Page 128 - Deception at work all chapters EBook

The Human Mind 69

First impressions will be influenced by various factors, including:

• The person’s position, reputation, wealth etc.
• The location at which the meeting takes place, including visual, auditory and sensory inputs.
• The person’s intended or unintended emblems, such as clothes, hair, office, car or speech.

The lesson is always to try to consciously register transactional roles, emblems and communi-
cations codes and to get to the deep truth by arriving at the position where you are a nurturing
parent and the subject an adaptive child.

The deep truth comes in the relationship between a nurturing parent and an adaptive child

CONSCIOUSLY CONTROLLING ROLES

If you want to raise the temperature of an interview or meeting and, for example, challenge the
honesty of the other party, you must be prepared to cross the transaction and become a critical
parent. If you want to establish rapport, you must recognize the other person’s ego state and
act accordingly. If you want to put someone off, adopt the role of a rebellious child.

Police officers and lawyers in court are perceived to be, and often act as, critical parents.
In fact, the environments in which they operate and their personal and associated emblems,
including uniforms, helmets or wigs, are deliberately used to reinforce a critical parent role
and to increase anxiety in the minds of people around them. The fact that people in positions
of authority rarely consciously move to become nurturing parents is one reason why there are
so few deep confessions in court, and why those made to police are sometimes alleged to have
been obtained through oppression.

If you can’t understand people, don’t interview them.
If you can’t become a nurturing parent, you will never get to the deep truth

BIG TIPS The light physical contact shows they are
interested and nurturing.
Research in the USA shows that waiters and
waitresses who touch their customers get 20
per cent greater tips than those that don’t.

Emotions: from anxiety and panic to relief

WHAT ARE EMOTIONS?

Emotions may be defined as ‘strong, positive or negative feelings’ and they are usually an im-
portant factor in deception. They affect both the subject and the interviewer and are mainly
triggered in the lower brain at an unconscious level.