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You are hypersensitive to the fact that person knows you're lying.
Another 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 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?
Now 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 that now you're thinking wow he didn't ask me if i knew him he said when was the last time he met him hey i'm kwame christian and you are about to step into the world of negotiate anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world where we teach you how to make difficult conversations easier
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Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation.
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 of 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 restraints because 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 son or our daughter.
It's an ugly tie. What are we going to do?
Tell the truth and say, hey, that tie's 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 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.
The definition is where we have to start from.
Yes. Oh, I like this.
It's really important because when you think about that, a lot of those are kind of social lies, the things that keep the world spinning.
If everybody were to tell you exactly what you thought, 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 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.
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 build 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 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 non -verbals 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 last when's the first time did you meet that person so now that now you're thinking wow he didn't ask me if i knew him he said when was the last time he met him so that causes you to go maybe that guy knows
more than than he's saying maybe he's he knows the truth and i don't know if i lie and so you see that the spotlight enhances that the non -verbal that you display Yes.
Okay. So this makes a lot of sense.
So let's just bring it back to this moment again, where you asked that question.
First of all, the way that you asked 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 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 reflect. 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 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 this 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 new line, a 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 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.
It flooded every 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 drywall paste or whatever being the paint and everything.
I said, I wonder if it was flooded.
Now, if you ask a real estate lady, did it flood?
They'll say, well, no, this place doesn't flood.
No, no, this hasn't happened in 100 years.
No, instead of asking that, you ask a presumptive question or presumptive statement.
I said, wow, they sure fixed this up nice since it flooded.
She says, well, yeah, they went to extra special this and that.
I have to 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 that's 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 presumptive works hello my friends before we get back to today's episode i want to ask you a question have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better difficult conversations at the american negotiation institute
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Jack, this is great.
One thing I love about elicitation, besides its power, is that it is outside of law enforcement and counterintelligence.
It is not very used out in polite society for civilians.
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's going to relocate or not.
The person went to the CEO and asked him at a party, hey, are you relocating?
Nah, you know, we're steady and we're this and that.
We don't have any intents of 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 says, 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 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 attacking 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 overwhelming notion is to say, no, I'm not 30 to 35.
You see what I'm saying?
Yes. Yes. Bracketing.
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 they truly know about the counterpart or the situation.
Because if we're talking about a big publicly traded company, 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 smoking with mirrors.
With 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.
I got all the tips, 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 plan 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 the answers were to 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 superbowl 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 uh 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 are you is that 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 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 were in the lie.
I caught you in the lie.
Ha ha, liar, right?
But you said, no, I don't call them I'm 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, 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.
And now the next time I ask you to do a project, you're going to, 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, I want, here's how you get people to like you.
And it works a hundred percent of the time.
If you want people to like you, you make them feel good about themselves.
The example I use in a class in, 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 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 so you 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 a girl was smiling what does smiling mean it means she's happy so what did I use I 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 your 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 Schaefer, 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 him very sternly and say, what do you want?
Because it's a direct compliment.
Sometimes direct 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 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. It's 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've got to make it about the other person.
This is powerful. And it's 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.
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 mutable likability, even though there aren't going to be elements of deception.
And I think also, too, the reality is deception is a natural part of human communication and interaction.
And there are 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 can 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, you know, a famous book somewhere was do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.
I can't remember what book that came from the Bible and why it works.
Ancient wisdom still reigns supreme.
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 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 is pivot to the positive.
Because a lot of people come up, we have neighbors and even our in -laws would say, you know, 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 your 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 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 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, 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 around 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, we're starting off the year.
You're interview number two for the year.
So maybe before you go, what parting piece of wisdom or advice would you give people?
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.
Oh, Professor, that 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, OK, you feel hurt and you know, OK, that person is lying to me, so I have to be careful.
But with an 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 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 discovered was called a text bridge.
Whenever we lie by omission, we have to use 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 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 withhold information, 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 with things
i would tell like i just rolled i got in the shower i turned on the hot water to cold water i got the soap you know you don't want to say all that are you really interested and 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 action right before the then, the and 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 non -verbal 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, 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 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.
Man, it's good. We have to use these text bridges because that's the way our grammar is hardwired in our brain.
There are some ways you can defeat it, but it's very difficult to defeat it because we're hardwired to bridge information gaps.
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 everything.
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, 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. 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 would be like torture this is like so torture let me just be good not because i want to be good but because it is too much stress being back 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 what's the meaning of is if is means this then it's one thing if it means that it's another thing so here's
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 and new, uh, innuendos and, and, and, uh, just gobbledygook.
Right. So if I say, did you do this?
And, and you say, number one, you'll say, well, that, that sounds 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 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 be because i'm going to make you look good because if i look 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.
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 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 the 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. I know 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 going to cost us X amount of dollars.
And I see the lip purse.
And what has he just said in his mind?
He formed an 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 gonna be an added benefit on the overall project and so now he's thinking oh okay and he's gonna 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 it's 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 uh 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 product 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've manifested for sure.
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 elicitation to get them to respond to something else.
And then you address that before they plant their flag in the ground The psychological principle behind that is, where we make decisions, we experience a certain degree of anxiety.
Think about when you had a decision to make, you were anxious.
There's a 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.
Yeah, 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 to change their mind 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, yeah, maybe he's right.
And so 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. 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 like a bit of malpractice to not address that.
need to, 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 asked 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're outside the human baseline, the other people will perk up because that's a potential threat.
So when I just ask 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 flatter 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, 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?
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 eagles.
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.
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 publishing 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 righty, my friend.
Great meeting you. I'll see you.
Bye. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
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