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56 Deception at Work

Maybe you have not noticed, before, just how sensitive people are to their personal space
but from now on handle it consciously. Make sure your towel is on the right sun bed and that
you keep well away from the neighbour’s niece with the little black dress and legs to die for.

Anxiety usually increases when there is an unauthorized intrusion into a subject’s per-
sonal space, especially when he is approached from behind or when you upset his ritual (like
moving the towel on another holidaymaker’s sunbed). But if you consciously invade some-
one’s personal space to increase his anxiety, you must be careful, as you can never tell whether
the anxious result is because the suspect feels ‘pinned down’ or whether your socks smell.

We have unconscious protocols for setting our positions with other people. Maybe you
haven’t noticed this, but it is true. When you happen to meet Joe Jones in the corridor you
will both unconsciously negotiate a position with which you are comfortable. There will be a
certain distance between you and you will align at an angle which will be to the left or right.
If one of you changes position the other will normally move. Just try it.

Personal space also has some interesting sub-plots. In most cases the guilty suspect will
try to distance himself from incriminating evidence and especially documentation. Thus if
you hand a damaging exhibit to the subject and he quickly drops it on the desk, hands it back
or shoves it away (usually in small increments while it is in his space), you know it is causing
him anxiety (see Figure 3.5).

You can increase this anxiety by pushing the offending document back into the suspect’s
personal space and in his left field of vision. This, again, is a useful NLP technique that appears
to work in practice because it impacts on the liar’s more emotional right hemisphere.

Emblems

An ‘emblem’ consists of all those visual, verbal and sensory images through which a person,
consciously and unconsciously, presents himself to the world, including clothing, hairstyle,
glasses, shoes, tattoos, jewellery, the tone and strength of his voice and the accessories and
accoutrements he uses and the people who accompany him.

You can tell a lot about a person by the company he keeps

It also includes other sensory images such as smell (nice perfume or bad breath) or touch,
such as the strength of a handshake. Emblems are an inherited instinct intended to show, or
impose, the social status of the animal.

Indicative of innocence Indicative of guilty knowledge
Figure 3.5 Handling incriminating evidence