Okay, now I don't wantto alarm anybody in this room, but it's just come to my attentionthat the person to your right is a liar.
(Laughter) Also, the person to your left is a liar.
Also the person sittingin your very seats is a liar.
We're all liars.
What I'm going to do today is I'm going to show you what the researchsays about why we're all liars, how you can become a liespotter and why you might wantto go the extra mile and go from liespotting to truth seeking, and ultimately to trust building.
Now, speaking of trust, ever since I wrotethis book, “Liespotting, ” no one wants to meet me in personanymore, no, no, no, no, no.
They say, “It's okay, we'll email you.
” (Laughter) I can't even geta coffee date at Starbucks.
My husband's like, “Honey, deception? Maybe you could have focused on cooking.
How about French cooking?” So before I get started, what I'm going to do is I'm going to clarify my goal for you, which is not to teach a game of Gotcha.
Liespotters aren't those nitpicky kids, those kids in the back of the roomthat are shouting, “Gotcha! Gotcha! Your eyebrow twitched.
You flared your nostril.
I watch that TV show 'Lie To Me.
'I know you're lying.
” No, liespotters are armed with scientific knowledgeof how to spot deception.
They use it to get to the truth, and they do what matureleaders do everyday; they have difficult conversationswith difficult people, sometimes during very difficult times.
And they start up that pathby accepting a core proposition, and that proposition is the following: Lying is a cooperative act.
Think about it, a lie has no powerwhatsoever by its mere utterance.
Its power emerges when someone else agreesto believe the lie.
So I know it may sound like tough love, but look, if at some pointyou got lied to, it's because you agreed to get lied to.
Truth number one about lying:Lying's a cooperative act.
Now not all lies are harmful.
Sometimes we're willingparticipants in deception for the sake of social dignity, maybe to keep a secret that shouldbe kept secret, secret.
We say, “Nice song.
” “Honey, you don't look fat in that, no.
” Or we say, favorite of the digiratti, “You know, I just fishedthat email out of my Spam folder.
So sorry.
” But there are times when we are unwillingparticipants in deception.
And that can have dramatic costs for us.
Last year saw 997 billion dollars in corporate fraud alonein the United States.
That's an eyelashunder a trillion dollars.
That's seven percent of revenues.
Deception can cost billions.
Think Enron, Madoff, the mortgage crisis.
Or in the caseof double agents and traitors, like Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames, lies can betray our country, they can compromise our security, they can undermine democracy, they can cause the deathsof those that defend us.
Deception is actually serious business.
This con man, Henry Oberlander, he was such an effective con man, British authorities say he could have undermined the entirebanking system of the Western world.
And you can't find this guy on Google;you can't find him anywhere.
He was interviewed once, and he said the following.
He said, “Look, I've got one rule.
” And this was Henry's rule, he said, “Look, everyone is willingto give you something.
They're ready to give you somethingfor whatever it is they're hungry for.
” And that's the crux of it.
If you don't want to bedeceived, you have to know, what is it that you're hungry for? And we all kind of hate to admit it.
We wish we werebetter husbands, better wives, smarter, more powerful, taller, richer — the list goes on.
Lying is an attempt to bridge that gap, to connect our wishes and our fantasies about who we wish we were, how we wish we could be, with what we're really like.
And boy are we willing to fill inthose gaps in our lives with lies.
On a given day, studies showthat you may be lied to anywhere from 10 to 200 times.
Now granted, many of those are white lies.
But in another study, it showed that strangers lied three times within the first 10 minutesof meeting each other.
(Laughter) Now when we first hearthis data, we recoil.
We can't believe how prevalent lying is.
We're essentially against lying.
But if you look more closely, the plot actually thickens.
We lie more to strangersthan we lie to coworkers.
Extroverts lie more than introverts.
Men lie eight times more about themselvesthan they do other people.
Women lie more to protect other people.
If you're an average married couple, you're going to lie to your spousein one out of every 10 interactions.
Now, you may think that's bad.
If you're unmarried, that number drops to three.
Lying's complex.
It's woven into the fabricof our daily and our business lives.
We're deeply ambivalent about the truth.
We parse it out on an as-needed basis, sometimes for very good reasons, other times just becausewe don't understand the gaps in our lives.
That's truth number two about lying.
We're against lying, but we're covertly for it in ways that our society has sanctionedfor centuries and centuries and centuries.
It's as old as breathing.
It's part of our culture, it's part of our history.
Think Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible, News of the World.
(Laughter) Lying has evolutionary valueto us as a species.
Researchers have long knownthat the more intelligent the species, the larger the neocortex, the more likely it is to be deceptive.
Now you might remember Koko.
Does anybody remember Koko the gorillawho was taught sign language? Koko was taught to communicatevia sign language.
Here's Koko with her kitten.
It's her cute little, fluffy pet kitten.
Koko once blamed her pet kittenfor ripping a sink out of the wall.
(Laughter) We're hardwired to becomeleaders of the pack.
It's starts really, really early.
How early? Well babies will fake a cry, pause, wait to see who's coming and then go right back to crying.
One-year-olds learn concealment.
(Laughter) Two-year-olds bluff.
Five-year-olds lie outright.
They manipulate via flattery.
Nine-year-olds, masters of the cover-up.
By the time you enter college, you're going to lie to your momin one out of every five interactions.
By the time we enter this work worldand we're breadwinners, we enter a world that is just clutteredwith Spam, fake digital friends, partisan media, ingenious identity thieves, world-class Ponzi schemers, a deception epidemic — in short, what one author callsa post-truth society.
It's been very confusingfor a long time now.
What do you do? Well, there are steps we can taketo navigate our way through the morass.
Trained liespotters get to the truth90 percent of the time.
The rest of us, we're only 54 percent accurate.
Why is it so easy to learn? There are good liars and bad liars.
There are no real original liars.
We all make the same mistakes.
We all use the same techniques.
So what I'm going to do is I'm goingto show you two patterns of deception.
And then we're goingto look at the hot spots and see if we can find them ourselves.
We're going to start with speech.
(Video) Bill Clinton:I want you to listen to me.
I'm going to say this again.
I did not have sexual relationswith that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never.
And these allegations are false.
And I need to go back to workfor the American people.
Thank you.
(Applause) Pamela Meyer: Okay, what were the telltale signs? Well first we heard what's knownas a non-contracted denial.
Studies show that peoplewho are overdetermined in their denial will resort to formal ratherthan informal language.
We also hearddistancing language: “that woman.
” We know that liars will unconsciouslydistance themselves from their subject, using language as their tool.
Now if Bill Clinton had said, “Well, to tell you the truth .
.
.
” or Richard Nixon's favorite, “In all candor .
.
.
” he would have been a dead giveaway for any liespotter that knows that qualifying language, as it's called, qualifying language like that, further discredits the subject.
Now if he had repeatedthe question in its entirety, or if he had peppered his accountwith a little too much detail — and we're all really gladhe didn't do that — he would have further discredited himself.
Freud had it right.
Freud said, look, there's much more to it than speech: “No mortal can keep a secret.
If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips.
” And we all do it no matterhow powerful you are.
We all chatter with our fingertips.
I'm going to show youDominique Strauss-Kahn with Obama who's chattering with his fingertips.
(Laughter) Now this brings us to our next pattern, which is body language.
With body language, here's what you've got to do.
You've really got to just throwyour assumptions out the door.
Let the science temperyour knowledge a little bit.
Because we think liarsfidget all the time.
Well guess what, they're known to freezetheir upper bodies when they're lying.
We think liars won't look you in the eyes.
Well guess what, they lookyou in the eyes a little too much just to compensate for that myth.
We think warmth and smilesconvey honesty, sincerity.
But a trained liespottercan spot a fake smile a mile away.
Can you all spot the fake smile here? You can consciously contractthe muscles in your cheeks.
But the real smile's in the eyes, the crow's feet of the eyes.
They cannot be consciously contracted, especially if you overdid the Botox.
Don't overdo the Botox;nobody will think you're honest.
Now we're going to look at the hot spots.
Can you tell what's happeningin a conversation? Can you start to find the hot spots to see the discrepancies between someone's wordsand someone's actions? Now, I know it seems really obvious, but when you're having a conversationwith someone you suspect of deception, attitude is by far the most overlookedbut telling of indicators.
An honest personis going to be cooperative.
They're going to showthey're on your side.
They're going to be enthusiastic.
They're going to be willing and helpfulto getting you to the truth.
They're going to be willingto brainstorm, name suspects, provide details.
They're going to say, “Hey, maybe it was those guys in payrollthat forged those checks.
” They're going to be infuriatedif they sense they're wrongly accused throughout the entire courseof the interview, not just in flashes; they'll be infuriated throughoutthe entire course of the interview.
And if you ask someone honest what should happento whomever did forge those checks, an honest person is much more likely to recommend strict ratherthan lenient punishment.
Now let's say you're havingthat exact same conversation with someone deceptive.
That person may be withdrawn, look down, lower their voice, pause, be kind of herky-jerky.
Ask a deceptive personto tell their story, they're going to pepper itwith way too much detail in all kinds of irrelevant places.
And then they're going to tell their storyin strict chronological order.
And what a trained interrogator does is they come in and in very subtle waysover the course of several hours, they will ask that personto tell that story backwards, and then they'll watch them squirm, and track which questions producethe highest volume of deceptive tells.
Why do they do that?Well, we all do the same thing.
We rehearse our words, but we rarely rehearse our gestures.
We say “yes, ” we shake our heads “no.
” We tell very convincing stories, we slightly shrug our shoulders.
We commit terrible crimes, and we smile at the delightin getting away with it.
Now, that smile is knownin the trade as “duping delight.
” And we're going to see thatin several videos moving forward, but we're going to start –for those of you who don't know him, this is presidentialcandidate John Edwards who shocked America by fatheringa child out of wedlock.
We're going to see him talkabout getting a paternity test.
See now if you can spot himsaying, “yes” while shaking his head “no, ” slightly shrugging his shoulders.
(Video) John Edwards: I'd be happyto participate in one.
I know that it's not possiblethat this child could be mine, because of the timing of events.
So I know it's not possible.
Happy to take a paternity test, and would love to see it happen.
Interviewer: Are you going to dothat soon? Is there somebody — JE: Well, I'm only one side.
I'm only one side of the test.
But I'm happy to participate in one.
PM: Okay, those head shakesare much easier to spot once you know to look for them.
There are going to be timeswhen someone makes one expression while masking another that justkind of leaks through in a flash.
Murderers are known to leak sadness.
Your new joint venture partnermight shake your hand, celebrate, go out to dinner with youand then leak an expression of anger.
And we're not all going to becomefacial expression experts overnight here, but there's one I can teach youthat's very dangerous and it's easy to learn, and that's the expression of contempt.
Now with anger, you've gottwo people on an even playing field.
It's still somewhatof a healthy relationship.
But when anger turns to contempt, you've been dismissed.
It's associated with moral superiority.
And for that reason, it's very, very hard to recover from.
Here's what it looks like.
It's marked by one lip cornerpulled up and in.
It's the only asymmetrical expression.
And in the presence of contempt, whether or not deception follows — and it doesn't always follow — look the other way, go the other direction, reconsider the deal, say, “No thank you.
I'm not coming upfor just one more nightcap.
Thank you.
” Science has surfacedmany, many more indicators.
We know, for example, we know liars will shift their blink rate, point their feet towards an exit.
They will take barrier objects and put them between themselvesand the person that is interviewing them.
They'll alter their vocal tone, often making their vocal tone much lower.
Now here's the deal.
These behaviors are just behaviors.
They're not proof of deception.
They're red flags.
We're human beings.
We make deceptive flailing gesturesall over the place all day long.
They don't mean anythingin and of themselves.
But when you see clustersof them, that's your signal.
Look, listen, probe, ask some hard questions, get out of that very comfortablemode of knowing, walk into curiosity mode, ask more questions, have a little dignity, treat the personyou're talking to with rapport.
Don't try to be like those folkson “Law & Order” and those other TV shows that pummel their subjectsinto submission.
Don't be too aggressive, it doesn't work.
Now, we've talked a little bitabout how to talk to someone who's lying and how to spot a lie.
And as I promised, we're now goingto look at what the truth looks like.
But I'm going to show you two videos, two mothers — one is lying, one is telling the truth.
And these were surfaced by researcherDavid Matsumoto in California.
And I think they're an excellent exampleof what the truth looks like.
This mother, Diane Downs, shot her kids at close range, drove them to the hospitalwhile they bled all over the car, claimed a scraggy-haired stranger did it.
And you'll see when you see the video, she can't even pretendto be an agonizing mother.
What you want to look for hereis an incredible discrepancy between horrific events that she describesand her very, very cool demeanor.
And if you look closely, you'll seeduping delight throughout this video.
(Video) Diane Downs:At night when I close my eyes, I can see Christie reachingher hand out to me while I'm driving, and the blood just keptcoming out of her mouth.
And that — maybeit'll fade too with time — but I don't think so.
That bothers me the most.
PM: Now I'm going to show you a video of an actual grieving mother, Erin Runnion, confronting her daughter's murdererand torturer in court.
Here you're going to see no false emotion, just the authentic expressionof a mother's agony.
(Video) Erin Runnion:I wrote this statement on the third anniversaryof the night you took my baby, and you hurt her, and you crushed her, you terrified her until her heart stopped.
And she fought, and I know she fought you.
But I know she looked at youwith those amazing brown eyes, and you still wanted to kill her.
And I don't understand it, and I never will.
PM: Okay, there's no doubtingthe veracity of those emotions.
Now the technologyaround what the truth looks like is progressing on, the science of it.
We know, for example, that we now have specialized eye trackersand infrared brain scans, MRI's that can decode the signalsthat our bodies send out when we're trying to be deceptive.
And these technologies are goingto be marketed to all of us as panaceas for deceit, and they will proveincredibly useful some day.
But you've got to ask yourselfin the meantime: Who do you want on your sideof the meeting, someone who's trainedin getting to the truth or some guy who's going to draga 400-pound electroencephalogram through the door? Liespotters rely on human tools.
They know, as someone once said, “Character's who you are in the dark.
” And what's kind of interestingis that today, we have so little darkness.
Our world is lit up 24 hours a day.
It's transparentwith blogs and social networks broadcasting the buzzof a whole new generation of people that have made a choice to livetheir lives in public.
It's a much more noisy world.
So one challenge we have is to remember, oversharing, that's not honesty.
Our manic tweeting and textingcan blind us to the fact that the subtletiesof human decency — character integrity — that's still what matters, that's always what's going to matter.
So in this much noisier world, it might make sense for us to be just a little bit more explicitabout our moral code.
When you combine the scienceof recognizing deception with the art of looking, listening, you exempt yourselffrom collaborating in a lie.
You start up that pathof being just a little bit more explicit, because you signal to everyone around you, you say, “Hey, my world, our world, it's going to be an honest one.
My world is going to beone where truth is strengthened and falsehood is recognizedand marginalized.
” And when you do that, the ground around you startsto shift just a little bit.
And that's the truth.
Thank you.
(Applause).
