The Truth Detector: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Secrets to Getting People to Reveal the Truth – John R. "Jack" Schafer

You are hypersensitive to the fact that person knows you're lying. In other words, a good example is that if you have the spot on your tie, nobody notices the spot on your tie until you say, look at the spot on my tie. Then that's the only thing they can look at. The other example is if you bought a particular model of car the next day after buying that car, you see that car everywhere, and it's called the spotlight effect. So what that does is it enhances the nonverbal indicators of deception. So I can say to you, I know you're lying because this, this, and that. And you go like, how does he know? Don't ask the person, do you know somebody? Ask him, when's the last time you saw him? When's the first time did you meet that person? So now, now you're thinking, wow, he didn't ask me if I knew him. He said, when was the last time he met him?

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Jack, thanks for joining us today.

You're welcome. Glad to be here.

Yes, it is an honor to have you. This is the interview I've been waiting for since 2016, when I started this podcast. So this is great. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Well, I spent five years as a police officer in the suburb outside of Chicago, and then after that I joined the FBI for 20 years. And in the FBI, I spent a lot of time working crimes on the Indian reservation, mostly homicides and those types of property crimes. And then I went to language school to study Korean. And I spent a year and a half studying Korean and was assigned to Los Angeles, where I worked on mostly counterintelligence. And as the last seven Years of my career, I spent as a behavioral analyst. And you're probably thinking the kind of behavioral analyst you see on tv. I did something a little bit different. That was the behavioral analysis unit. What they did is they went to crime scenes and tried to figure out who did the crime based on the evidence at the crime scene. So they didn't know who did it, and they tried to figure out who did it. We, on the other hand, in the behavioral analysis program had a target that we wanted to recruit. Say, for example, we wanted to recruit somebody from the Chinese embassy. We would select the people that we thought would be the best recruits. We would do a behavioral analysis on them, and then we would design interview strategies to get them recruited to work for us.

Incredible. Oh, that's fascinating. And after such a rich career, I know that you have a lot of incredible stories to tell. And this will be a test of my interviewing restraint, because I will. I would want this to go for days, Jack, but I have to focus on one of your many skills. And today we're going to focus on deception, because this is something that comes up so frequently. I think a lot of times when people think about difficult conversations and challenges in relationships, they go straight to some of the darkest, scariest things. And deception is one of the things that looms large in people's minds. And you're an expert in deception detection and understanding what to do with this. So let's start this off in a fun place. When you think about deception and what it means for us in difficult conversations, but also human interaction and relationships in general, what do you think is the thing that most people misunderstand about deception?

Well, deception is a little more complex than most people think, because there's lies and then there are lies. Because if we go to a. Well, let's just say we get a present from our. Our son or our daughter. It's an ugly tie. What are we going to do? Tell the truth and say, hey, that tie is ugly. I wouldn't wear it. No, we can't. But is it a lie? Yes, it is a lie. How about if we tell somebody who put on a nice dinner for us, we went to a dinner affair and the food really sucked. What are we going to say? Hey, I had a great time, but the food sucked. Next time, make it better. So is that a lie? Well, technically, it is a lie. So we have to kind of discern. In essence, I guess what we're looking at in a lie like that is we are just acknowledging the person's efforts that they perform for us. So the effort of buying the gift or providing the food. So we're actually acknowledging the effort. So technically, it's not a lie. A lie, I think, is defined as it's an intentional act to deceive somebody else. And the emphasis is on intentional, because a lot of times we say things not intentionally, but because we don't know what we're talking about. And that. Is that a lie? Well, it's not technically, by my definition, it's not a lie because we didn't intentionally want to deceive somebody else. Now, if I did something wrong and you borrowed $10 from me, and I went back to ask you for $10, and you said, no, you never gave me the $10. I never asked for the 10. Now, that's an intent to deceive. That would be a lie. That's the definition, is where we have to start from.

Yes. Oh, I like this. This is. It's really important because when you think about that, a lot of those are kind of social lies, the things that keep the wind, the world spinning. If everybody were to tell you exact, everybody would be broken. Relationships would fall apart instantly. So I think that this is a really important distinction, but I love the fact that it focuses on intent. And now let's. Let's go into this, Jack, because when we hear this definition, I think most people would be able to get down with this. They'll say, yeah, okay, an intentional act to deceive someone else, 100%. Now, one of the challenges I've found is that, like you said, sometimes there might be a situation where somebody misstates the truth not because of intentionality, but because of ignorance. And some people get really lost in that intentional piece, the intent. And it's hard to understand what somebody's intent is outside of what they tell you. We're kind of piecing that together from the outside. And so when it comes to deciphering intent, how do we do that? Or is there any value in trying to figure that out, too?

Well, the only time you have to decipher intent is when you figure out that the person lied to you or did not convey the truth anything before that. We are built as humans to accept what people tell us as the truth until we give them reason to doubt what we say. So the only time we would look for intent is if we have some reason to doubt you're telling the truth. And then we get into deciphering a lie. But the basics for lie detection is when people lie, there's a fear of getting Caught. Now, if I lie to you, and I think that you may catch me in a lie, then what engages is the fight flight response. And the fight flight response gets us ready to run away or gets us ready to fight. And obviously in most social circumstances, in even criminal interview situations, it's difficult to fight the police or fight your friends or run away because it's kind of a giveaway, you know, he ran away, he's not telling the truth. So we have to sit and we're in this fight flight response. And that gets our body ready to fight and we have a lot of energy and a lot of, you know, our heartbeat goes up, our respiration goes up, our begin to sweat and we can have all this energy here. So what do we do with that energy? We have to dissipate that energy somehow because our bodies are looking for homeostasis or equilibrium. And so what our bodies try to do is to return to equilibrium. So all the stress that we built up because of the fight flight response, we have to dissipate that. And a lot of times it comes out in finger tapping, toe tapping, fidgeting, hands fidgeting, fingers, pacifying gestures. And you can now begin to pick up those nonverbal signals that come from or stem from the fight flight response. So that's what we're looking for. That's the first way. The second way is cognitive overload. When liars lie, they are fully cognitively loaded. In other words, what I mean by cognitive is their mind is fully occupied on that lie because they have to pay attention to what they said, what they didn't say, what they left out, how their verbals are going, how their nonverbals are going. Not only that, they have to monitor the lie target to find out, is that person believing me? Is he buying off on my lie? So we're fully cognitively loaded. And so what you want to do to test for that deception is to add cognitive load to the person. In other words, here's what I would ask you if you're accused of committing a crime. And I would say, do you really want to get away with this? And your initial reaction is, yes. And then I'll say, that's why I'm here to stop you. Then you'll say, no, no, no, I don't want to get away. Well, that's why I'm here to stop you. Truthful people say, what? Get away with what? But because their brains are so cognitively loaded, what our brains do is when we're faced with two options out of when we're fully, cognitively loaded. Faced with two options, the brain selects item A or item B. It doesn't go beyond that because of efficiency, because there's no more room to think about those alternatives. So that's what we look primarily. Fight flight, cognitive overload.

This is brilliant. And, Jack, to be honest, first thought that came to my mind when I heard you talk about this is, damn, I don't want to lie ever again. I started to get stressed out when I heard you describe the experience. It just seems horrible because you're absolutely right. Because as much as we try to hold back our emotions, a lot of times there's going to be a lot of emotional leakage, especially if it's coming from someplace as visceral and carnal as the limbic system. It's really hard for us to hold that and hide it. It has to escape in some kind of way. And the cognitive load. I did not consider that because it's pretty easy to remember the truth. What happened, happened, and then you just recite what that is. But if you're trying to first understand what the truth is and then create an artful deviation from the truth and then keep track of everything that you've done, that's incredibly heavy. Incredibly heavy. It's almost like the straw that broke the camel's back. You ask that question, and then it's kind of like a mental malfunction that happens under that pressure.

Yeah. And what you're describing is something we call the spotlight effect. In other words, you know you're lying. The person you're talking to doesn't know you're lying, but you are hypersensitive to the fact that person knows you're lying. In other words, a good example is that if you have the spot on your tie, nobody notices the spot on your tie until you say, look at the spot on my tie. And that's the only thing they can look at. The other example is if you bought a particular model of car the next day after buying that car, you see that car everywhere, and it's called the spotlight effect. So what that does is it enhances the nonverbal indicators of deception. So I can say to you, I know you're lying because this, this, and that. And you go like, how does he know? Don't ask the person, do you know somebody? Ask him, when's the last time you saw him? When's the first time did you meet that person? So now you're thinking, wow, he didn't ask me if I knew him. He said, when was the last time you met him. So that causes you to go, maybe that guy knows more than he's saying. Maybe he's, he knows the truth and I don't know enough. I lie. And so you see that the spotlight enhances that the nonverbal that you display. Yes.

Okay, so this makes a lot of sense. So let's just bring it back to this, to those moments again where you ask that question. First of all, the way that you ask that question, the sentence formulation is exquisite because a lot of times in negotiation we talk about the power of open ended questions and everything, but we don't really go down deeper beyond the surface. And this is a really good example of one of the biggest concerns that I personally have when it comes to asking closed ended questions is that it makes it exceptionally easy for people to lie to you. It's easy to say yes and no. And oftentimes there's a very clear right or wrong answer. Any parent out there who says, hey, did you do your homework? The kid might just reflexively say, yes, because I know that's the right answer. Oh my goodness, I lied. It was a reflex. And so by asking the question in that open ended format, it gives more of a narrative response and gives you more of an opportunity to see inconsistencies in the story and see more of those in indicators and gestures that show deception.

I'll give you one tip. When you're talking to people or negotiating with people, what you want to do is use what I refer to as elicitation. In other words, you want to get that person to tell you the truth before they have a chance to lie. And what you want to do is create an environment where that person tells you the truth without them realizing that they've been telling you the truth. In other words, if I ask you as a businessman, we're competing for a particular contract and I tell you, I say, sir, I understand that your company doesn't have the capacity to deliver on the amount of product that the buyer wants to buy. That's a presumptive, it's not a question. And you're automatically going to say, what? No, I think we can deliver. I think we just put on a, we just put on a new, a line of manufacturing line to anticipate this contract. Now I'm thinking, wow, okay, they have the capacity. I say, but your gna, your general overhead and administrative costs are probably running around 15, 18%, which puts you out of the, out of the bidding. And then you'll say, no, no, no, we're a lot less than that, you see. So you're telling me the truth without what, knowing that you're telling me the truth. And you can use this in real estate. My wife and I were looking for a house. We knew it was in a flood zone. You know, it flooded every, you know, 100 years or whatever, you know, those zones. And we went to the basement of this house and it was completely remodeled. I mean, spotless. It had just been finished. You could still smell the, like, the drywall paste or whatever being, you know, the paint and everything. So I said, I wonder if it was flooded. Now, if you ask the real estate lady, did it flood? They'll say, well, no, this place doesn't flood. No, no, this is. Hasn't happened in 100 years. Instead of asking that, you asked a presumptive question or presumptive statement. And I said, wow, they sure fixed this up nice since it flooded. And she says, well, yeah, they went to extra special this and that. I did. Doggone it, it's flooded. So we excused ourselves and left. So there's different ways to detect lies, but that presumptive question, it's not a presumptive question. It's a presumptive statement. It's either false or true. And people have a psychological need to correct others. They have to correct it. Like if I say you're from. I think you said you were from Ontario.

No, I'm from Columbus.

Oh, okay, See, there you go. Why did you feel the need to correct that? People are. They're compelled to correct other people because psychologically it puts me above you because now I know something and you don't. Our egos can't handle that. So you see how a presumptive works.

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Jack, this is great. And one thing I love about elicitation, besides its power, is that it is outside of the of law enforcement and counterintelligence. It is not very used out in Polite society for civilians.

Right?

We don't. We don't use it at all.

No, we don't use it and we should use it because you could get a lot of information from a lot of people and they don't even realize they're giving up the information. Well, as you say, the one example we used is in the book the Company we wanted to know, somebody wanted to know if that company was relocating so they could either make business decisions on whether a company is going to relocate or not. The person went to the CEO and asked him at a party, hey, are you relocating now? You know, we're steady and we're this and that. We don't have any intensive this and that. So then that person then went to the CEO's wife and said, geez, it's really cold here in whatever town it was. She said, well, we don't have to worry so much about that because we're going to move to a warmer climate zone. Bingo. See how elicitation works.

What's another thing that makes it a lot like, really like a stealth attack. I don't want to say sneak attack, that seems negative, but it is a stealthy attack, is that you cannot be painted. Oh, go ahead.

You're just looking for the truth.

That's right. That's right. And you're doing it in a way that doesn't damage the relationship. Because I think a lot of times people look at Hollywood and they're like, oh, okay, so I need to turn the volume all the way up and start banging on the table and they'll break down. So let me be really, really aggressive in attack this person who I believe is deceiving me. But that just kind of puts them deeper into their hole and makes it harder for them to share. But with this, you're doing this in a way that is empathetic and quite respectful, and you're just providing them with an opportunity to tell the truth.

That's right. Because if you ask people direct questions, their shields go up. Why did you ask the question? How is it going to be used against me? What do you want? What's your intent? What's that? So shields go up. So with elicitation, you don't ask questions. You just provide the impetus or the tool. So I could say you're. You look about 30, 35 years old. So what did I do? I set up a bracket. And so your, your overwhelming notion is to say, no, I'm X, not 30 to 35. You see what I'm saying?

Yes.

Bracketing in the in the truth detector, we present about 16 tools that people can use to get that information from people. And it works so effectively in the business world. In fact, I trained quite a few people in the business world on how to elicit information from people, which is critical in the business world. Absolutely.

I mean, at the end of the day, negotiation is an information game. We're going to win and lose on the quality and quantity of the information that we have. And a lot of times I think it can be very scary to negotiators who have a lot on the line to recognize just how little, little they truly know about the counterpart or the situation. Because if we're talking about a big publicly traded company, we can, there are due diligence things that we can do. But when it is a privately held company, everything, it's, I mean, with a lot of them we can see it's smoking mirrors. With every, every, every year there's some marquee fraud that was the darling of the media.

Right.

And we see high level people being deceived because they don't have these tools and they don't have the curiosity. A lot of times too.

I'll give you one more tip if you're interested.

All the T, Jack, all of them.

This is a powerful tool to test people's veracity. In other words, to test whether people are telling you the truth or not without them realizing that you're testing their veracity. And that is very simple. You ask somebody a yes or no question if the first word of their answer is the word well, then they are about to give you an answer they know you're not expecting. So let's break this down into an example. I tell my kid, go to your room and do your homework. And all I hear in there is game playing and tomfoolery and no homework. So he comes out an hour later and I say, did you do your homework? He says, well. And I said, get back there and do your homework. How do you know I didn't do it? Because I'm in the FBI. I know those things. Get back there and do it. But how did I really know? I asked him a yes or no question. The first word out of his mouth was well. Which means he's going to give me an answer he knows I'm not expecting? What answer does he think I'm expecting when I ask the question, did you do your homework? And that would be yes, dad, I did my homework. If he answers with the word well, it's anything but yes. Anything but yes is no. So I'll ask my boss, am I getting a raise this year, boss? Well, that means no, you're not getting a raise. Can I have that day off? Well, no, you're not getting a day off. Now this is different than if you said, who's going to win the super bowl this year? And you go, well, that's a thinking. Well, it has to be a yes or no question so you can test people like, are you, are you going to do something? Something or other? And you go, well, the answer is you're not. Because the answer you think I'm expecting is yes, I'll get it for you. Is that pro. I'm going to ask you, is that project going to be done by next Wednesday by the deadline? And you go, well. And I go like, no, you're not even close. Because you're expecting the answer you think I'm expecting is yes, sir, it'll be done by Wednesday. When in fact if you say, well, it means no, it's not going to be done by Wednesday. And I know that well ahead of time. Then I could ask you, well, I'll say, what do you need to help that project along that way? Now I can know that you're lying to me and I can now say, what do you need to help finish by Wednesday? What kind of resources do you need? Can I give you more? And that gives you an opportunity to say, yes, sir, I would really like this, this and that. Okay, we'll get that for you. Just get it done by Wednesday. Because I know you lied to me, but I'm not going to tell you you lied to me. I'm just going to know you lied to me and then take action.

Oh, this is, this is big, Jack. This is big because again, this is where a lot of people make mistakes because they treat this in a very combative way. Where, hey, I just won. I know you're in the lie. I caught you in the lie. Haha. Liar. Right? But you said no, I don't call them a liar. We move on and work to solve the problem. Why don't you do that victory dance?

Because it's not about me. It's about getting that project completed on time. It's about enabling you to feel good about you so that you will complete it on time. If you complete it on time, then you will complete more assignments on time because your confidence increases, our rapport between you and I increases. I don't have to tell you you're lying. You know you're lying. But it's all about ego. Right. The reason we say you're a liar, you won't have it by Wednesday. What's that going to do? Are you going to be more or less likely to complete that by Wednesday? Probably less likely. What if I say, what more do you need? If you need anything, you let me know. We'll give so and so if you let me know what you need to finish it, and you'll go like, okay, boss, and you'll tell me, and I'll give you the resources and you'll say, wow, he's a good boss. Right?

And that's a real win.

Yeah, it's a win for both of us. Now, the next time I ask you to do a project, you're gonna. You're more likely to voluntarily put your best work into that effort because you like me, you're working for me. You know, I'm giving you the resources you need. Although you had to lie to me.

That has been noted. I think this is great because I think what's really encouraging about this is that when you think about the negotiation fundamentals of collaborative negotiation, we're trying to work together to find a solution in most cases, and we want to try to be empathetic and not be unnecessarily combative. Those same principles still apply when deception is at play here, too. Because we're trying to say, all right, yeah, we're staying in that same mode.

Because our goal number one, here's how you get people to like you. And it works 100% of the time. If you want people to like you, you make them feel good about themselves. The example I use in class when I teach at Western Illinois University and my students, I'll say, if a young man goes to a young woman and they have a conversation and he makes her feel good about herself, I ask the young lady, what are the odds that you're going to want to go back and meet that young man again? They go, well, they're going to increase quite a bit because I want that same good feeling. The thing is, you have to make the conversation about the other person, not about you, but the other person. And the way to do that is to form an empathic statement. We all hear about the empathic statement. You use the word a number of times so far. But how do you construct an empathic statement? Well, here's the simple construction. You start out with the word so you. So you. And then you describe that person's feeling, their status, their emotional condition. So you look very upset today. So you look happy today. So you look this today, right? So you. Because if I say I know how you feel, what's the first thing you're thinking to yourself? No, you don't know how I feel because you're not me. So I'm going to say, so you look happy, so you look tired, you look frustrated, you look angry. And that number two things it says that person cares about you. The other thing it does is it gives you a chance now to express why you're angry, why you're frustrated, why aren't things going well? And so that gives you that whole. And that's an elicitation tool. Because once you tell me, oh, you're frustrated because you can't get this and this done well. So if we got this and this is done, things would be better. So you feel that this and this. So you feel this and this. And then the more sophisticated you want to get is drop the. So you. Because you're in the habit now, drop the SOYU and say, you look pretty frustrated today. Good example I use is, it happened to me actually at school because I was on the elevator and the girl was smiling. What does smiling mean? It means she's happy. So what did I use? I formed the empathic statement, you look very happy today. And what was her response? Yes, I just passed an exam I studied really hard for. So I told her, so you're hard work paid off. And she said, yes, it did. Now, we accomplished two things there. The first thing we accomplished was we got the empathic statement out. We're connecting, right? The second thing I did was I allowed her to flatter herself. And this is where people get in trouble with flattery. If a student walks into my office and said, oh, Professor Schaeffer, you're the best professor in the whole wide world. You're the best professor I've ever had in my whole life. I just look at them very sternly and say, what do you want? Because it's a direct compliment. Sometimes compliments run astray, right? So I tell the students a better way to do that is to walk in and say, sir, I would like your advice on something. So what that does is it places me in a position where I go, of course you want my advice because I'm the professor, and it allows me to flatter myself. When you walk into a company, when you're negotiating with somebody and you want to allow them to flatter themselves, you say, geez, when I walked into this. This office building, everybody looks so happy. That has to be the product of good management. And of course, if you're the manager, you're going, what? Heck yeah, it is. Is my management. Oh, absolutely, yes. So if I can make you feel good about you, you're going to like me. And that's the beginning of the rapport building stage. So we gotta make it about the other person.

This is powerful and I think it's such a powerful combination too because listeners, you might not realize it. We're talking to the man who literally wrote the book on being liked, right? The like Switch is an incredible book. And so just remember it's L I K E. It's so fascinating. I think for somebody who's not familiar with you and your approach and just the science and psychology of all of this, it would seem almost as though you're writing two competitive books here or multiple books, but on two competitive topics. Likability and deception don't seem to be closely combined or related. But then once you start to have the conversation and you start to look into this, you can recognize there's a very clear connection as well. And you can still maintain high levels of mutual likability even though there are going to be elements of deception. And I think also too, the, the reality is deception is a natural part of human communication and interaction and they're going to be different levels of deception. Like you said, we have those kind of white lies that keep the world going, but then we also have lies of omission. Maybe we don't tell the full truth or, you know, then we have the pants on fire lies which are a different breed. But it's important for us to be aware of it and understand how to address it without damaging the relationship. So you could still stay in the negotiation mode and still get work done.

That's exactly what the purpose of the books are, is to understand the truth and find out how do we make the truth work for us and not let our egos get in the way by saying, ha ha, you lied and that'll end the relationship. That's not what we want. We want to negotiate a deal. We don't want to end the relationship. Isn't that, you know, when you think about it, isn't that what we're supposed to do every day in life is to make other people feel better about themselves for having met us? I think in a famous book somewhere was do unto others as you would like them to do under you. I can't remember what book that came from the Bible and why it works.

Ancient wisdom still reigns supreme. It's, it's so simple but so easy to overlook. And before you go, I want to focus on one thing too, because you mentioned it a couple of times and I don't want to gloss over it because I think people will hear it and they will agree with it, but they might not know how to do it. So how do we keep our ego in check when everything within us is wanting to do that victory lap, saying, ha, I caught you in the lie? How do we actually make sure that we can keep control of our ego and stay focused on the goal? In the heat of the moment, keep.

Your mind on the objective. The objective is to make a deal, not to spot your competitor or your. Your client or whoever you're negotiating with as a liar. That's not the goal. The goal is to make the deal. There are times, I suppose, when the goal is, say, if your wife or spouse cheats on you. I guess the goal is to spot the lie and then capitalize on it. So that's another issue altogether. But in the business world and social world, what we want to do is keep our eyes focused on the objective. We don't want to just go around pissing people off by calling them liars because we wouldn't have any friends. So our goal is to know, you lied to me. Okay, fine, we can deal with it because I've lied to other people. So let's try to work that into a positive instead of a negative. What I call is pivot to the positive. Because a lot of people come up, we have neighbors, and even our in laws would say, my kids are way better than your kids because they do this and they've achieved this and that and the other thing. Instead of going like, defend yourself, you go, you must be very blessed to have kids that are very successful. And that stops it. You pivot to the positive and you divert the attention away from your kids and being defensive, just say, you're very fortunate to have good kids in your life, so you pivot to the positive.

This is incredible because I think the sign of a brilliant insight is that it seems positive in hindsight. And when I think about those times where my ego has been inflamed and it led me to do or say the wrong thing in at the wrong time, I've recognized if I would have just kept this in mind to pivot to the positive when I start to feel that, then we would have been able to dodge all of that. So it's funny because again, even that saying is an example of the power of the approach. Because when we were thinking about the how to control the ego. I'm thinking about the ego is out of control. Put it in a cave, like, bury it, put it away. And you're saying, no, you don't need to attack the ego. You just need to focus on the positive and that will orient you to the right behavior. That's incredibly powerful.

Yeah. I should let you know there's I blog for Psychology Today magazine and I've got like 171, 75 blogs now. And it deals with a lot of tips, techniques and insight that we've talked about today. So if anybody wanted to go back and review some of the topics, most of them that we covered are addressed on that Psychology Today blog.

Amazing. Yes, we'll link to that in the description. And then, of course, all of your books and all of the work that you've done. Jack, you are a legend in the industry. So I really appreciate you taking the time to join us. Well, you know, we're starting off the year interview number two for the year. So maybe before you go, what parting piece of wisdom or advice would you give people?

True words are the building blocks for truth and justice. So choose your words wisely.

That is great. This is an example of my restraint. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole because we'd be here for another hour. Jack, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it.

You're welcome. I enjoyed it.

Professor. There I was listening to the episode and I really want to know how to deal with omissions, not only with deception. Because when someone lies to you, okay, you feel hurt and you know, okay, that person is lying to me, so I have to be careful. But within omission, that person, I don't know if that person is actually lying to us because for themselves they can say, oh, no, I'm not lying. I'm just omitting things. So how to deal with that?

Well, here's how you deal with that. That's called a verbal technique to determine detect deception. When people lie by omission, they lie to the point where they want to withhold information, they withhold the information and then they continue with the truth. It's kind of like a road going to a river and you have to have a bridge that goes over the river and then the road continues. So in grammar, this is a little complicated, but in grammar, there's something that I, I discovered was called a text bridge. Whenever we lie by omission, we have to use a, some kind of grammatical device to bridge that gap over the river. So to speak, over the lie, the withheld information. And I discovered there's about seven words that people typically use to bridge the withheld information. And the word that most people use is and then. So if you were to ask me what did I, you know, what did I do this morning? I would say I got up and then I took a shower and then I had breakfast and I came to work. I'm withholding information by using the word. And then. So what we discovered is when people were told information, they. Truthful people and deceptive people use text bridges, but deceptive people, you focus on the incident itself. Where were you between 1 o' clock and 4 o' clock when the bank was robbed? Well, I drove to my mom's house, I went to my friend's house and then I came home. Well, that end. And then tells you where there's missing information. Now you have to ask yourself, am I interested in that missing information? Yeah, because you might have been robbing a bank at the time. But now if you ask me, what did you do? I got up and then I took a shower. Are you interested in all the things I would tell? Like I disrobed, I got in the shower, I turned on the hot water, the cold water, I got the soap. You know, you don't want to say all that. Are you really interested in that stuff? No. So you have to make a decision if you want that information. And then there's a technique. What it does is it's like you're drilling for oil because it tells you where the oil is probably at. And so then what you want to do in order to extract the information, there's something called a micro action interview. So then you go back to the, to the action right before the, then the end, then. And you say, so you were doing this at this time. You go, yes, what happened next? Then people will try to lie and they'll give you a little bit more information. And then they'll say, and then I did this. So then you go back to the end, then again, and they'll give you a little bit more. And as that gap narrows by you asking what happened next, they get kicked into the fight flight response. Then they start admitting all these nonverbal indicators of deception. And so then you start seeing them fidgeting, say, aha. So then you use the empathic statement for your presumptive. So you feel very uncomfortable about this, about what you're talking about. And so then you'll get to, yes, I am uncomfortable. I would be uncomfortable too if I did the evil deed that you just did. That's so good.

That's a great question, Simone. Brilliant question.

So you can work verbals and non verbals both at the same time. So I not only know that you're lying by your non verbals, I listen to what you're telling me, and I can tell you're lying to me by withholding information.

Unreal.

Yeah. So there are going to be benign reasons for using a text bridge.

Yes.

Because you might want to overlook things. But then if you have to be savvy enough to understand what's an important topic, ask the questions, and then pay attention to the text bridges. There. Yes, man, that's good.

We have to use these text bridges because that's the way our grammar is hardwired in our brain. There's some ways you can defeat it, but it's very difficult to defeat it because we're hardwired to bridge information gaps.

Yeah, Jack, you know what's funny about this? Because every time I think about just any type of engagement, I'm thinking about, okay, here's a move. Is there a counter move to that? So if there's a liar who's listening to the podcast, what would they do and say, okay, how do I avoid this and that? And I'm recognizing. Going back to your point about cognitive load, I mean, that's heavy. I don't even know how you would counter these in terms of concealing the deception, because a savvy interviewer would just ask different questions in different ways and it's hard for them to keep track of.

Yeah, and I'll give you another. Another cognitive overload technique. And that is you tell me a story and I'm going to say, you know, I've just met you. I don't know whether you're telling me the truth or not. So why should I believe you? And what should the person say? Well, I'm a good person. Well, good people lie. My mom taught me not to lie. Okay, that's fine. But that's not what I asked you. I said, why should I believe you? The answer is because I'm telling you the truth. Or some derivation thereof. Right. So that's very benign. You could say, hey, why should I believe? And I use this all the time with people. Why should I believe you? You know, I don't know you very well. Why should I believe you? Well, I'm telling you the truth. Okay, thank you. Or why would I lie? And I say, I can think of a thousand reasons why you would lie to get over on me to take advantage of me to get a deal that's good for you, not for me. I could think of a million ways. But that's not the question I asked. I said, why should I believe you? And if you ask that question twice and they don't tell you because I'm telling the truth or some derivation thereof, then the probability of a lie goes way up.

You know, it's funny, the saying the truth will set you free is having a whole different meaning to me now because I'm thinking about somebody sitting in the chair in front of you. It'll be like torture. This is like mental torture. It is like, let me just be good, not because I want to be good, but because it is too much stress being bad, you know?

I'll give you one last thing. I'll leave you with this. And that is what I call the land of is. And I don't know if you remember President Clinton about, have you had sex with that woman? No. What's the meaning of is? If is means this and it's one thing, if it means that, it's another thing. So here's the technique. I named it after that. That is, if you ask a person a yes or no question and they don't answer yes or no, because if they answer yes, they're in trouble. And if they answer no, they're in trouble. So where do they go? They go between yes and no, which is the land of is. And that is where everything gets gets tangled up and obfuscated and, you know, double entendre innuendos and just gobbledygook. Right. So if I say, did you do this? And you say, number one, you'll say, well, that solves that problem. Well, I wasn't able to get around to it because of this, this and that and the other thing. And I said, no, no, no, I didn't ask you that. I asked you, did you complete the assignment? And if they say, oh, you got to understand that I was pretty big. Now it's either yes or no. If you don't answer yes or no, you're lying to me. Yeah. Especially if you start. Especially if you start your, your sentence with the word well, which people, most of the time they answer, well, and then it'll take you to the land of is, and you could stop after. Well, but the key is you don't tell people how you know they're lying because then they will change their speech pattern. That's why you got to be quiet. So if you say, I say Is, is this truly going to be edited in. In to make me look good? And you go like, well, I go like, we got a problem. See, because it's got to be a yes or no question, right?

You're right.

And then I'll come back if you give me some kind of gobbledygook and I'll say, well, you know, why should I believe you if you say you're going to make me look good, why should I believe you? It better because I'm going to make you look good. Because if I look good, you look good. If you look good, I look good. It's part of a mutual thing. I go, okay, he's probably telling the truth. You see how it works with the derivation? So I can run through a series of these questions to determine whether you're lying to me or not. And you don't even know if I'm testing your veracity because I'm not telling you.

Oh, my gosh, it's so good. Because again, thinking about counters, no, you're just. It's like you're. You're either screwed now or screwed later. This is a matter of time before the truth comes out.

I just thought of something else that you probably would like, and that's called a lip purse. That's a small outward movement of your lips, like the fish lips, but it's very slight. That means you have just formed an idea in your head that is in direct opposition to what I just said. Yeah, I see that in school a lot. I'm giving a lecture. I see a student lip purse. I say, ah, you don't agree with what I just said. Well, how'd you know I'm in the FBI and all these things? No, it's because of the lip purse. Right. Now, the trick is, if you go to your boss, and I often went to my boss, I need money for this, this and that, this project or that thing or whatever we're working on. I talk about all the benefits and all the upside and the downside and this and that and the other thing. And all of a sudden I get to, well, boss, it's cost us X amount of dollars. And I see the lip purse. And what has he just said in his mind? He formed opinion. No, we're not spending the money on that, no matter what the benefits and everything is. So the trick is, you want to get your boss to change his mind before he has a chance to articulate. No, if you articulate. No. There's something called the psychological principle of consistency. If you say no, you're going to stick to no because that's what you articulated. So I'm going to say, boss, this is where elicitation comes in. Boss, I'll bet you're thinking it might be a little too expensive. But let me explain to you how that cost is going to be an added benefit on the overall project. And so now he's thinking, oh, okay, and he's going to change his mind in his mind and then say, well, okay, I'll go ahead and try it out. We'll see how it works. So that's the key, is to get him to change his mind before he articulates. No.

Wow.

And we learned that all from a lip purse. And so if you're negotiating and you're hitting all these things, we got this and this and this, and all of a sudden you hit like on time delivery. Well, we're going to have to push delivery off two weeks. And you see the lip purse. What are you thinking? They're going to turn the deal down because they want on time delivery. So elicitation, I'll bet you want, I bet one of the most important things in this negotiations is on time delivery. And they'll go like, well, yeah, see now you, you've uncovered the problem and you can change their mind. You say, well, tell you what we can do. We can add extra shift, we can do this, we can do that, we can guarantee that the products will be in your warehouse on time.

So it's almost like a silent negotiation you have with them because they've verbalized a cognitive. No. Even though they, they've manifested or shown.

Verbalize.

Non.

Verbalized.

That's right. It hasn't been verbalized yet. And you want to make sure you can stop them from verbalizing it. So you use EL to get them to respond to something else and then you address that before they stake their, put their, plant their flag in the ground to say, yeah, wow.

Psychological principle behind that is when we make decisions, we experience a certain degree of anxiety. Think about when you had a decision to make, you were anxious. There's certain amount, maybe a little, maybe a lot, depending on the consequences of your decision. So when you make up your mind, you go, ah, no more anxiety because the decision is made. Our psyche is, we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we're more anxious than we are now. So it's easier to say no and stick with no because we don't want to go through that anxiety of making a decision again. Right.

Wow. So if you're in a negotiation and you see the lip purse and then you see their body get kind of like very relaxed. Would you interpret that as they've kind of checked out, they've said no, and they're sitting here to kind of be polite? Potentially?

They have. As long as they don't say no, you got a chance. In their mind, I would say, looks like you're pretty comfortable with that. But let me explain to you the nuances of this particular item. Yes. No product or whatever. Let me, let me talk about this. You may think it's a little more expensive, but. And then you say the goodwill that you give people and this and that and the exposure and this and that and the other thing, and they go like, maybe he's right. And so then, then he may say, well, all right, how about a trial? Can we do a trial period for this product or this? And they go like, well, all right, we'll do that versus no.

Right.

You see how that works? I don't have any concrete examples I'm working with, so I'm kind of.

No, this is great. We're tracking. This is amazing. This is amazing. Yeah, I think it's also very interesting. This is just kind of a broader point, just how, and I'm guilty of it too, how infrequently negotiation experts talk about deception. You know, we talk about asking questions, and then we almost pretend as though every single answer we get is just said with complete veracity. You know, I feel like it's almost, it's almost like a bit of malpractice to not address that. Nita, that's, that's good.

And this is a perishable skill. You have to practice it, keep up on it. But you know what's fortunate? Anytime you go out and meet another human being, you can practice these skills because one of the traits of elicitation is you can use an elicitation technique. And the person doesn't know that they're a target of elicitation because of the way you phrase it. So if I ask you a presumptive question and it doesn't work, I'm going to ask you a bracketing question. So you're 30, 35 years old. You make this much or that much. Your overhead is this or that. And if that doesn't work, I'll go to another technique. And if that doesn't work, you can daisy chain these techniques and the person won't know that you're targeting them for elicitation. And the reason is this. Our brains look to the horizon for threats. And if there's a threat, we get ready the fight flight response. Now, what the brain does for efficiency reasons, they look at all the behavior that we see every day. And if we see that behavior and it doesn't pose a threat and it's been proven not to be threatening behavior, we kind of stuff it away in a place in our brain and we ignore it. The brain ignores that behavior. So what you want to do is you want to stick within that human baseline because as soon as you, you're outside the human baseline, the other people will perk up because that's a potential threat. So when I just asked you a question, that's outside the baseline. So I'm not going to ask questions, I'm just going to use presumptives. I'm going to use bracketing, elicitation, oblique references, you know, empathic statements, because that's all within the human baseline. They don't even realize that you're doing it. Allow people to flatter themselves. See, people don't recognize that, they automatically feel that themselves. But if I say, oh, like, you're the best professor I've ever had. Yeah, what do you want?

Yeah, right, yeah.

Goes back to that example. A better way, if you're a salesperson, to say, geez, you know, we have a new product. I'd like your advice on this. And a book salesman actually came into my office and said, hey, buy this new book. It's better than the one you have now. Well, you just disparaged me by saying that my choice in books sucks.

Right?

Which does is this is, this is getting off to a bad start, right? So I told her, I said, stop right here. This is not the way to approach professors. She said, well, what do you mean? I said, they have big egos. You know that. Oh yeah, I know that. I said, so work it. She said, well, how? I said, ask for their advice. So I want you to leave my office and come back in and say, hi, professor, my name is so and so. I'm from such and such publisher. I'd like your advice on this book. Book. I said, oh, let me take a look at it. So I actually read through the book there and I said, this is a better book than the one I'm using. I'll start ordering the book from you.

Wow.

So who made up their mind? I made up my mind. She didn't force me. She asked for advice that made me feel good. Because of course she's going to ask me for advice because I'm a Good, professor. Right. And then when I'm reading it on my own mind, I'm going like, well, this is a better book. I'm still using that book to this day. And that company said, geez, can you do a training session for all our salespeople?

Unreal.

This is so good.

So you see how you can use these techniques in the business world, the social world, not only police work and espionage and terrorism, but across the board.

I appreciate you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

All right.

This is great.

Hope you got something of value out of it.

Oh, my gosh, yes. More than you could ever know.

If you have any questions, email me. Or do I have your email address to send you that?

I'll ping you an email because I know you and Simone have been in touch, but I'll email you too. All right, perfect. All right, my friend, great meeting you. I'll see you.

Bye.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

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I'll catch you later.