Three Unexpected Things I Learned From Trying To Become A Human Lie Detector
“I didn’t quite make it to the bathroom,” the man says.
“I missed the whole meeting and went home but not before a few people saw me. It was humiliating. Humiliating.”
He lifts his head and looks at us seated in a circle facing him. His head is up, shoulders back, legs crossed at the ankle. The room’s only sound is breathing and a slight scratching as six of us write in our notebooks.
“What do you think?” our instructor asks.
“Lying,” comes the first answer. “Lying,” I say.
“Lying.” “Lying.” “Lying.” “Lying.”
The man smiles. “Caught me,” he admits. “None of that was true.”
Seven years ago I was locked in a room for a week with eight strangers and we took turns lying to each other.
I was a journalist at the time and was doing a story about if it was possible to turn yourself into a human lie detector. It sounded interesting and I thought any skills I gained would be an asset in my line of work.
Going back and reading my notes after more than half a decade has made me realise that I learned a lot in that week — and not all of it to do with lie detection.
These are three unexpected things that I learned.
1. Cognitive Load — A Life Changing Idea
“Come on, push through. This is the part where you get supercharged.”
The personal trainer doing the yelling isn’t mine. I’m pedalling a stationary bike sedately while next to me a giant of a man is being berated into grinding out another eight burpees. He is so tired he’s flopping to the ground like he’s doing an exhausted version of “the worm” from breakdancing.
I glance over at the wall and the pictures of people doing Crossfit. Their faces match the giant’s, contorted with the various efforts of flipping a tyre, climbing a rope, or running up a sandy mountain.
On the desk next to the bikes is a selection of magazines. The one on top has the headline “MASS MONSTER” over a picture of a bodybuilder whose veins cover his massive body like a topographical map of California’s highway system.
The magazine next to it is for marathon runners. The model is lean and sleek, boiled down to sinew, bone, and taut muscle.
The television screens above me blast out the 2007 pop song by Mika “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)”.
“Get yourself to the butterfly lounge,” he sings. “Find yourself a big lady. Big boy, come on around. And there we’re gonna do baby.”
I first heard the expression “cognitive load” at the course. Since then it’s become a regular part of my vocabulary to express a variety of ideas.
Human beings are cognitive misers. If they can avoid spending effort they will. This isn’t a bad thing. Conserving effort is an advantage in a lot of situations.
Cognitive load isn’t just mental exertion or fatigue. You can also see its impact in someone who takes mental shortcuts, outsources thinking, or otherwise disengages their brain through common cognitive biases like the halo effect, illusory correlation, and the Dunning-Kruger effect.
When I did the course only a handful of people were worried about the constant time drain of social media, iPhones, and our online lives.
Things have only gotten more overwhelming in the years since.
Like the time I was on the gym’s stationary bike we are all constantly being crowded by weaponised messages telling us what to do and believe, who to be, and what to buy.
At times these finely crafted messages overwhelm neural circuitry that is poorly equipped to withstand such constant bombardment.
During the lie detection course cognitive load was a diagnostic tool for identifying communication that didn’t make sense.
An instructor asked one of the students what they did Thursday the week before at 3pm and they answered him right away.
“How did you remember that so quickly,” the instructor teased. “That should require at least a little effort to recall.”
While you can’t read people’s minds it’s sometimes easy to read when they are using their mind.
But the wider impact of this simple idea has been far more profound than just trying to figure out if someone is fibbing to you.
We have a finite capacity for processing and there are no shortage of people who are willing to try to exploit that.
In the months after the course I began noticing clever communicators who seemed to deliberately increase that load if asked an uncomfortable question — they would “baffle their audience with bullshit”.
That’s not all. Since that course the idea of cognitive load has shaped my thinking around:
- Technology And Communications Saturation: We are constantly being bombarded with ideas that ratchet up our cognitive load. A phrase you will be hearing a lot more of in the coming years is “digital nutrition”. Logging off social media or having a break from your phone is one approach. The things we consume digitally have a profound effect on our health and life in much the same way as diet and must be managed and thought of in a similar way.
- Cognitive load as a communications technique: Something I’ve noticed recently is the tendency for some people to, apparently deliberately, ratchet up the amount of cognitive load you are exposed to as a tactic. Sometimes it’s just to confuse and obscure a point they are trying to mitigate. Worse is the emergence of people recently who are doing it before providing the “catharsis” of a false answer or solution.
- Stray load and open loops: Another life changing book for me was “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. This introduced me to the idea that our brains keep constantly checking in on things we have on our mental “to do” list. I often have dozens of projects and priorities on the run at any one point. Understanding that this mental checklist was exerting a load on me even when I wasn’t thinking about them was transformative. Pressure that I hadn’t realised was there melted away when I started eliminating these loops, and their load. I can’t recommend the book enough if you want to read more (and if you buy it using my link I’ll make a few dollars).
Noticing the load that thoughts exerted changed my life. You have a finite capacity for mental processing and the demands on it are increasing.
Where are you spending your cognitive energy on?
2. People ‘Say’ A Lot More Than You Realise
I’m at a poker table and it’s 2 am. I’ve been playing for four hours. Across me is young Asian man in a tracksuit and Beats headphones.
He makes a huge bet and stares at me. I look back and ask what he has.
“A better hand than you,” he says.
That’s not hard but he could also have a busted flush or straight draw … he’s either very strong or very weak. I don’t know which.
I think back to a hand we played three hours earlier. I had noticed a slight pause and almost sing-song inflection change when he was claiming to have a flush but was lying — managing to bluff an older businessman off the best hand in the process.
He sounded the same then as he does now.
“Ok I call,” I say. “What have you got?”
I don’t turn my hand over because I have a really bad hand and don’t want to suffer the humiliation if I’m wrong.
He shrugs and turns over a seven and an eight — nothing as well. But my nothing is better.
I turn my hand over and he shakes his head in disgust.
“Never bluff a fish,” he says, using the derogatory term for a bad poker player.
“Unlucky,” I reply. “I just had a gut feeling.”
No need to tell him where he went wrong. I’m going to want to use it again.
During the course we spent almost a day talking about the different channels of communication. We learned people usually only tune into one or two channels — such as body language or vocal content.
But there is so much more information available to us and tuning in to these channels makes us powerful listeners
After the course I watched videos of interviews while writing down everything I noticed about a single channel. Once I was done I would go back and play the video again to focus on a different channel. I would spend half an hour watching a five minute video.
These are the channels I focused on during these video sessions.
- Vocal Content: This is what is actually said. Most people listen to this but there are depths to this as well. Pay attention to which words are used, and which are omitted. It all means something. If you’re interested I thoroughly recommend the book “The Secret Life of Pronouns” by James Pennebaker (it’s fascinating and examines words that are typically overlooked).
- Vocal Rhythm And Timing: Speeding up or slowing down during speech or changing the way words are clustered together all mean something. In particular I found speed useful in what it indicated about the amount of cognitive load the person was experiencing.
- Vocal Tone And Style: Which words are stressed, where are the inflections, what is the overall tone the person is using and does it match the other channels and what is being said. My friend the poker player gave himself away with his tone — not because it was strange, but just because it matched when he was lying previously.
- Facial expressions: One of the most powerful and overlooked channels of communication. I was astonished to learn how much you can gleam by paying close attention to someone’s facial expressions, especially the tiny “micro-expressions” that can last less than a second. There are several great books and online training sites to help you learn how to spot these.
- Body language: We spent far less time on body language during the course than I thought we would. The problem is that it’s so damn variable. I still pay attention to this channel but the most valuable thing I learned was to knock it off with the “crossed arms mean they’re lying” nonsense.
3. The Prelude Can Be The Point
In Latin the word prae means “before” and ludere means “to play”. The word prelude means the play before the play.
In lie detection school the prelude is the part of the conversation before you get to the “meat” of the interaction.
It’s essential because that’s where you get your baseline from. Without this you don’t know if someone is nervous about your remark or if they’re just a remarkably nervous person in general.
If you know how the person behaves when they’re relaxed and not lying you’ll notice the deviations that mean something is going on.
Similarly like in the poker example once you catch them in a lie you’ll be able to spot similarities in their behaviour that can help tip you off to other deceptions.
A baseline is important when you’re looking for “hotspots”. These are the areas where communications channels conflict with each other. There are lots of examples of this:
- Someone tells you they are relaxed or happy but they have a micro-expression of sadness or an increase in vocal tension.
- They are talking about something light and breezy but they are exhibiting signs of considerable cognitive load — what are they thinking about?
- You notice a tone or inflection change when they discuss a specific topic or person that is out of place.
Pay attention to conflicting messages. Someone says they’re happy but have some facial markers of sadness? There is potentially something there. Likewise if someone moves a lot when you’re chatting with them, but stops when you ask about something particular.
These signs aren’t definitive in themselves. But they can be roadsigns to let you know there is something to be found.
I’ve heard a poker player say this is what he does when he sits down at the table — he asks a question he knows the person will answer truthfully. “What’s the score in the game”, “how long have you been playing” or something else.
He will listen to the tone of the person’s voice, their rhythm, and the inflection. Then later when he asks them if they have a strong hand he will see if they match…or if they differ.
But this isn’t the only thing I learned from getting to love the prelude. The more I worked in business settings the more I have begun to notice a lot of the “serious talk” is done in this part of the meeting.
In Western culture there is an urge to “cut to the chase” and “get down to business”. Which misses a lot of the information and rapport which is established in the initial interaction before things are commenced properly.
You can learn how the person thinks and communicates, what is important to them, and how they approach conversations.
Those things are useful for everyone from the salesman to the CEO.
There is also the potential they are also sizing you up as well. And if someone is getting information about me I certainly want to make sure I’m doing the same.
I’m not saying you should waste someone’s time if they are one of the “cut to the chase” types. They’ll resent it.
But there is immense value in taking a moment or two to get to know someone and how they communicate before you start trying to persuade them of something.
Thinking a bit differently about the prelude was a gift that I’ve revisited repeatedly.
Sometimes the most important things are said before you get to the thing you sat down to talk about.
But I want to become a human lie detector!!
Ok, fine. I understand. It’s a bit of a tease to write an article that is just about the unexpected things I learned without talking too much about the course itself.
If you want to read the original article I wrote after doing the course here is a link.
The below steps are the framework I ended up with after finishing the course. But if you want to get good at it I’d suggest finding out if Ekman International offer courses in your area or try one of their online training courses.
Sherlock in Six Steps
- Talk to the person to establish a baseline across the communications channels.
- Ask questions and identify “hotspots” — moments and areas of inconsistency or friction.
- Delve into those hotspots and ask questions relating to them.
- Ideally record the interview and watch it back to focus on each of the communications channels while taking notes.
- Compare these notes and draw conclusions if possible about the nature of the conflicts and hotspots.
- Repeat interview and process as many times as necessary.
Happy hunting!
