Truth and Lies of What People Are Really Thinking
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Dedication For Lex and Stella Epigraph Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth —Falsely attributed to Marcus Aurelius (author unknown) Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Epigraph Introduction Part One Genuine Deceptions 1 Body Language Lies 2 Powerful Thinking 3 Mind Your Judgments 4 Scan for Truth Part Two Dating 5 They’re Totally Checking Me Out! 6 Playing Hard-to-Get 7 Just Feeling Sorry for Me 8 I’m Being Ghosted 9 What a Complete Psycho! 10 They Are Running the Show 11 I’m Going to Pay for That! 12 They Are So Mad at Me 13 A Lying Cheat? 14 Definitely into My Friend 15 A Match Made in Heaven? 16 They Are So Breaking Up! Part Three Friends and Family 17 Thick as Thieves 18 My New Bff? 19 Fomo 20 Control Freak 21 Too Close for Comfort 22 They’ll Never Fit in with My Family 23 House on Fire! 24 I Am Boring the Pants off Them 25 Lying Through Their Teeth 26 Persona Non Grata 27 Invisible Me Part Four Working Life 28 I Aced That Interview—So, Where’s the Job Offer? 29 They Hate My Work 30 Big Dog 31 Never Going to See Eye to Eye 32 Cold Fish 33 They’re Gonna Blow! 34 This Meeting Is a Waste of Time 35 Looks Like a Winning Team 36 So, You Think You’re the Boss 37 Hand in the Cookie Jar Summary Bonus Bluff Learn more Acknowledgments Notes About the Authors Praise for Truth & Lies Also by Mark Bowden Copyright About the Publisher Introduction WE CAN ALL RECALL EXAMPLES when our sense of what another person was thinking turned out to be the truth. Equally so, there have been times when we were so sure we were reading another person right only to discover, after the fact, how dead wrong we were. Sometimes, we learn the hard way that we were purposely lied to and cannot believe we did not see it for even one moment . until it was too late. Chances are that no matter the case, we were relying to some extent on correctly reading another’s body language. We are inundated through news and social media with clickbait, articles and guides on how to read body language, which attempt to make it quick and easy for us to glance at someone and deduce their most secret thoughts. For example, they’ve crossed their arms, so obviously they don’t like what I’m saying. They’ve pointed their feet elsewhere—clearly, they are more attracted to someone else in the room. They scratched their nose, so they’re a no-good liar. The problem is that while some of the time our “quick read” of someone’s body language may correctly uncover the truth about what they are thinking, all too often our readings and interpretations prove incorrect in the moment and we get it horribly wrong. On a good day there is only about a fifty-fifty chance of being correct. Having said that, people who are truly practiced at the skill of reading and interpreting body language have found that by following tried and trusted processes, they can be far more effective at deducing what people are really thinking. HERE IS A STORY from someone whose job it has been, in the interest of public safety, to always get the reading right: to examine behaviors, make an informed judgment from them, and then test how accurate his judgments are to uncover the truth of the matter. Read on and ask yourself how much you would trust your current body language reading skills in this situation, where stress and the stakes are high, in order to catch a murderer. Our colleague and friend Paul Nadeau is a former police detective with twenty-five years of investigative background, including homicide, and was a trained polygraph examiner—in other words, a professional lie detector. Paul describes the polygraph as an instrument that can detect the “slightest physiological changes in someone’s body; changes that can occur when someone is anxious giving a deceitful answer to a clear question.” As the polygraph examiner, Paul had to record and analyze the stress shown when answering questions to determine which ones the examinee may have lied about. Paul notes that, of course, individuals who agree to take a polygraph examination may indeed already be in quite an anxious state, particularly if they are being investigated by the police. Someone in Paul’s position understands that if a person being questioned is immediately attached to a polygraph, there is every chance of getting a “false positive” result—they might look like a liar, even when they are not. “Before hooking any suspect up to the instrument, I would first take some time to bring the examinee to a calmer state, putting them at ease. But that’s not all. I would also be watching every movement made by the examinee. Taking mental snapshots of that person’s physicality; looking for changes— especially as we move onto talking casually about the subject matter under investigation.” Paul shared with us one real-life situation, a homicide case where a gang member had been found in a rival gang’s territory stabbed to death, with three deep knife wounds to the heart. The theory was that the gang was sending a powerful message: Do not trespass on our turf—or else! The suspects were any and all of the rival gang’s members. Unsurprisingly, each gang member denied committing the murder, and each of them was requested by the police to take a polygraph test. It was Paul’s task to interview and give polygraph tests individually to the entire rival gang, any of whom could be the murderer, and all of whom denied any involvement. But then there was rival gang member number six, whom Paul describes as displaying body language that felt to him cocky and argumentative. “His chin was up and pushed out defiantly. He looked down his nose at me with a lopsided snarl. He hated all cops and had no respect for them.” Right off the bat, Paul, a veteran of interrogation and lie detection, put the suspect at ease by leaning in and confiding that he too felt much the same way about the officers he worked with. This tactic paid off in that the gang member warmed to him and they got to making small talk. Once they were involved in more relaxed banter, the gang member chatting about his family and girlfriends, Paul noted that he was at this point openly displaying a true smile, with no seemingly defensive postures. Paul was effectively establishing an understanding for himself of this individual’s most normal behavior in the interview situation when in a relaxed state. The crucial moment of body language interpretation happened when Paul purposely and abruptly shifted the conversation to the topic of the homicide. “His eyes left mine, his head turned away and his arms crossed. Although he answered ‘no’ to being involved, his verbal answers were inconsistent with what his body language was now broadcasting to me . the more I asked about his involvement, the more he leaned back into his chair— uncomfortably so.” This extreme change in body language was all Paul needed to see to have a strong suspicion that this guy was guilty. To test his theory, Paul confronted him with a powerful question: “You didn’t intend to kill him. You just wanted to teach him a lesson—‘Don’t come back!’ Otherwise, I’m sure you would have stabbed him much more than three times. Isn’t that the way it happened?” The gang member dropped his head into his hands and turned away from Paul, hiding his face. He confessed then and there to the murder and was later convicted in court. For Paul, taking mental snapshots of the behavior as he went through this interrogation, creating moments when a change in body language would stand out, as well as evaluating whether the suspect’s words were consistent with the body language he saw, and taking the moment to test his conjecture, made him a “human lie detector”—he had no need for the polygraph. Of course, this was Paul’s job as a law enforcement professional, an essential service in ensuring public safety. Paul was highly skilled and well practiced in his system for reading body language with accuracy. Wouldn’t it be incredibly useful if you could emulate Paul’s level of expertise in getting to the truth in your everyday life, without going through the detective training, and without coming across as an interrogator? For example, what if you understood as Paul did the suspect’s lopsided snarl, looking down his nose, jutting chin: All his facial expressions that indicate arrogance and contempt, a powerful feeling of being “above” Paul and the cops. Then, if you knew to empathize with the person and find their baseline of relaxed behavior for that situation, to instigate a change in the situation that might reveal a notable change in body language, and to—finally—test the findings for accuracy, eliciting displays of shame and even guilt—well, that skill would surely prove useful, instead of your acting solely on a hunch and going with a knee-jerk reaction to another’s body language. ALYSON SCHAFER, A HIGHLY RESPECTED parenting expert, told us a story that highlights just how important it is to put aside those knee-jerk reactions we can have to nonverbal behavior, to hold off on making wrong and possibly even catastrophic assumptions based on those reactions, instead taking the time to investigate situations more thoroughly to get to the truth.