Chapter Title Here Please 1 How Spot to Liar a Why People Don’t Tell the Truth ...and How You Can Catch Them By Gregory Hartley and Maryann Karinch Franklin Lakes, NJ 2 How to Spot a Liar Copyright © 2005 by Gregory Hartley and Maryann Karinch All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press. HOW TO SPOT A LIAR EDITED BY JODI BRANDON TYPESET BY CHRISTOPHER CAROLEI Cover design by Lu Rossman/Digi Dog Design Printed in the U.S.A. by Book-mart Press To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press. The Career Press, Inc., 3 Tice Road, PO Box 687, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 www.careerpress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hartley, Gregory. How to spot a liar : why people don’t tell the truth—and how you can catch them / Gregory Hartley and Maryann Karinch. p.cm. Includes index. ISBN 1-56414-840-8 (pbk.) 1. Truthfulness and falsehood—Psychological aspects. 2. Deception—Psychological aspects. I. Karinch, Maryann. II. Title. BF637.T77H37 2005 155.9'2--dc22 2005050791 Chapter Title Here Please 3 Dedication To my grandmother Elsie Hartley for teaching me the difference between poor and low class. —Greg To Jim, mom, and Karl—I can always count on you for the truth. —Maryann 4 How to Spot a Liar Acknowledgments I cannot thank Mike Ritz and Hollis Moore of Team Delta (teamdelta.net) enough for having the insight and vision to understand that interrogation is not confined to the interrogation room and for getting me in front of the national media. This book would not have occurred without Michael Dobson, who takes the blame for this collaboration since he prodded me to write and intro- duced me to Maryann. I am grateful to Allan Stein of Rutgers University School of Law for his assistance in understanding the jury selection process. Thank you to Dina for supporting me and keeping me sane with the added workload. I could not manage this without Jeffrey caring for the horses when we are both away. Thank you to Jim McCormick for his choice of words and his en- couragement. Don Landrum has been an invaluable men- tor over the years in making me the interrogator I became. Also many thanks to Nina. Maryann, thank you for mak- ing this a painless and enjoyable process. Most impor- tantly, thanks to all men and women in uniform who protect us in anonymity on a daily basis. —Greg Hartley 5 Thank you to Jim McCormick for keen insights, en- couragement, and other practical support along the way. Great appreciation to Michael Dobson for introducing me to Greg as well as assisting us with ideas as our work devel- oped and to Debbie Singer Dobson for generously contrib- uting her expertise on personality profiles. A big thank you to Dean Hohl, who provided an engaging story and exper- tise on sorting styles. I am also grateful for the enthusiasm and support we have received from the Career Press team, specifically, Ron Fry, Mike Lewis, Kirsten Dalley, Kristen Parkes, Michael Pye, Jodi Brandon, Christopher Carolei, and Linda Reinecker. Thank you also to friends whose pro- fessions put them in a unique position to offer guidance on a book about truth-telling, especially Patti Mengers and Ray Decker. I also want to acknowledge experts whose research and writings laid the foundation for some of the insights in the book, including psychologist Paul Ekman and neurolo- gist Antonio Damasio. And thank you, Greg, for being such a great partner! —Maryann Karinch 6 How to Spot a Liar Contents Introduction: Why You Need This Book 8 Section I: Context Chapter 1: Where Do These Techniques 11 Come From? (Or, What Does Abu Ghraib Have to Do With You?) Chapter 2: Why and How People Lie 36 Chapter 3: Are Men, Women, 57 and Children Different? Section II: Tools Chapter 4: Planning and Preparation 78 Chapter 5: Baselining to Detect 99 and Apply Stress Chapter 6: Extracting Information 125 Chapter Title Here Please 7 Section III: Applying the Tools in Love Chapter 7: Discovery 156 Chapter 8: Extract the Truth 165 Chapter 9: Change the Way You Fight 170 Chapter 10: Are You in Love or Captivity? 179 Section IV: Applying the Tools to Business Chapter 11: Getting the Upper Hand 187 in a Meeting Chapter 12: Direct the Interview 198 Chapter 13: Close the Deal 213 Section V: Self-Defense Chapter 14: How to Avoid Falling 231 for These Techniques Conclusion 250 Glossary 252 Index 256 About the Authors 262 8 How to Spot a Liar Introduction Why You Need This Book Our bodies, including our brains, have remarkable simi- larities and striking differences. We have the same, funda- mental physical structures—heart, mouth, neck, cerebral cortex, and so on. But I’m a lanky, red-headed male with big ears and beady eyes, and you’re probably not. Add religion, culture, education, and other non-physical char- acteristics to the distinctions between us, and you and I seem even more dissimilar. Could it be true, then, that we broadcast the same signals when we tell lies or feel stress? No, and yes. It’s not true that the eyes of all human beings wander off to the right when they’re lying, but some of them do. It’s not true that all people cross their arms when they don’t want someone to invade their space, but some of them do. We can make a firm statement about only a few things, such as the fact that humans in a state of high anxiety smell really foul. Zoologist Desmond Morris, author of classic works on behavioral links between people and our primitive ape ancestors, offered us a framework for documenting how we’re likely to respond to certain stimuli. His conclusions should not be taken as absolutes, however, and that’s why I can’t offer you a simple checklist of ways to spot a liar. What I can do is teach you to determine on a case-by-case 8 IIIIInnnnntttttrrrrroooooddddduuuuuccccctttttiiiiiooooonnnnn 9 basis whether or not someone is lying—by what they are saying, or by what they’re not telling you. I can also give you the steps to extracting the truth, as well as resisting efforts to make you divulge information you want to keep to yourself. This book is a practical guide to learning and using the sophisticated psychological tools of interrogators. You need this book if someone has lied to you, manipulated you, or backed you into a corner. You need this book if you have an important relationship—with a spouse, boss, parent, client, child, employee, friend—that lacks honesty. You don’t want to go through life wearing a sign that reads “victim” or “patsy.” To make sure you don’t, you need the techniques covered in this book that give you what I call “extreme interpersonal skills.” The book isn’t just about managing your relationships with a cheating spouse or manipulative boss, however. The same techniques that help you turn those situations around are the ones that help you gain the upper hand in a salary negotiation, to draw a prospective client toward the out- come you design, and, in some cases, to find out why you need to end a business or personal relationship. They will help you conduct or succeed at job interviews and reel in prospective customers. Litigators who need to read char- acter and establish truthfulness will find dozens of reli- able ploys. Anyone who is trying to survive the dating scene, has teenagers at home, or works on Capitol Hill will find ways to cope and win. People often ask me if I use these skills on my family and friends. The answer is, “No…as long as I have rea- sons to trust them.” —Greg Hartley