Page 60 - Deception at work all chapters EBook

Signs of Deception 101

You should not allow suspects to find comfort in self-deprecation but they should be told
something along the lines: ‘Forget that, just tell me …’ If your golfing partner self-deprecates
say the same sort of thing and try to make him focus. If your opponent self-deprecates you
might say: ‘Yes, you do look a bit pickled and you are aiming miles to the left. Watch out for
Granny Smith’s garden.’

A suspect may refer to his own state of mind such as ‘I know in my own mind I am innocent
of this’ and give away other clues that he has internalized the problem. Experience shows that
when a person refers to his own mental state, he is struggling with the truth. When he refers
to his ‘mind’ or ‘heart’ he is usually drawing information from his imagination.

A profile in family murder cases is that the attacker will not refer to his victim by his given
name or by his exact relationship. For example, he will refer to the victim as ‘the child’ or ‘my
child’ rather than ‘my daughter’.

Most crooks (whether white collar or otherwise) tend to be non-judgemental, do not have
clearly ingrained beliefs and tend to assume everyone is as crooked as they are. In manage-
ment fraud cases, the guilty person will often fail to clear himself or blame someone else. For
example, if he is asked the question, ‘There were four of you on duty at the time and someone took
the money. Who can you absolutely clear of this?’ the person responsible will seldom give the
answer ‘me’. If he does, the chances are he is innocent. But if he says ‘me, because I just love
pussies’, by now you should know what this means. Through such attention to fine detail the
truth is exposed.

Perhaps the greatest example of attitude giving the game away is the story of King Solo-
mon.

KING SOLOMON and half given to each. He knew that the
woman who accepted this decision was not
Two women were in dispute over a baby: the real mother.
both said they were its mother. King
Solomon said the baby should be cut in two

Attitude is critically important in revealing the deep truth

The real bottom line is that liars do not do or say the things an innocent person would and
do not show congruent emotions.

OTHER UNCONSCIOUS CLUES

Virtually all of a liar’s syntax, non-verbal communication, paralinguistics, and clues to his
attitude are driven at an unconscious level and are summarized in pages [xref]. But the most
important thing, in all of the ways lies are communicated, is that liars do not do or say what
an innocent person would do or say.

Liars focus on what they do and say but omit innocent reactions.
It is not only what liars say, but what they don’t say that is important