I haven’t seen The Invention of Lying yet, but the internet hype has been hard to miss:  The admissions of co-star Jennifer Garner regarding her own use of deception. 

Her comments have been recounted across countless blogs and news cites, with all the pieces I’ve seen titled, “Jennifer Garner is a Compulsive Liar”.

Why the rough label?  Well, she confessed… that she lies. 

So 2 points come to mind: 

1-Well, she’s actually not a compulsive liar, just an ordinary one, and the use of this label underscores that when it comes to lying and deception, misconceptions abound. 

Compulsive liars tell lies when there’s no (more…)

If you read my post from a couple weeks back about duality (you did, right?) then you already know that, “It lures people into missing your real message.” 

Because I know how this stuff works, I’m usually leery of giving you examples that have religious or political components.

But here I go again, breaking my own “rules”.

Why? 

Well, 1-because I can’t ignore a great opportunity to give you something you might benefit (more…)

Suppose you’re in a strange town and don’t know how to get where you’re going.  If the guy at the gas station gives you bad directions, will you get where you want to be?

Maybe you will, but only if one of these two things happen:  1-You ask someone else, and they give you good directions, or 2-Through good fortune you just happen to stumble upon your destination.

Bad information equals bad results. 

Until we get good information, or figure out the real deal on our own, we tend to act on the bad information. 

The worst part?  It can take a while to figure out we’ve been chasing the wrong rabbit.

There’s an article out this week from US News & World Report that purports to give us the “3 Ways to Tell if Someone is Lying“.  It touches on a couple of valuable points, but ultimately just supports the common belief (myth) that reading body language is the key to spotting deception. 

You want the truth?  It’s actually hidden—sometimes not too deeply—in the words people speak.

If you haven’t already, take a look at the article (it’s brief) then come back here and I’ll give you (more…)

Maybe you know by now that I see (and hear) double. Or you could call it duality, parallelism… the name you give it doesn’t matter.  

Plain fact is, a lot of things have the obvious side, and then another less obvious one.  Most times, the less obvious angle is the most informative, revealing, and interesting.  

Hunter S. Thompson rode with the Oakland, California chapter of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club in the late 1960s, then wrote a book about the experience.  They knew up front what he was doing—nothing covert there—but they weren’t entirely happy with the end product, either.

In his National Bestseller Hell’s Angel (a killer book that I recommend), founding club member Sonny Barger describes Thompson as a coward: “All show and no go.”  On page 126 Sonny tells about the day Thompson got what was coming to him.  He’d just finished up writing the book, and Thompson had asked to join the Angels on a gun run to Squaw Rock.   

While there, a club member called Junkie George (that’s him above) got into an argument (more…)

There’s power in knowing how to read body language signals. 

There’s power in knowing how to transmit signals with your own body language. 

So why wouldn’t there be power in transmitting messages physically into a person’s body? 

Translation:  There’s power in torture. 

Now, I never tortured anybody for information when I was a cop.  And you know what?  I missed out on a lot of confessions because of this. 

That’s right, a lot of thugs walked because I was too nice—only because I had to be, of course. 

Still, I did get confessions.  And since I couldn’t put bamboo shoots under their fingernails, or whip ‘em with a rubber hose like they did in the old days, I had to rely on psychological means (more…)

I knew it going in, but I went for it anyway.

Here are the two subjects that always polarize people (and distract them from specific points):  Religion and politics.

In my last post I critiqued Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ comments about President Obama’s bow to the King of Saudi Arabia. 

The post was not about Obama.  It was not about the bow.  It wasn’t even about Gibbs.  It was about the techniques Gibbs used for denying that the bow… was a bow.

Hey, haven’t you found it’s hard to have a serious discussion of Britney Spears without somebody bringing up her crazy antics?  

David Copperfield is a master illusionist because he’s a master of distraction.  Beware of it.

In my book Conquering Deception© I told you a story from my days as a police detective about a check forgery case, one that I thought it would bring me the easiest confession ever.  

I was wrong.

Here was the evidence I had:  A clear black and white surveillance snapshot—clear as a high school yearbook photo—of the suspect at the counter as he slid the forged check to the cashier.

So I had this bandit in my office to question him about this clear-cut crime, and after a few (more…)

This one’s been going around so long I can’t tell you its origin, only that it’s total bunk.  It sounds intriguing, but if you’re after more than just intrigue, forget you ever heard of this.

Body Language is nothing more than body movement… that reveals something. 

A lot of self-appointed gurus will tell you that body language is the key to spotting a lie.  Sure, it sounds sexy, and it sells—but body language isn’t the end-all approach (or even the best one) for spotting deception, and it sure doesn’t make up 90% of the information a person communicates in conversation.

So where is the most revealing information found?  Not in the body language, but simply in (more…)

Getting uncommon results in any conversation comes down to this very simple point:  Overcoming distractions, and maintaining focus—on what’s being said and what we’ll say next.

We often miss the subtleties of what’s being said in conversation simply because we’re focusing on other things.  Irrelevant things. 

Like where we’re going to eat tonight.

Or we’re focusing on the person’s clothing. 

Or on what’s going on around us.

There’s an interesting story this week at the Daily Express that touches on this very powerful phenomenon of human nature, and it’s this:  When we’re not focused on what matters, by default, we’ll be focused on what does not matter.

The article cites a study by British psychologists that found women are more attracted to a man in a “fancy motor than in an old banger”.  Women paid more attention to a guy driving a (more…)

When a self-serving lie is told, it’s usually for the purpose of fixing something.  

A person’s done something they shouldn’t have, and now they need to dodge the consequences. 

So it’s always a two part process: Conduct, then Cover-up.  Or just think of it as Action and Reaction—but all in one person.  

Of course, sometimes there’s a third step that comes after Conduct and Cover-up:  Discovery.

Hey, nobody likes to be lied to.  So discovery can stir folks up.  In fact, when it’s discovered, a lie sometimes ends up becoming the focus, actually eclipsing the conduct that was lied about.

A few days ago on the North side of Chicago, Philip R. Tate allegedly beat another man to (more…)