Gregory Hartley - How to Spot a Liar, Revised Edition: Why People Dont Tell the Truth...and How You Can Catch Them

HOW TO SPOT A LIAR

REVISED EDITION

REVISED EDITION

WHY PEOPLE DONT TELL THE TRUTH
AND HOW YOU CAN CATCH THEM

GREGORY HARTLEY & MARYANN KARINCH

Copyright 2012 by Gregory Hartley and Maryann Karinch

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

HOW TO SPOT A LIAR, REVISED EDITION

EDITED BY NICOLE DEFELICE

TYPESET BY KATE HENCHES

Cover design by Lucia Rossman/DigiDog Design

Printed in the U.S.A.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hartley, Gregory

How to spot a liar : why people dont tell the truth--and how you can catch them / by Gregory Hartley

and Maryann Karinch. -- Rev. ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-60163-220-3 -- ISBN 978-1-60163-595-2 (ebook)

1. Truthfulness and falsehood--Psychological aspects. 2. Deception--Psychological aspects. I. Karinch,

Maryann. II. Title.

BF637.T77H37 2012

155.92--dc23

2012013335

This book would not have occurred without Michael Dobson, who takes the blame for this collaboration because he prodded me to write and introduced me to Maryann, with whom I have a great relationship that has spawned seven books. I am grateful to Allan Stein of Rutgers University School of Law for his assistance in understanding the jury selection process. Thank you to Dina for supporting me and keeping me sane with the added workload. Thank you to Jim McCormick for his choice of words and his encouragement. Don Landrum has been an invaluable mentor throughout the years in making me the interrogator I became. Thanks to Mike Dyches for helping me gain connection to my past. Maryann, thank you for making this a painless and enjoyable process. I would also like to acknowledge Jack Schafer, whose work we cite here for constant cutting-edge thinking, and for good conversations in past years. Thanks to Career Press for starting this whole thing and being such a fantastic team to work with. Most importantly, thanks to all men and women in uniform who protect us in anonymity on a daily basis.

Greg Hartley

Thank you to Jim McCormick for keen insights, encouragement, and other practical support along the way. Great appreciation to Michael Dobson for introducing me to Greg, who has enriched my knowledge of human behavior greatly and been such fun to work with these past seven years. We also appreciate Michaels contributions to this edition. Thanks also to Debbie Singer Dobson for generously contributing her expertise on personality profiles; and to Dean Hohl, who provided an engaging story and expertise on sorting styles. I am also grateful for the enthusiasm and support we have received from the Career Press team, specifically Ron Fry, Michael Pye, Kirsten Dalley, Laurie Kelly-Pye, Adam Schwartz, Gina Talucci, Nicole DeFelice, Kate Henches, and Karen Roy. We also very much appreciate the good work of Allison Olson, who has done an outstanding job of getting our work in print in many different languages, and Newman Communications in promoting the first edition so effectively that we now have a second edition. Thank you also to friends whose expertise enables them to be in a unique position to offer guidance on a book about truth-telling, especially Patti Mengers, Ray Decker, John Biever, and Saroj Parida. Thanks also to David Kozinski, who offered very helpful edits in preparation for the second edition. I also want to acknowledge experts whose research and writings laid the foundation for some of the insights in the book, including psychologists Paul Ekman and Jack Shafer, and neurologist Antonio Damasio. And thank you, Greg, for being such a great partner!

Maryann Karinch

WHY YOU NEED THIS BOOK

Our bodies, including our brains, have remarkable similarities and striking differences. We have the same fundamental physical structuresheart, mouth, neck, cerebral cortex, and so on. But Im a lanky, red-headed male with big ears and beady eyes, and youre probably not. Add religion, culture, education, and other non-physical characteristics to the distinctions between us, and you and I seem even more dissimilar. Could it be true, then, that we broadcast the same signals when we tell lies or feel stress? No and yes. Its not true that the eyes of all human beings wander off to the right when theyre lying, but some of them do. Its not true that all people cross their arms when they dont want someone to invade their space, but some of them do. We can make a firm statement about only a few things, such as the fact that humans in a state of high anxiety smell really foul.

Zoologist Desmond Morris, author of classic works on behavioral links between people and our primitive ape ancestors, offered us a framework for documenting how were likely to respond to certain stimuli. His conclusions should not be taken as absolutes, however, and thats why I cant offer you a simple checklist of ways to spot a liar. What I can do is teach you to determine on a case-by-case basis whether or not someone is lying by what they are saying, or by what theyre not telling you. I can also give you the steps to extracting the truth, as well as resisting efforts to make you divulge information you want to keep to yourself.

This book is a practical guide to learning and using the sophisticated psychological tools of interrogators. You need this book if someone has lied to you, manipulated you, or backed you into a corner. You need this book if you have an important relationship, with a spouse, boss, parent, client, child, employee, or friend, that lacks honesty. You dont want to go through life wearing a sign that reads victim or patsy. To make sure you dont, you need the techniques covered in this book that give you what I call extreme interpersonal skills.

The book isnt just about managing your relationships with a cheating spouse or manipulative boss, however. The same techniques that help you turn those situations around are the ones that help you gain the upper hand in a salary negotiation, to draw a prospective client toward the outcome you desire, and, in some cases, to find out why you need to end a business or personal relationship. They will help you conduct or succeed at job interviews and reel in prospective customers. Litigators who need to read character and establish truthfulness will find dozens of reliable ploys. Anyone who is trying to survive the dating scene, has teenagers at home, or works on Capitol Hill will find ways to cope and win.

People often ask me if I use these skills on my family and friends. The answer is, Noas long as I have reasons to trust them.

Greg Hartley