whether this person can be trusted. It will feel almost like a gut instinct, but in actuality it’s the exact opposite: your in-depth knowledge on how people behave when they lie has enabled you to read them like a book and thus revealed to you their intentions, integrity and ultimate truthfulness.

You can now detect deceit.

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