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Human Lie Detection Steps 6 - 7

Lesson 21 from: The Power of Body Language

Vanessa Van Edwards

Human Lie Detection Steps 6 - 7

Lesson 21 from: The Power of Body Language

Vanessa Van Edwards

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Lesson Info

21. Human Lie Detection Steps 6 - 7

Lesson Info

Human Lie Detection Steps 6 - 7

Back to lie detection. We are going to finish those seven steps. So I wanna do a very quick review so we can just solidify what we've been doing so far. So step one: getting into baseline mode. What does someone look like? What do they sound like when they are telling the truth? Next: getting a physical baseline. So asking them questions they would have no reason to lie about. What does their body do? What does their face, their head, their posture, their legs, their movement, what does their body do when they are telling the truth? Third: audio baseline. So how do they sound when they're telling the truth? What kind of verbal ticks do they use? What kind of vocal emphasis? What's their volume like? Listening for those, that honesty, what their honest self is like. Fourth: getting an emotional baseline. So putting them into more of an emotional or nervous state. Talking about topics that get them a little bit on edge so you can see what are their nervous ticks. How do they sound? What ...

do they look like when they're nervous but still telling the truth? Number five: spot lying cues. That's the step we're in right now. There are 28 lying cues to deceit. Not one thing means someone is lying. It's only when it differentiates from their baseline. And this is what the research has found liars do most often, how our bodies react when we're in that deception state. So we're gonna keep going, and this whole section is about phone lies. Now, of course, this works in person as well 'cause you're listening to them, but these can specifically be used if you don't have any body or face to go off of 'cause you're on the phone. Number 17: vocal baseline changes. Right? So we did this column here, audio, when we looked at Mackenzie. We listened to what she was saying, her face ticks, her volume. This is differences from that column. How is the audio changing? And here are the four areas we're looking for, specifically where liars typically get tripped up. So differences in volume. Sometimes liars go up 'cause they're trying to convince you. They're almost yelling at you that it's true. Right, they yell at you that it's true. Other people, because they're not confident in what they're saying, they drop on their lie and they go lower and lower and lower. There's a great show called Find the Money and Run, I think it is. It's not on anymore, but you can by them on iTunes. And it's where they have a couple, they are on a like scavenger hunt. They get a case full of money. They have to hide the money somewhere in the city. And then they're arrested, and the detectives have to find out where they hid the case. And they do this by interviewing them over and over and over again. And they use lie detection in amazing ways. And on one of those shows, one of the characters, she's talking normally, not characters, one of the women who wants to keep the money. By the way, if they can convince the detectives not to find the suitcase, they get to keep the money. So during her interviews, during her baseline, she was normal. Oh, yeah, here's what we did yesterday, my husband and I. And then next she started talking about the route that she took with the briefcase, and you could barely hear her. Like the volume on her voice was slow low 'cause she was so afraid. She knew what she was saying was not true. The great thing about that show if you wanna practice baselining is we, as the viewers, get to see the true journey. So you can see exactly what they do when they're lying to the detectives and when they're telling the truth to the detectives. So it's a great way to practice and see that in action. So volume, voice tone. Do we go high or do we go low? We're looking for big changes in that voice tone. Pitch, the pitch of our voice, any major changes from when they were speaking when they were nervous but telling the truth. And speed, do they speed up to get through the lie as quickly as possible or do they slow down because they're trying to figure out what they should say next, right? Which one do they go to? Audio baseline changes, so these are things like clearing the throat. Nervous laughter, those nervous giggles. And remember for Mackenzie, she normally nervous laughed during her truthful baseline, her regular baseline, but she also laughed, giggled during her emotional baseline. So for her, nervous giggling, nervous laughter would not be a lying red flag, 'cause that happened during her baseline. Scoffs and sighs, so this is a big one to look out for. Liars will sometimes act like it's no big deal, right? (scoffs) That. They're trying to act like it's no big deal, right? That's what we think, liars in their brain, you have to think, if you think like a liar, they're trying to think, what do honest people do? And so they think oh, an honest person would be irritated that you're asking these questions, so they hyper-embellish, as we're talking about, I don't know why you're asking me this. (sighs) Right, those sighs and those scoffs. It's a big red flag. By the way, non-verbally (scoffs) that kind of scoffing is very dismissive. If you have that verbal tick normally, if you do that during your baseline, I would highly recommend that you kind of look at trying to change it because it's dismissive towards the people you're speaking with. It's like you're saying you don't matter. What you say doesn't matter. So when you record yourself, we talked about yesterday please record yourself, listen for that little scoffing behavior. Okay, number 19 is speech baseline changes So now we're getting into the words that people use, the words that liars use and how they use those words. First: pauses. So when our brain is trying to formulate a lie and convince you of the lie, there's a lot happening. And so they often have to take more pauses or longer pauses to give their brain a chance to catch up with what they have to say. 'Cause they're correlating their lie with the truth and, at the same time, trying to see if you believe them. So we're looking for duration of those pauses and the frequency of those pauses to see if there's any differences. I think with Mackenzie we only saw the heavy breathing at the beginning. That was when she paused, right? Uneven speech. Okay, so if it sounds memorized. So a lot of politicians, they make, they have this problem where their answers, it's like we might as well not even listen 'cause their answers are so memorized. And it's the same across every interview. Another thing you can do, someone in the chatroom asked well, how do you tell about politicians? You could watch multiple interviews. You know they sit usually, if there's a crisis going on, they'll do an interview with NBC, CNN, FOX. Listen and hear if the answers are the same. That usually means those answers are completely scripted. So that's how you know if it sounds memorized, there's something you wanna try to get around to get them out of that canned speech. Using the question inflection. So people typically will go up at the end when they don't actually believe what they're saying, 'cause they're saying do you believe this? Right? I went to the party last night. Right, they're kind of asking do you believe it 'cause they don't believe it themselves. So using the question inflection. Unfinished sentences. So part of statement analysis is when people are trying to formulate a thought, but they don't quite know how they should finish the lie and so they just stop mid-sentence. We're gonna hear that in Mackenzie's fake embarrassing moment. She kinda starts a couple sentences and then just doesn't finish them 'cause she doesn't quite know where she's going because she's obviously making up a lie on the spot. Little ninja tip here. When you are doing lie detection, I do not want you to mirror. So we talked about mirroring yesterday as a well to build rapport. If you're mirroring them it can sometimes change what they would do naturally because they get into congruency with you as opposed to just letting, so if you can be as neutral as possible when you're doing lie detection. The only exception to this is during rapport-building. If you wanna mirror, you could do that during rapport-building, during the baselining area. You could if you want to. But just be careful with that. I always err on the side of not doing it. You can also pause after each answer. And this is really hard, but if you can do it not only as a lie detector, but just as a human. I'm a fast talker. I also fear awkward silences. It's like one of my greatest fears when I'm in a conversation. So typically when someone's talking, as soon as they're done I jump in either with another question or a thought. With lie detection, it's very important to give them one, two, and even three extra beats to let them keep going. That awkward silence for a liar makes them incredibly uncomfortable and usually they'll start to divulge more details and try to convince you more. An honest person, that doesn't usually make them that nervous. So adding that extra pause and waiting a little bit longer than you would normally be comfortable can get them to keep going and try to keep explaining things to you. So very neutral, and then give 'em that extra pause. Written lies. So I talked about statement analysis. This is how we use our words. So this is lies in emails, lies in IM. It's much, much harder 'cause people, you know, edit emails, but you can still do it. And, of course, statement analysis works when you're in person or on the phone 'cause it's how people use their words. Some of the pioneers of statement analysis, the way that they've been able to spot a lot of these patterns is they look at written testimony of criminals when they're brought in. So written confessions. Most criminals or suspected criminals, when they're brought into the police department they're interviewed verbally, and then they say okay, could you write down everything that happened? Both. So handwriting analysis experts, they look at the handwriting. Statement analysis looks at the word they use. So what happens is is the way that they've made such advances in statement analysis is they've looked at original written statements, and then the end of the trial when we've found out that someone is guilty or not, we go back to those written statements and you can try to spot the lies and look for patterns of what happened with the lying statements versus the truthful statements. That's how a lot of this research has come about, a lot of it is in the police and anti-terrorism units. So number 20, what happens with statement analysis, is verbal distancing. As I mentioned, people hate to lie. It gets us into trouble, so our brains don't like us to do it. So what happens is they stop using personal pronouns. They actually take out the I's and the we's. That makes it, it's harder to say I like blue if you don't actually like blue. So people say love blue. Right? I catch myself doing this in emails all the time. If like I saw someone that, I was at a networking event and I really didn't like seeing them that much, I'll be like great seeing you. Not I really enjoyed spending time with you. I notice I do that. So we drop our pronouns when we don't like something. Yeah? I have a question about that. Would it be possible to compare it as a baseline or as a happening on-spot because I remember when I was at the university here in the states and I was trained to way of writing papers was the distancing and avoiding the personal pronouns and preferring the passive voice and stuff, which because it's not my native language, it reflects in my normal emails, though there is no bad intention there. Hugely important to baseline, right? If that's the way someone normally speaks this would not be a red flag for them. Absolutely, so that's a great question. [Audience Member] - But it's not how I speak, it's in my written speech. I'm sorry. Baselining the written speech, absolutely. So baselining works for written as well as in-person as well as on the phone, yes. All of it. But if it is not elaborate communication, email-- Well, if someone were emailing with you back and forth, they would have a tone of voice you use, a written tone of voice that you use. [Audience Member] - Yes, but if it's not, but if there is no pattern... So if there was not that pattern then you would want to go to step seven, which we're gonna talk about, which is, I'm sorry, step six, which is looking for clusters. So, for example, in your email, if I had never emailed with you before, first of all, I probably wouldn't be lie detecting your first email 'cause it wouldn't be about a very serious topic. But let's say that it was. And I saw that there was a verbal distancing. What we're gonna learn in step six, which is clustering, I would never take one cue by itself. I'd have to see one, two, three, or four other red flags, and then it would be like I saw all these in a row. But one aspect or a couple aspects of verbal distancing, I wouldn't do. And that's what step six is, so yeah. So you could either baseline or you take multiple things to make sure. I always err on the side of caution, right? I always want you to assume, and we're gonna be talking about it later, the most important thing with lie detection is actually to assume the best in people. The best lie detectors assume that people are telling the truth. That is the best mentality to do it. You wanna have that positive mentality, not the negative mentality. So lack of personal pronouns, I, we, I do this all the time in emails, and use of the passive voice. 'Cause it's much harder for our brain to lie with a current grammatical structure. And the passive voice, which sounds a little bit more distant, it's literally the verbal side of distancing behavior. It's like trying to get away from the lie. All right, 21. Lack of contractions. So they have found, studies have found that honest people want to get out the truth as quickly as possible. They want to get to the truth, and so they speak naturally in contractions. As humans, when we're writing casually or speaking causally, we use contractions. I don't, I won't, I couldn't, I shouldn't, right? They use those contractions. Liars wanna emphasize the not. So anyone recognize this phrase, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, right? Liars wanna emphasize the not, whereas truth-tellers wanna get it out as quickly as possible. So that's a little bit of red flag when we don't see those, when we don't have the contractions. Avoidance. So number 22. All different kinds of verbal avoidance. Non-answers, so you ask a question and their answer has absolutely nothing to do with what they asked. When I watched The Bachelor, this happens all the time where someone will ask a question about previous relationships and they give an answer that like doesn't even make sense. It's like totally nonsensical. That happens a lot on reality television. Change of the subject, they answer very quickly and then quickly route it to something else. Generalizations, unnecessary details, these all fall under number 22, which is verbal forms of avoidance. They don't wanna get to the heart of the answer because their brains are trying to protect them from saying a lie. Lie by omission is easier on the brain by an actual lie. So avoidance helps the brain be like I just will try not to talk about it and they won't have to put me in this specific situation where I have to actually say a lie. Exclamations, so swear to god, to be honest, frankly. I thought this research was fascinating. They have found that liars use, they mention honesty and swear to god more than truth-tellers. 'Cause truth-tellers are telling the truth, so they don't need to remind you that they're telling the truth. So when people say to be honest, I go ugh. Whenever anyone says that to me I'm like have you not been honest before? Why are you saying to be honest now? So it's a little red flag. The research shows. Now, again, I have friends that constantly are using those exclamations. They're very expressive in their language. For them that is not a red flag. But for people who all of a sudden are saying swear to god or let's be frank or to tell you the truth, that's a little bit worrisome. Number 24, speech errors. So tense problems is the biggest thing we see. In statement analysis people switch up the tenses of a true story and a false story. You always hear that when husbands talk about their wife in the past tense and she's gone missing, that's not a good thing. He's already thinking about her in the past tense. My wife was an amazing woman, right? No, she is an amazing, it's 24 hours after she's been missing. She is an amazing person, right? So tense problems happen a lot with liars 'cause they know the truth and so their grammar gives them away. They also sometimes in a fake story they forget the tense they were telling it in. So they start off in the present tense. Like let's talk about a parent and a teenager. What did you do last night? Well, my friends and I, we started in the parking lot, and then we were just hanging around the mall, and they we went, past tense, past tense, we went into the movie theater, and then all of a sudden I'm sitting there and this guy talks to me. We switch into the present tense. So all of a sudden, there's a tense switch there. So that's, and then we're gonna talk about what to do when you hear this, but the brain usually sticks in one tense when it's telling a story, all past or all present. So looking for weird tense changes. Incomplete sentences, we talked about. So leaving the end of a sentence or not finishing. This even happens in written. Two people will be writing a thought and they'll put a period realizing that they actually didn't complete or finish the sentence. False starts or partial words. So this usually happens only verbally, so on the phone or when you're with someone where they'll start an idea and in their head they realize that won't sound good, and so they go back and they change it or they say a partial word. It's 'cause their brain is trying to autocorrect quickly by not getting them into the lie or a sticky situation. Number 25, bear with me, we have, we're almost done with these and then we're gonna start practicing. Number 25 is verbal oddities. So luckily we're very attune to these already. When someone does something odd with their speech we usually already perk up and we're like why did that happen? Verbal oddity examples. Repetitions of the same phrase over and over and over again, especially if a liar thinks that that sounds really good. Like sometimes criminals, especially husbands who have murdered their wives, they'll use these phrases they think are quite catchy 'cause they want the media to pick up on them and they've rehearsed 'em and they think they sound really good. So that's a really weird kinda repetition. Overformality. Sometimes liars will switch into being overly formal 'cause they feel like it's textbook and they've organized it in their head. They've actually sort of scripted it, so it sounds not like casual conversation. Again, that lack of contractions. In academic papers we don't use contractions, and so they'll switch into that really formal tone. And lastly, stalls and pauses, which we talked about. So stalling, trying not to answer, that's another kind of verbal avoidance. Number 26: softening. So now we're getting into the behind the words. So when you're talking to the liar, especially like when I train HR people and they're trying to find the source of an issue or the source of a problem, one of the things they can do as I'll ask them ask the person who you think is a liar what they think the punishment suggestion should be when they catch the person. A liar who did it will often offer a very lenient punishment suggestion because it was them. Even if they don't think they're gonna be caught, they don't wanna think it's a big deal and so they'll offer a really lenient punishment. This also works really well with teenagers. Well, if that were to happen, what would be the punishment? Well, I don't think it's that big of a deal actually. Right? So that's another way you can, we're going past the words into some things that you can do suss things out. So minimizing. So they tell the story and as they're telling it, they're telling you it's not a very big deal. Well, it was, well, I mean, it was no big deal. We we're walking down the street and this guy just came out of nowhere, I mean, who cares? Right, they minimize it as they do it to try to take down the anxiety or the nerves, the emotions around it. They add qualifiers and modifiers. So it's, the brain will sometimes sneak these in. Even in written analysis you see this where it's hard if you say I don't like blue, right? That's hard if you don't actually like blue, that's hard, so you add a qualifier and you say I probably don't like blue. I maybe don't like blue. I mostly don't like blue. Right? 'Cause it gives you a little margin of error if there is truth there. So people will add in those qualifiers as like a mental buffer for their guilt, for their own guilt. Number 27: inability to change the order of the story. So Meg and Marie were talking earlier about stories. One thing you can do if someone has a, that's where the lie is hidden, especially when you're talking about criminals and criminal cases. They cannot change the order of that story 'cause they've only memorized it one way. So one thing you can do is you could have them start in the middle. You could have them go backwards. You can ask them what happened before a certain event. Liars cannot do this and definitely not quickly. They stumble upon it. Whereas honest people know exactly what happened because they experienced it. So it's very easy for them to go back, forward, start in the middle, start in the end. It's easy for them to do that. The last one. We made it. So number 28 is post-interview relief. So let's say that you're talking to someone, You're in that kind of hotspot area, and at the end when you switch topics they go (sighs) Like they visibly relax. They relax their shoulders. That's like what was so tense, what was so awful about that topic that they had to show that post-interview relief afterwards? Okay, before we go into step six, I know that was a lot, that was a lot of information, I know, now we're gonna practice it. We're gonna go into step six and step seven. What questions can I answer? How can I help with these 28 lying cues? Yeah? I just, I have a teenage, well, she's not a teenage anymore. She's in her twenties now, a step-daughter. And I'm just literally wishing that I knew this like five years ago. (laughs) And, again, for parents, I think this is just tools that you can use to help you, right? Because a lot of the time, parents don't know what to believe. So if you know what to look for, it makes you feel more confident in your communication. This is about taking back control, it's not about spotting liars and feeling that everyone's a liar. It actually makes you feel like I know exactly what I need to look for. I can trust my instinct. I can trust my gut 'cause I know what the lying cues are. So for parents, it's empowering. It's empowering for you. And by the way, I recommend you watch this with your kid. Give them these tools. And then talk about it together. It is the best way to have open communication. So thank you for bringing that up. I love it. Yeah? This isn't a question. This is more of a comment. But I'm actually just really excited to start using these because I am really just a trusting person. I like to kinda bring everyone into my social circle. But now I think I'm gonna be a little bit more guarded because I have things to analyze and look for while I'm seeing whether someone's a trustworthy person or not. I love that. Can I just change one word. [Audience Member] - Sure. So I don't want you to be guarded. I just want you to be inquisitive. [Audience Member] - Inquisitive, okay. Lik when you meet someone, you just want to get to know them better and more quickly and more easily. That's it. I'm giving you the tools so you know exactly what to look for. 'Cause you're right. You should be careful with your time and who your friends are, absolutely. And that's just knowing what to look for. Yeah. And, again, you don't turn this off. Once you learn it, it's both a blessing and a curse. People always ask me like do you have friends? And I'm like I have a few friends. And my husband is the most honest person I've ever met. That is why I married him. I love him dearly, and he knows this science as well. So we have a very honest relationship. I'll be like do I look fat in this and he's like yeah, kind of. Yeah, a little. But I love it, right? Because it's so honest. So we have that honest back and forth relationship, so I love it. And the more that you do it with your friends, the more that you can have that really open communication. It's great for building bonds. I always thought that question was they never wanted to hear the right answer. The answer is always no, you look fabulous. 'Cause that's what you wanted to hear. So good for him. So I will actually say to my husband just tell me how fabulous I look. Just tell me. And then he knows okay, we need to go into pep talk mode. But if I really wanna know the truth I'll be like how does it look? Really, how does it look? So it adds another dimension into that honesty to make sure. Yeah? For the purpose of training ourselves to notice these, in addition to the cues, can you give us some examples of most frequently received lies on a day-to-day basis so that we can start saying like oh, this person said that they're in a really great mood, but now actually because I know that this is something that people lie about a lot, I'm noticing X, Y, and Z. Yeah, so I'll go to the research on that. So the research finds that people typically lied the most about, not teenagers, okay? This is adults. Time. So where they are, how far they are from you, are they on the way, are they coming, do they want to come? They RSVP'd yes, but really it's a maybe. It's how they spend their time, where they spend their time. What did you do all day? Nothing. Right, they never actually did nothing. So time is the biggest one. And, again, it's a little bit more harmless, which is great. The next one is relationships. So how they feel about a relationship, how they interact in a relationship. In business I think it's really important, I think the most useful part for lie detection is client interactions. So saying to a client so how, if you're building their website for them, how has it been for you with previous vendors? That's really important for you to know, right, so that you can make sure you do it right. And the last one is feelings. So just general feelings about how they, preferences about something. And that also in business it's really important that you know do you really like this? Are you really happy with this work? What do you really want? So preferences, that's a really great way. 'Cause as soon as you start to see these, and we're gonna talk about what to do, you can shift it into we're on the same page. Don't be afraid to tell me the truth. As soon as you see that they might feel like they have to get defensive or hide something, you say no, you telling me the truth actually helps me be a better partner for you. So I like to bring it into the positive. Yeah? When people ask how are you doing? The most common answer is I'm good. But why is that? Canned. So those are social scripts. So I like to fight social scripts. So that's like we're so used to the same questions over and over again, the same answers. And you don't even see lies anymore 'cause it's just habit to say it. So I try to be more genuine in my responses and stop social scripting, but that's in my stop being boring course about how to try to use different kind of conversation starters. Yeah, total habit. Laziness, actually. The brain is like, the brain has also learned that people don't often want to know the real answer. The brain has learned that if they say, actually I'm having a really awful day. The other person's like holy shit, like I don't wanna talk to this person. They're a downer. So the brain has learned to say I'm good and then if they can be trusted, then maybe you can open up to them about having a bad day. So I actually, I think it's partially habit, but I think it's also partially a protection mechanism. It's a safety mechanism for people just to make sure that they don't overexpose too quickly. Yeah. [Audience Member] - I think it's a cultural construct. Culturally as well, absolutely. And lingual, right? Like what you say. I think that, so I studied Chinese in college and one of the questions people ask is what have you eaten today? It doesn't actually mean what have you eaten today, it's more just like hey, how's it goin? So like they ask that, but it doesn't actually mean those things. You don't say oh, I've eaten really a lot of things, actually. It's been great. Breakfast, lunch, and then dinner, it was good. You don't actually answer that way. You just say yeah, I'm doing good. Yeah. I'm not feeling good is probably the most common lie in our society in modern day. But anyway, you had a a question Evie? Yeah, I thought it was interesting. We were all just talking about that and it came up here again. But Iris was saying how do you detect liars from honest but just insecure people? You know, sometimes they just have very low self-esteem. They may be using those same buffers and they're actually honest people. Right. That is why this is so important. The emotional baseline is so important. Because if you have someone who has extremely low confidence so they're doing blocking behavior, they're covering their eyes, they're self-soothing all the time, all things that low-confident people do, for them, that is in their honest baseline. That is what they do when they're telling the truth. They just have low confidence. For them, that would not be any sign of lying. That's why baselining is so important, because you don't wanna confuse those two, those two things. Yeah. All right. Shall we go on to step six? Okay. Find clusters. So a cluster is a series of lying cues that are inconsistent with the verbal statements. So we talked about earlier what If I don't use a subject in one email? One lying cue should never stand out on its own. So let's say that someone's baseline, their baseline is different, right? If it only happens once, that's still not enough. The rule of thumb is three to five lying cues in the same area. So if you're talking about a topic and they show three, four, five of the things that we've just talked about, they're different in the baseline, that's when you need to move on to step seven. So finding the cluster is important so you don't just take one by itself. We don't wanna take anything out of context. A very easy example is if someone's sitting in your office and all of sudden they feel a little bit of pollen in their nose and their nose gets itchy so they start itching it. That's one thing, right? If you just take that one thing you'd be like oh, they're lying about that. But actually they were feeling allergies. So you wanna have two, three, or four other things. And the good news is, is when people lie they almost never show just one. Liars show multiple cues. So it's a nice safeguard to make sure that you don't guess wrong. Liars typically show more than one. That video that we saw earlier of Eric, right? He lip pursed, he had duping delight, and he did one-sided shoulder shrug, right? In a very, very short amount of time. So typically people do more than just one, that's why you never wanna take one alone. Any other questions before, step six is a real short one. And we'll go on to step seven? Okay. All right, so you got into the interview. You baselined them. You got their emotional baseline. Then you started seeing some lying red flags around a little topic. And you saw another one and other one and other one, and you went something is not right here. That's when you go into step seven, which is confirmation mode, circling back. There's a couple different things you can do. First, ask the question every which way possible. So ask them about that same thing in multiple different ways because then you have them answering in different ways and you can see if you keep seeing those red flags over and over and over again, right? Keep reaffirming that you're seeing them over and over. Second, get a second opinion. Have a second interview. Bring someone else into the room. Film it, record it, right? So have someone outside of you say are you noticing anything weird? Is anything else standing out for you here? Getting a second opinion can also be really helpful. It's one of the great reasons we have wingmen, right? Do you feel anything weird about that guy when he was talking about his ex? Right? Getting a second opinion can really help balance out what you think you saw. And you can say, it felt like when he was doing that, all of a sudden he was like really nervous. He was like backed up against the bar. Did you notice that as well? Highly recommend you watch the series of videos the cues with someone else so they can be your lying wingman or a business partner. Research. So there's all different kinds of research you can do. Let's say that there's, if you're with a client and you find that something isn't right with like their mission, with what they want, like you're not getting to the real heart of the matter. You can go back and do research. Ask them to make a video for you. Go look in their old YouTube videos. Go look at their Twitter feed. Ask their friends. Think of other ways that you can research, you can get more information about that topic so you can safeguard and say what was I really seeing? What can I get more from them? How can I get more from them? Following up, doing it a second time. Sometimes if you get someone on an off day, if it's really serious I will always bring them in a second time or ask them to do a second call or ask them to send another video. Right, giving them another chance. What if that day was really weird? For example, I had one woman who's showing me all these weird physical things when we were doing this interview and I was like, I don't know. I was interviewing her for an internship at my company and she's like doing all these weird things. I was like I don't know what to do. So I was like I have to do a second interview. I just have to bring her back in and we're gonna do a second time. I brought her back in and it's was like so much better. And I said to her you know, I have to tell you something. The first time you came in, I don't know if you were really nervous or what, but you were, like you were giving me all kinds of weird physical signals. And she's like my shoes were too small. Her shoes were in, she was in incredible pain because she said she couldn't find the pair of shoes she wanted to wear and so she borrowed her roommate's shoes. And so the entire time during the interview she would step and oh, ah, oh, right? And she actually was having this pain with her shoes. And I was like that is the perfect example of why you have to circle back and do more information. So sometimes getting that second interview can help you find out more information. Bring back a second interview, so following up in whichever way you can, by phone or bringing them in again. Referrals. So in business referrals are easy to do. And this is not only for clients, this is for employees, this is for partners, this is for colleagues. If I'm gonna take on a big client, a really big project, I do my homework with third parties. I ask for client referrals. I don't take new clients anymore. So when I'm taking a new client I make sure that I'm getting another referral. They either come from a warm contact or I look on LinkedIn and see if there was any mutual contacts and I reach out and say anything I should know? I'm thinking about bringing them on. I'm thinking about working with them. So getting those referrals, in business you can absolutely use this. We do the same thing in dating when we look and see if we have any mutual friends. Same thing, that's a casual referral. Lastly, the other thing that you can do here is you can hypothesize for possible rationales. Okay, so all the last few days I've been talking about don't lens, don't create stories in your head. If you're at the end of your rope you can hypothesis for possible reasons and then go and try to prove those right. So, for example, in that wedding client we were like worried that maybe she was not getting exactly what she wanted with the wedding. That's why she was showing sadness. That's a hypothesis for that possible rationale. Now, what I would do first is try all these other things. Get a second call. Go do more research. Talk to her fiance. But I would also say, okay, let's try to prove that. And then you can go and say so tell me about your relationship with your family. Is everything in the wedding happening exactly the way that you want it to happen? Right? That's your proving or disproving those hypotheses. And that's a different line of questioning that you can do if everything else has not worked. Does that make sense? Okay. All right, so quick review. Those were the seven. So what I always do, how I teach this course is I teach you the science and then we do theoretical examples, and then we do real life examples. That's how we do it. So now we're gonna go into the theoretical example section. So let's review. Baseline mode. Get them in. Figure out what their physical and audio baseline is. Then you ask them emotional questions. Get them a little bit nervous, a little bit heightened in their emotional state. What do they do? How do they look when they're telling the truth? How do they sound when they're telling the truth? Then look for lying cues, anything incongruent. Do they change their baseline? Is there anything that they do that makes you go that's not right? Look for three, four, or five of those cues in a row. Is there an area where you find a cluster of those lying cues to protect yourself to make sure that you didn't see something that was just a one-off. And then lastly, figure out how you can confirm what the truth is. Is it more questions? Is it circling back? Is it going up for a second interview? Yeah? Okay. I'm gonna offer you a red flag challenge. So on my Twitter feed, at vvanedwards, any time you see a lying red flag or a cluster of red flags, I would you to send them to me. This is a challenge. I love to critique them. So any time you see that you can tweet me what you see. Interviews, I've been sent pictures, I've been sent videos of friends, and I will see if I can help. I love gathering that research. Okay, we have a time for questions before I go into my theoretical example. How is the science? Do we feel solid on how it works theoretically? Audience? Good? Vanessa and I had a little chat earlier on, but I was asking as an expert has anybody ever absolutely floored her and fooled her. She said yes. And this question came in. It's from your name. They're saying can you use the same detection techniques on people you think might be sociopaths or psychopaths? I think they can lie without you being able to tell they are lying. And you said... Yup. That is the one place I've been duped. Psychopaths do not feel guilt. So these lying cues come out because the brain feels bad, and so it leaks from the body. If you have psychopath who does not feel guilt, who feels very justified in their actions, they have so little tells from what they show. The one thing that you can tell with psychopaths is you can use the microexpressions. Because even if they might not feel guilt, they still do feel genuine emotion most of the time. So microexpressions can save you with psychopaths, but I do not recommend going home and trying to interview and do lie detection on a bunch of psychopaths, okay? Let's save that for the FBI, okay? Let's not do that. But yeah, psychopaths, you wanna be careful of. Yeah. [Male Host] - Just in general I would think. And another question? What if somebody's not a psychopath or a sociopath, but what if somebody, does somebody have the potential to be a better liar or lie with less telltale signs if the environment they grew up in had little or no repercussions for that behavior? So typically, even if you've had no repercussions growing up, you still do feel guilt. That's because, from an evolutionary perspective, our brain knows that lying gets us in trouble. As humans, we feel guilty when we do something bad. So you can, you can be a practice liar but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're a better liar if you lied a lot growing up. And I always try to avoid how to tell people to be better liars. Of course you can figure it out from the science that I'm teaching. It's the other side. I say use your powers for good and not evil.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Baseline Coding System Chart
Lying Red Flags
Positive Trait List
The Nonverbal Elevator Pitch
Laws of Body Language Answer Key
The Nonverbal Sales Pitch
Trivia Answer Key
Citation List
Elevator PItch Clinic
Laws of Body Language Worksheet
Self Diagnosis Chart
Syllabus
Body Language - Trivia
The Microexpression Chart
30 Day Action Plan.pdf
Action Steps and Homework
Resources

Ratings and Reviews

R. P. Getz
 

I loved this course! I've learned so much and Vanessa did a terrific job making it easy and fun. I loved learning that by paying more attention to body language, I'm becoming a better listener (and picking up on stuff I never caught before). ;) I recommend the class highly to anyone and everyone as all can benefit from being more aware of others and yourself!! My hard earned education $$ well spent here. :) Cheers to Vanessa Van Edwards and Creative Live!

Andrew
 

This was an absolutely fantastic course, it would be a huge understatement to say this course was worth the money. Vanessa provided tremendously accessible, highly actionable training useful for both social and professional environments. I couldn't recommend this course highly enough, and am heading now to purchase her next one! Thanks so much Vanessa and Creative Live, this is the course I've been hoping to find for years.

susan kinnel
 

I just found myself applauding in my bedroom as this program was wrapped up, Vanessa is fabulous! This was money well spent, loved every moment of it! I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the information, and soon felt blown away by how many micro expressions I could spot during the clips she showed. I was so impressed with how easy it was to pick this info up due to Vanessa's enthusiastic delivery. YAY vanessa!

Student Work

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