Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception

231 Pages·2010·1.45 MB·English

by  Pamela Meyer

LIESPOTTING
LIESPOTTING

Proven Techniques to Detect Deception
PAMELA MEYER

St. Martin’s Press
New York
For Fred
CONTENTS

Introduction
I Detecting Deception
One: The Deception Epidemic
Two: Deception 101—Who, When, and Why
Three: Reading the Face
Four: Reading the Body
Five: Listening to the Words
Six: The BASIC Interview Method
II Building Trust
Seven: Liespotting for High Stakes
Eight: The Deception Audit
Nine: Building Your Brain Trust
Ten: Putting It All Together
Appendix I Putting BASIC to Work
Appendix II Test Your Liespotting Skills
Notes
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION

I didn’t set out to become a liespotter. I am neither a scientist nor a psychologist,
and I never imagined I would spend three years researching deception, then
develop a system we can use to protect ourselves from it. But I learned that the
average person is lied to close to two hundred times a day. I learned that we are
no better than monkeys at determining fact from fiction. And I learned that none
of the sophisticated lie-detection techniques used by security experts and
government agents had been adapted for everyday professional use. It seemed
almost criminal not to make it my business to make sure that everyone has
access to this invaluable new tool.
Calling myself a liespotter—a human lie detector—might suggest that I live
in anticipation of being deceived, wary and suspicious of everyone with whom I
come into contact. Actually, becoming a trained liespotter allows you to do the
opposite. You’ll know you have the tools you need to protect yourself in
situations in which you might encounter falsehood or obfuscation. Becoming a
liespotter doesn’t inspire paranoia—it frees you from it.
DECEPTION AT WORK

Like everyone, I’ve experienced deception and suffered the disappointment
and disillusionment that accompanies it. I witnessed it in the business world
almost before the ink was dry on my diploma. When I headed out into the world
as a freshly minted Harvard Business School graduate, I didn’t expect to see
dishonesty running rampant. Was I in for a surprise.
My first job out of school was in the international department of a feature
film company. I love film and was delighted to have landed what seemed a
dream job, which in many ways it was. Yet I was shocked to discover that the
industry was riddled with dodgy yet extremely common accounting practices.
For example, it wasn’t unusual to find that the millions we had offered for an
independent film in a “pre-buy” had immediately gone instead to bankroll the
seller’s prior debt in what amounted to a kind of Ponzi scheme. It was also not
unusual for the head of a company to pay a friend to determine the value of his
company’s film catalogs. That valuation would then be used by investment
bankers to establish the value of the company itself. The bankers, however,
knowing they would receive a small percentage of the IPO, had every incentive
to inflate the company’s already inflated worth—and they did.
Fraudulent behavior was so common, especially in those days and especially
when dealing with companies that didn’t have stable revenue streams, that most
people seemed almost inured to it, as though it were a price to pay for doing
business in such an exciting industry. Still, the dirty dealing shocked me, and
though I loved the business, I felt disillusioned. When the film company moved
to Los Angeles I decided to accept a job at National Geographic Television,
where I ultimately served as vice president of the program enterprises division.
DECEPTION IN NATURE

I loved the job, and I had the good fortune to work in an extremely honest
environment. My colleagues’ behavior was unimpeachable, and I had nothing
but trust and respect for the people with whom I worked.
Yet every day, I witnessed extraordinary acts of deception.
In charge of acquiring natural history films for the National Geographic
Explorer television series, I spent countless hours watching nature videos
submitted by almost every independent filmmaker or television station in the
world. Watching that many nature shows, it became impossible for me not to see
that deception is intrinsic in nature—predators camouflage themselves against
seabeds and forest floors, spiders build models of themselves to avoid detection,
birds fake injury to lure enemies away from their nests.
The more cognitively advanced the animal, the more sophisticated the
deceit. The most entertaining videos were those featuring primates and dolphins
—they are masters of guile and trickery—but they were also the most revealing.
The creative schemes these mammals used to get away with unacceptable
behavior weren’t all that different from what humans have dreamt up. Even
plants could be con artists: the orchid Ophrys speculum uses pheromones and
coloring to excite male wasps and fool them into thinking they are copulating
with a female wasp, when in fact all that rubbing is simply helping the orchid
spread its pollen.
I began to suspect that if lying and fraud are innate in the animal kingdom,
humans must also be hardwired for deception. When years later I began the
research that would ultimately become the backbone of this book, I discovered
that scientists have firmly established that lying is in fact one of the major
building blocks of human social life.
FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE

You’d think that my exposure to and interest in dishonesty would mean I
might be a little more attuned to it when I saw it. That, unfortunately, was not the
case. It turns out that when it came to detecting lies and fraud, I was as gullible
as anybody else.
In 1994, I left National Geographic to start my own company, Manhattan
Studios. Searching for an assistant, I interviewed a large pool of candidates and
thought I’d found a perfect match for my needs: a brilliant, personable Ivy
League grad. She quickly exceeded my expectations, handling every job I gave
her with exemplary professionalism. It was the heyday of the mid-nineties
Internet boom, and she seemed enamored with the potential of the Web business.
She did research, she acted as a project manager, she ran our Web site—she
could do anything. In a small company, it’s hard not to get attached to your
colleagues, especially when working the long hours required by any start-up. I
felt close to most of my staff, and in particular to this individual who knew so
much about my life and who had told me so much about her own.
The company was thriving when I was offered a full-time job at the Ford
Foundation running their media fund, which by default lessened how much time
and attention I could spend on what was going on at Manhattan Studios. I trusted
my staff implicitly, however, to handle the daily workings of the company and
fill me in as necessary.
One Saturday, knowing I had fallen behind, I started going through the
company books. I found that the numbers didn’t add up. I tried again, but still,
there was a discrepancy. I quickly called my assistant and told her that there had
to be a mistake somewhere and I needed her to come in and help me find it. I
was taken aback by her reply: “I think I’m pregnant. I can’t come in.”
I began to suspect that something was wrong. It didn’t take long to discover
that while I wasn’t paying attention, this bright, capable woman had embezzled
an enormous amount of money, forging checks to herself and pulling them out of
the statements when they came in. Though she didn’t go so far as to steal my
identity, she had memorized my credit card number and bought herself a