DECEPTION DETECTION AND STRESS
There are no behaviors that directly indicate deception or lying. What we are looking for is discomfort, stress, and uncertainty when someone is speaking. In this regard, you’re not only learning how to detect when deception is likely in conversations, but you’re also learning how to detect stress. This skill reveals all kinds of internal emotions, whether you’re in sales, medicine, negotiations, or any other situation where you speak to humans.
Becoming a stress-detector has tremendous benefits. You can start to see where disagreement, discomfort, and uncertainty creep into the mind of anyone you speak to. When you see these behaviors, you will be able to identify the precise moment they occur and what was being discussed that might have caused it.
In this chapter, we are going to cover verbal ‘deception’ indicators and nonverbal indicators. The verbal indicators are written to address deception, but remember to read through them with the intent of applying them universally.
ABOUT LYING
There is no machine or human that can ‘detect’ lies. Even the polygraph is a machine that measures only stress responses. In fact, one of the reasons they are inadmissible in court cases is the fundamental unreliability of the machine. They are prone to subjective interpretation, manipulation and are even biased against truth-tellers.
To get proficient at determining the likelihood of deception, you must read behaviors in groups and clusters. When we see a single data point, we must obtain another before making any kind of determination about the presence of deception in someone’s statement. One of the reasons I designed the Behavioral Table of Elements to resemble the Periodic Table of Elements, aside from the fact that it looks cool, was to show that just like elements, they come together to form things. Behavior is the same in that we need to combine multiple data points to form a cohesive opinion about the interaction.
We are all affected in conversations of all kinds by something called the ‘truth bias.’ This phenomenon suggests that when we like someone, even just a little, our brains will make a decision, without our knowledge, to see only truth. Deceptive indicators and warnings are deleted from the memory of experiences with people. Our brains are working to do the right thing, and when we interact with someone we like, our brains will seek confirmation of this and ignore anything that conflicts with it.
We see this in extreme situations where a husband is cheating on his spouse. Everyone in the neighborhood knows about it except for his spouse. She has ignored fundamental indicators of deception and bad behavior simply due to a firmly held belief or desire to believe that the relationship is still solid and going well.
We can be affected by truth bias in the courtroom, in sales, and in almost any conversation we have. It’s not just something spouses and interrogators deal with. Something as small as looking like someone, sharing the same first name, or even being the same race as someone can trigger this truth bias. While there’s no vaccine to prevent this from happening, knowing about it can help. Before you enter into an important conversation, examine the situation. Determine if you’re likely to suffer from the truth bias and keep it in mind during the interaction. This won’t prevent it, but it can certainly limit the influence of the bias on you.
Let’s walk through the verbal deception indicators.
HESITANCY
Hesitancy occurs in two forms. In one form, there is an unusual pause before a person answers a question. How do we know what’s unusual? We only measure how unusual the pause is based on how they have responded to all the other questions in this conversation.
The second form hesitancy takes is a direct repetition of the question. If you asked someone, “What’s the reason you decided to do that?” and their response is, “What’s the reason I decided to do that...?”—this is hesitancy. The person has basically echoed the entire question back before answering. This behavior is designed to buy time and provide room for the person to prepare an answer to the question.
However, if someone simply repeats a part of the question, it’s most likely for clarification, not buying time. For instance, if you asked the same question, “What’s the reason you decided to do that?” and their response is simply, “The reason? Well…,” this is simply a partial repetition of the question for clarification, and does not qualify as hesitancy.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCING
When someone speaks about something, they feel guilty about, they will soften the severity of the crime and distance themselves (with words) from the object of the question.
In police work, criminals will use words to describe crimes that are less revolting or severe.
Kill = hurt
Steal = take
Rape = have sex with
Molest = interfere with / touch
Assault = hit
Shoot = harm
Stab = hurt
People also do this in business, referring to negative actions in the workplace with less severity than an innocent person would. When questioning innocent people, they will typically have no problem using the specific ‘harsh’ word to describe an occurrence of something. Guilty people will tend to soften how bad it sounds.
People will also do this with names. Criminals are less likely to use the name of victims, instead referring to them as he or she, or ‘the woman.’ In the workplace, employees will do the same for people they either disdain, or they might have victimized.
Consider this statement you may have heard before:
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman…”
In this phrase, we see two instances of psychological distancing. Sex has become ‘sexual relations,’ and the name of the subject of the sentence, ‘Monica,’ has been omitted. Only after this distancing phrase was the name of the subject used, and only after a pause.
When I train interrogation teams, one strong piece of advice that I always offer is that your language should do this when you question someone. There are seven specific tasks an interrogator must accomplish to get the job done. One of them is to ‘Minimize the Seriousness of the Situation.’ If you ever have the need to question someone, never use harsh or criminal words to describe the event or action. Always soften the severity. Suspects have a mental tendency to assign blame, dismiss how severe the crime is, and rationalize their actions. One key job of interrogators is to help them do just that.
RISING PITCH
The tone of our voices tends to rise when we lie.
As stress creates adrenaline in our bodies, it also tightens the muscles in the neck around the vocal cords. A deceptive statement will likely sound higher pitched than the rest of the conversation.
This deception-indicating behavior is easy to notice, but it won’t sound like you might think. As I was first trained in this, I imagined Dennis the Menace lying to Mr. Wilson about the baseball flying through his living room window. Sadly, I discovered it’s not that dramatic. The tone will increase only slightly in contrast to the other statements in the conversation.
SCENARIO:
You’ve been interviewing a new hire for your company. The moment you asked about why they left their previous employer; the pitch of their voice goes up. Everything else looked entirely believable, but you decide to call the previous employer and discover they were stealing from the company. Crisis averted. You’re a hero…sort of.
INCREASED SPEED
Liars will increase the speed of potentially deceptive statements. This happens unconsciously, like all the other indicators. This typically has roots in one of two reasons in the subconscious mind.
First, the brain is stressed out. If the person delivers the statement as fast as possible, they will minimize the time they are experiencing stress. The speed will differ from the rest of the conversation.
Secondly, the person being deceptive will speed up their answer to avoid being interrupted. If they pause, their brain views this as an opportunity for you to interject and question certain aspects of the statement.
SCENARIO:
In a business merger discussion, the CEO of one business speeds up when speaking about the integrity of the company and how they have been forthright in submitting all the requested paperwork. A week later, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) announces they are investigating the company for insider trading. (Try watching the videos of Enron staff make similar statements.)
NON-ANSWERS
If a person responds to a question in any way that doesn’t answer your question, it is considered a non-answer. We’ll be coming back to this a few times to illustrate how this combines with other deception indicators to increase the DRS (Deception Rating Scale) number of the behaviors.
PRONOUN ABSENCE
When we speak, we use all kinds of pronouns. It’s built into the fabric of our language. Deceptive statements will contain fewer pronouns than our normal speech and may be completely devoid of pronouns altogether.
Technical manuals typically don’t contain pronouns. If you bought a new washing machine and read the instruction manual, I’d be willing to bet you’d find no pronouns in there.
Somehow, in the subconscious, our brains view this lack of pronouns as highly technical or recall untrue events with fewer pronouns because we didn’t actually experience an event. Whatever the reason, deceptive statements are far less likely to contain pronouns.
Imagine asking someone what they did last night, and their answer is, “Well, left the house at about nine. Went to the bar and had like six or seven drinks, stopped at the store on the way home, got a six pack, got home at like eleven, and played on my X-Box until about 2 AM.”
Something’s missing. You guessed it. Pronouns are all missing from the story. While deceptive statements may not be this dramatic, you will definitely be able to notice when the pronouns are spoken less often. James Pennebaker’s book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, describes this and many other fascinating phenomena about the way we speak and write.
SCENARIO:
You’re speaking to a co-worker about their recent vacation. As they describe the short trip to Miami, you notice there are almost no pronouns in their description. You make note of this, and only a week later, discover they were interviewing for a job in NYC, not sunbathing in Miami.
RESUME STATEMENTS
Many of us get defensive if we’re questioned about something we didn’t do. However, most of us would simply deny having committed the offense if we were innocent. A frequent tool unconsciously used by deceptive individuals is called the resume statement.
After being questioned, they will respond to the interviewer with a long list of the reasons why they would never do such a thing and provide you with a resume of sorts. This details out the reasons they are a good person who’s honest, kind, caring, and full of integrity. People who frequently speak about their integrity may be preemptively giving resume statements to everyone they encounter to remove doubt, and sometimes give them out of guilt or shame.
SCENARIO:
You’re a senior interrogator. You’ve been tasked to interview a suspect in a sexual assault case against a minor. You ask the suspect where they were at the time the victim stated the crime took place, and this is the response you receive:
“I’ve volunteered coaching that softball team for over seven years. I have a Master’s in Psychology; I know what inappropriate touching would do to a kid. Not only do I respect people in my life, I’ve been teaching Sunday School at Riverside Baptist for the last four years.”
This is a resume statement. But consider this: did it answer your question? Nope. In fact, in this example, we have a non-answer statement, two instances of psychological distancing, and a resume statement.
Total score (not including nonverbal responses): 16 on the Deception Rating Scale (DRS)
NON-CONTRACTIONS
We know our brains default to the most logical and technical language possible to deceive others or to spin a tale to make sure it sounds highly believable. If you go back to that washing machine manual you imagined earlier, you’re also not going to see contracted words in there. Where you would speak to someone casually and say, “Don’t use chemicals to clean the washing machine.” The manual would remove that contraction and say, “Do not use chemicals to clean the washing machine.”
This technical language is not something people decide to speak with on purpose (or consciously); it’s something the brain defaults to regularly to lie. The reasons for this are still up for debate, but we do know it happens.
Don’t = Do not
Can’t = Can not
Wouldn’t = Would not
Shouldn’t = Should not
Consider the following statement: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman…”
Now, if the former president routinely spoke this way, we could discount this as non-deceptive since this is his normal behavior. Luckily, we can access thousands of hours of him speaking. This isn’t his baseline behavior, so it becomes a 4 on the DRS here. With the two other instances of psychological distancing, the statement becomes a 12 on the DRS., alerting us to likely deception. This isn’t even including nonverbal behaviors.
The good news is that if we make these little mistakes when speaking, they tend to always tally up to numbers less than 11 on the DRS. Some people will use many of these ‘deception indicators’ in their normal speech. Their scores still stay below the 11 mark.
QUESTION REVERSAL
If you ask someone a question and they ask the question (or a similar question) back to you in defiance or indignance, this is question reversal.
If you asked someone, “What were you up to Monday evening?” and their response is, “What were you up to Monday evening?!” we’ve got an interesting data point.
What makes this even more interesting is that their response was not an answer to your question, so it qualifies as a non-answer statement. This makes almost all question reversals an 8 on the DRS.
AMBIGUITY
Ambiguity simply means the answer a person gives us is not fully functional as an answer.
If you asked someone in a business setting, “John, what were you doing after hours in the office at around 9 PM on Saturday?”
The ambiguous answer might sound something like, “Well, I usually come in to check emails.”
This one is easy for us to get tripped up on. If someone uses these phrases, our brains, being experts at filling in gaps, will assume they answered the question and move on. Even worse, our brain notices the ambiguity gap, and then we ask a question that allows them to completely escape. If we got the response above and replied to John with, “So, you just checked your email?”, we’ve provided him with a perfect escape, and all he has to do in response is say a simple, ‘yep.’ This gives us little room for further deception detection.
Furthermore, this answer John gave us is not a direct answer to our question, making it a non-answer statement.
POLITENESS
Good manners don’t mean deception. In this case, we are looking for a sudden rise in the respect the person is showing the interviewer.
I had a concierge interrogation case in Los Angeles, where I interviewed someone about stolen money. He came into the room and addressed me as ‘dude’ and ‘bro’ throughout the first twenty minutes of our conversation. When I broached the question asking him if any of the other employees would have seen him take any of the money, or if one of the security cameras would have shown him taking money, his response was priceless:
“Oh, no. No sir. Absolutely not, sir. I mean, that kind of thing is not something I would do, Mr. Hughes.”
This was a drastic deviation in his baseline behavior for dealing with me. The politeness spiked in response to the question about the actual event. Go back to his statement (copied word-for-word) and see if you can spot some other deception indicators in it.
OVER APOLOGIES
When we hear a spike in apologetic speech and behavior, we are seeing something unusual for the person we’re speaking with.
For example, if you’re speaking with someone, and you hear this after asking a pointed question, you will have a strong indication of potential deception:
“What did you guys do on Thursday evening again?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how I can possibly recall everything you want. I apologize; my memory isn’t perfect. I don’t know what else you want. I’m sorry.”
MINI- CONFESSIONS
Our need to confess is almost hard-wired. As we feel an increasing sense of guilt about something, our need to confess, or ‘get it off our chest,’ also rises. The human need for confession, the desire to release our troubles to someone else, goes back ages. Some religions even have specific outlets for this, such as Confession in church.
The second reason this may occur is still rooted in the need to confess our sins but also serves to derail the interviewer.
For example, in a police interrogation, a suspect may confess to a smaller crime in order to appear honest, derail the interviewer, and fulfill the need to confess. These small confessions are typically unrelated to the original event in question. If you hear small confessions, it’s easy to get side-tracked and begin a whole new line of questioning based on this mini-confession. Don’t. The mini confession will still be there at the end of the conversation. Your best course of action is to stay on track and calmly explain the mini-confession is no big deal and not what you’re after at all.
SCENARIO:
You are serving the government as an FBI Agent. You are interviewing a suspect for a homicide investigation when they suddenly say, “I didn’t have anything to do with that, but I’ve been meaning to tell someone that I have nineteen grams of heroin in the trunk of my car. It’s parked right outside.” That’s a lot of heroin. Enough to make the news. It’s exciting, and makes you want to go search the car immediately. However, you stay the course and continue your line of questioning by dismissing the confession as ‘no big deal’ and reassuring the suspect that you’re not in the drug business. After the suspect realizes you have no intent on latching onto the smaller confession, and they see it as ‘no big deal,’ they are much more likely to confess to the larger event if they were involved. Our display of comfort and acceptance for all the other things they mentioned makes gradually ramps up comfort levels with confession.
SCENARIO:
You’re casually looking for a recipe you texted your partner on their phone. You see a completely deleted conversation from someone named ‘Nicole’ that you don’t recognize. You walk the phone over to your partner and ask about the conversation and hear the following: “Oh. Yeah. That’s someone from work. It’s nothing. But I have been meaning to tell you something. A few weeks ago, I downloaded a dating app and chatted with a few people. I thought it was a social networking app, and I deleted it afterward.”
You dodge the mini confession immediately and dismiss it as nothing, knowing it will still be there when the conversation is over. After they see that the mini-confession didn’t work, your partner confesses to even more inappropriate actions with people at work.
EXCLUSIONS
Exclusions are the behaviors we see all the time in politics. Politicians muttering phrases such as ‘to the best of my knowledge,’ ‘as far as I recall,’ and ‘if memory serves…’ are so normal we don’t pay much attention.
Exclusions remove you from the original answer by creating a caveat that allows escape from anything definitive. These include the following:
As far as I know
To the best of my knowledge
As I recall
If memory serves
As far as I am aware
As far as I’ve been made aware of
These statements are stock-in-trade for politicians. We hear them daily on the news as well. If you’re going to ask anyone a question, however, you must be careful about what question is asked before you announce that you’ve observed exclusion statements.
If someone asked you if your neighbor four houses down was selling drugs, you might rightly say, “Not to the best of my knowledge.” But if someone asked you if you were selling drugs, you’d be quite suspicious if you said the same phrase.
If you’re ever grading someone on the deception scale for exclusions, be sure the question is something you can reasonably assume the person has knowledge of.
Exclusions require that the suspect reasonably has knowledge about the event in question.
CHRONOLOGY
We tell most of our stories chronologically. However, if we’re being questioned about an emotional event or one of our days where something significant occurred, we will tend to lead with the emotional event.
If you were in a car accident on Wednesday, and someone asks you, ‘What happened on Wednesday?’ you’ll likely respond by talking about the accident. We start our stories with action, movement, and emotionally charged events.
When you hear a recollection after asking a question that involves a timed sequence that includes unnecessary detail and follows a detailed timeline, this is likely to be deception. The exception to this is if the person is asked to provide a chronological recall of events. If we ask someone to walk us through an event from the beginning, we can hardly judge them as being deceptive.
We’ve all made up some serious stories before. Most of us were kids, but some adults still do it. As we made up the stories, we added in details, rehearsed the lie until we had the entire thing memorized and packaged into a perfect narrative.
There’s one problem, though. When we memorize something and rehearse it dozens of times, we get really good at retelling it. How many times have you said the alphabet? Ten thousand? More? So, we have our story memorized to the point of recalling the alphabet, good. But what if someone asked you to say the alphabet backward? No matter how many times we rehearse something forwards, we will still have an extremely difficult time saying it backward.
Truthful events can be recalled in reverse. You can recall any event in your life backward. Even now, you can think in reverse without much difficulty to what you were doing at this time yesterday.
If we spot chronological stories that sound like they may be deceptive with too many details, we can ask someone to recall the events in reverse.
CONFIRMATION GLANCE
We look around at other people all the time. But if we do it at certain times, it can indicate quite a bit about our psychology and our relationship to the people we look at.
A confirmation glance is where a person glances at a friend before telling a story or glances at another interviewer after telling a story. These are the only two times they are a 4.0 on the DRS.
If you’re with a co-worker and speaking to someone, you’ll see this glance if the person maintains eye contact with you and glances back to your co-worker after they finish speaking.
If you’re talking to two people, you’ll be able to see one of them glance at the other just before the story / answer begins.
SCENARIO:
Having been promoted to Sales Manager at a real-estate company, you have been asked to speak to a reluctant man who has concerns about buying a home. You sit down with the man and his wife to see what’s going on. The moment you ask if they are ready to buy a house, the man immediately looks at his wife before answering. You’ve confirmed she is likely the decision-maker, and tailor your conversation to better adapt to her communication style and desires. The home sells.
PRE-SWALLOW MOVEMENT
Just as we begin to swallow, the throat visibly moves upward. Try it now. Place your hand on your neck, and you’ll feel the upward movement of the trachea as you prepare to swallow.
When people feel a sense of stress or anxiety, you will see a slight rise in this area of the throat. Anxiety associated with deception not only increases saliva production, but it also causes a sensation in the throat called Globus Pharyngeus.
You’ll most often see this behavior while you’re asking a question. As the person realizes the severity or consequences of the question, their bodily response in the throat will be immediate.
SCENARIO:
You are a medical doctor. A patient comes into the office and asks for a prescription for a controlled substance. During your question asking them if they’ve seen other healthcare providers for this issue, their throat (trachea) raises almost an inch. You spot the behavior and immediately call the pharmacy they asked for the medication to be delivered to. You’re able to confirm they’ve received several scripts for this medication this week alone.
SINGLE-SIDED SHRUG
We see this behavior all the time. When we speak with people, they will raise one of their shoulders as they explain something. This, like all the other behaviors, doesn’t indicate deception on its own.
A single-sided shrug indicates someone most likely lacks confidence in what they are saying.
If you were speaking to a close friend and asked how they like their new job, and you saw this behavior as they said, ‘It’s great!’ you’d know they might not like the job so much.
However, if you’re in a high-ticket sales situation, and you see this as you ask the client if they feel good with the deal, you’ve got problems. As you see this behavior, you instantly know you have some work to do. You can choose to address the issue right away or ask them about their concerns later. Either way, you know ahead of time instead of waiting till the end.
THROAT CLASPING
In any situation, we need to identify the context in order to understand behavior. If we are able to spot behaviors, and we know exactly what they all mean, that’s still only half the battle.
If someone you’re speaking with touches their neck or throat, this can strongly indicate a self-soothing or pacifying behavior. The hand does not have to raise up and wrap around the neck. Any contact with the neck can be illustrative of doubt or a need for reassurance.
When you observe throat-clasping behavior, identify the context. If there is a point in the conversation you can identify that caused it, that means you can overcome the doubt or uncertainty the person may be feeling there in the moment.
HUSHING
We inherit a lot from our ancestors. All of the nonverbal behaviors we have are either ways to signal other humans or to protect ourselves from large predators.
These behaviors are so ingrained that we don’t grow out of them. The hushing behavior is simply defined as any behavior that obscures the person’s mouth from your view. Whether it’s a cough, a nose-scratch, or someone directly covering their mouth, this is hushing behavior.
Imagine a child accidentally dropping the F-bomb in front of their parents for the first time. We all instinctively picture the kid reaching up to cover their mouth. We do this because that’s what we would do in the same situation. This is so ingrained in us that our behaviors are compulsive.
Unlike with clothes, we don’t grow out of these as we grow up, but we do come up with more creative ways to satisfy the impulses. This impulse to reach up and cover the mouth might be masked by someone scratching their nose or turning their head to cough briefly. The impulse is satiated, and our social standing remains intact.
As you’ve learned thus far, not all these deception behaviors are indicative of deception in every situation. Sometimes they indicate stress, and other times, we just don’t know.
In social situations, for example, covering the mouth is seen as a respectful way to listen to someone. We tend to do this to subconsciously prevent ourselves from interrupting, and it’s often a respectful gesture when we speak to others.
In deception, this may be the most reliable indicator of lying. Research suggests that facial touching is the most commonly seen indicator of deception in westernized countries.
In sales or interviewing, it’s important to note when you see this behavior. It can indicate respect, concern, uncertainty, and deception.
THE FIG LEAF
This gesture occurs when a man folds his hand in front of his genitals. The hands draw inward and rest or cover the crotch area. While we tend to imagine this as a still image with both hands over the crotch area, I’d once more like to suggest you imagine this, and all of these behaviors, as moving images. As practitioners of this art, we are concerned with movement and changes, not still shots.
The term for this behavior was coined by Allan Pease. It tends to indicate that a person is either feeling vulnerable, threatened, or insecure.
SCENARIO:
You’re seated with someone and going over details of a contract. His hands are gently placed on his legs as he listens. Right when you mention the payment terms, you observe his hands retreating toward his crotch area. As you notice this, you ask a few questions about the terms to determine if there is an issue or if he’d like to modify them, and he opens up. He admits he didn’t agree with the extended timeline of the contract and would like to change it to reflect payment over a shorter period of time.
You were able to identify the movement as genital-protective behavior and resolve the issue before you got to the point of no return.
SINGLE-ARM WRAP
Remember, while men perform the ‘fig leaf,’ women are likely to perform the single-arm wrap. This behavior indicates the same internal feelings as the fig leaf: feeling vulnerable, threatened, or insecure.
Women will instinctively cross an arm across their body and hold the opposite arm, covering the area near their uterus. You can see this behavior in high schools and college campuses anywhere. Where women are in or around new social situations and unknown groups of people, this behavior flourishes.
Much like the fig leaf, the movement is what you are looking for. When one arm begins to fold across the lower abdomen, that’s the time to identify the conversational context.
SCENARIO:
As a therapist, you’re interviewing a young woman who’s complaining of depression. She talks about her family life and childhood, and as she says the word ‘stepfather,’ she performs a single-arm wrap. You observe the behavior and recognize there may be an issue. During the next therapy session, you ask about this and discover a traumatic history she wouldn’t have revealed without your questioning her.
ELBOW-CLOSURE
Fear makes us protect arteries. It’s an impressive system we’re born with designed to save us from tigers, but it’s no longer the threat we face today.
The upper bone in your arm is called the humerus. Elbow closure is when these bones move inward toward the torso. If someone you’re speaking to suddenly moves their arms inward, you’ve established a strong data point worth dealing with. This is mostly visible only when someone is seated.
This fear behavior is also indicative of stress or anxiety. The arms will instinctively pull into the body to protect the brachial artery near the armpit.
SCENARIO:
You are at a party, and you’ve just met someone. You both sit to chat, and you notice instant elbow closure the moment you mention swimming. Later, you discover she has a fear of water due to a childhood experience. You refer her to a good friend who deals with phobias and saves the day.
DOWNWARD PALMS
We show our palms to others to indicate sincerity. Imagine a kid explaining his innocence to his parents. We instantly imagine the arms out to the side, with palms exposed to the parents.
Throughout our lives, we participate in conversations. You’ve likely seen this behavior tens of thousands of times without noticing it. We expose our palms to indicate sincerity or openness, but they go downward to indicate the opposite.
When someone is seated, their hands will be resting on their legs, the table, or the arms of a chair most of the time. The downward palm behavior occurs when someone’s hands turn downward toward the table or body, further concealing the palm from view. This gesture can be subtle, but it’s easy to spot after only a few rounds of practice.
This can indicate disagreement, stress, concealment, deception, or even anger, depending on the context. If we see this in sales, for instance, we might be seeing an objection to something being discussed. In the courtroom, however, we may be seeing a reluctance to proceed with questions or concealment of information.
SCENARIO:
You’re at your doctor’s office. You talk her through all the symptoms you are having, and she takes notes on a notepad. Before prescribing you anything, she asks what other medications you’re currently taking. You let her know you are taking a certain prescription from another doctor, and notice her palms turn down into her legs as she listens. Later, you ask her if she thinks you should keep taking the prescription from the other doctor, and she convinces you not to do so. She was hesitant to undermine the other doctor, but lets you know that with your condition, the medication could be more dangerous than you thought.
SUMMARY
There’s no behavior for deception, only stress. So, whether or not you’re locked in an interrogation room with suspects, the same behaviors will benefit you.
Don’t worry, at the end of this book, I’m going to detail out exactly how to learn all of this, and I’ve even typed up a training planning guide for you that’s included here in the book as well.
Coming up, I will actually show you the techniques that FBI spy hunters and intelligence operatives use to get information out of people…without them even knowing.