8
B Is for Baseline: Using All Your Senses
When I joined the U.S. Navy Reserves in 1997 as a Seaman/E3, I had no idea how that decision would affect my life. It led me on an amazing journey and it’s how I got to where I am today, and in part how I came to write this book. During the years I spent as an intelligence analyst and then as an intelligence officer, working for and with different agencies, my family and friends back home in Rhode Island really didn’t know exactly what I was doing. They knew I was a Navy Reservist and they knew I worked in Intelligence, but outside of that they had no clue what I was being trained to do, and they never asked. I have a big family and was fortunate to grow up with most of my cousins. We were the best of friends. We hung out together and went out together—we even went on cruises together! We were as thick as thieves. So when it came time to fly the coop, I truly hated leaving my family behind, but I needed to go and experience the world, and explore California and all its diversions. But soon the military had different plans for me. I headed back East to Alexandria, Virginia, in the summer of 2001 to work at the Office of Naval Intelligence and prepare for mobilization. Being a little closer to home made trips to Rhode Island easier, both logistically and financially.
On one particular visit home for a Christmas holiday, one of my cousins, Darren, was hosting a big-time poker game. He had a legit gambling room in his basement, equipped with a gorgeous poker table and full bar; yes, he was that serious about the game. Anyway, my brothers invited me to go over and play poker with my cousins, and wanted me to use my “mind reading skills” (which you and I both know I don’t have) on Darren to beat him, because no one else could and they were all tired of losing to him. I laughed at their ignorance about my skills but went along with the plan. When I arrived, Darren warned me, “Lena, we play for money, and I am unbeatable.” I smiled and asked for a cheat sheet card because I often got confused at what the hands were and which ones beat each other. “Are you serious?” he asked, laughing. Then this huge grin came over his face as he realized I was an easy target; he was going to take my money and bounce me out of the game—or so he thought!
I bought in and kept my cheat sheet close by as we started to play (because I seriously didn’t know how to play poker). Darren was good. He was winning almost every hand. Meanwhile I watched him closely. I studied his eyes, facial expressions, and gestures when he first looked at his cards, when he won on a good hand, and when he won on a bluff. Eight of us started out playing that night. After a couple hours it came down to Darren and me. Everyone was shocked I was still in the game, especially since I still was using my cheat sheet. I must admit, though, that I purposefully played up my naiveté to make everyone think I was just a dumb girl trying to play poker—certainly no threat. I kept their focus off me, so they never studied my reactions. I knew when Darren had a good hand because he would frown slightly and his body gestures quieted down; he would concentrate. I think he was concentrating on trying to not show his tells! When he didn’t have a good hand he would smile nervously, become fidgety with his cards, reposition himself in his chair, and became more talkative; he would even taunt me, almost as though he were trying too hard to appear confident: overcompensating.
So there we were, both of us holding our cards, getting ready to show our hands. With contempt written all over his face, Darren said, “Lena, you played a good game, but unfortunately, you won’t be taking home that pot of money tonight.” (I will talk more about contempt in the next chapter.) What I noticed was that he couldn’t look at me when he said this; his eyes darted around the room and he started shuffling his cards. I knew he was bluffing. “Read ‘em and weep!” he said, as he threw down his cards. There on the table were two kings and one queen. I looked at him, sighed, and placed my cards down very slowly, one by one, “Well, shoot, those are good cards, Darren—but mine are better.” There on the table were two kings and an ace. Everyone cheered and laughed in amazement. Darren was so shocked he was speechless. “I guess that $220 is mine, right?” I gave half to my youngest brother because I felt badly he had lost.
They still call me a mind reader, but you know I’m not, and neither will you be. You will not always be 100-percent accurate, and you will not always win every game of poker. There is a margin of error when detecting deception, but this margin is slender when it comes to people who have had years of experience reading body language, interpreting behavioral congruency, and listening for verbal deceptive tells. To really bring that margin of error down, you need to use all you sense, especially your eyes and ears, when people talk. We listen to the words they say and match them to how they are said (voice pitch, tone, word usage), and whether the body is in agreement or not. I started off this book by telling you detecting deception was hard, and it is. You have to really focus and pay attention to pick up on the subtle clues and tells people will leak, and then compare what is being said verbally to what the body is saying nonverbally, and all with precise timing!
Follow the Rule of Three (or, Don’t Read Me)
The key to being a good lie detector is baselining people’s body language before you can say they are leaking deceptive tells. Here is my rule of three when it comes to detecting deception: 1) baseline a person’s normal behavior (how they normally act, carry themselves, move, gesture, talk, sound, and speak); 2) identify clusters of deceptive tells (verbal or nonverbal), because only one deceptive tell is not enough to determine whether someone is lying; and 3) know the context in which the information is being delivered (meaning, is the person stressed, under duress, hurt, not feeling well, on medications, and so on, because all of these factors can affect their body language).
1. Baseline
So, how do you baseline people? First, hold a 15-minute conversation with them when they are relaxed, calm, and comfortable with you and their surroundings. Talk about casual, non-pertinent topics; don’t bombard them with questions, and don’t allow them to control the conversation. Make them feel relaxed and at ease so you can see how they normally act. Then, study them closely and observe the following:
• Stance and posture: Do they slouch or stand up straight? Are the shoulders rolled back or rolled forward? Do they shift weight frequently or stand still? Do they use power poses? (Review Chapter 5 if you need a refresher on these.)
• Feet: Do they point them toward you or away from you when they are talking? Do they tap their feet or keep them still? Do they cross their ankles while they sit or stand? Do they rise up on their toes or remain flat-footed when they speak?
• Hands: Do they talk with their hands? Do they wring them, hide them in their pockets, touch their face with them or touch you, relax them in their laps, show you their palms or keep them hidden? Do they pick at their cuticles?
• Eyes: Do they make good eye contact or do their eyes dart around? Do they blink frequently, stare, roll their eyes, or raise their eyebrows? Where do their eyes go when they are trying to recall information? (I’ll talk more about neu-rolinguistic programming (NLP) later in Chapter 9.)
• Mouth: Do they smile a lot or frown? Do they bite, purse, or lick their lips?
• Voice: Is their voice high- or low-pitched? Loud or soft and deep?
• Speech: What kinds of words do they use? Softening (more on this in Chapter 10), visual, kinesthetic, descriptive, negative, or positive? What is their normal rate of speech?
Once you have a good idea of how they move their body and how they speak, start to ask pertinent questions to see if you notice any shifts in their normal behavior. (I will teach you good questioning techniques in Chapter 10.) To give you an idea of how this works, I will share my baseline with you—just don’t use it against me! I am half Italian, I am from Rhode Island, and I am an Extravert. I speak loudly and quickly, and I am very animated; I talk with my hands. In fact, I have to have something moving at all times, whether I’m tapping my feet, gesturing with my hands, or twirling my hair. I have very expressive eyes and eyebrows. Also, I am very personable so I may touch your upper arm frequently when we talk (if I like you). If I suddenly become quiet, stop moving, self-preen, or avert eye contact, you’ll know something is wrong, because my normal behavior has just changed. Now you have to figure out why. Is it because I am stressed about the topic you brought up? Or did I just lie to you as I answered your question?
Exercise: Baseline Yourself
Stand in front of a mirror and say something that is truthful. Then tell a lie. Talk about something that makes you sad and then something that makes you happy. While you do this, observe your face. Do you see emotions leaking out? What is your mouth doing? What do your eyes and eyebrows show? If you feel funny and can’t do this exercise without laughing, ask a friend to observe you, but tell her what to look for. Think about how you act when you comfortable and when you are stressed.
2. Clusters
As I mentioned, the presence of just one tell can’t determine deception. You need to see more evidence, at least three or four tells, to help you decide whether or not a person is lying to you. And then you have to confirm the lie by getting the truth. I will teach you numerous nonverbal deceptive tells in Chapter 9, and verbal deceptive tells in Chapter 10. Once you have your collection of tells you’ll be able to look for clusters of them.
I still train DoD personnel in elicitation and elicitation countermeasures, and I am used as a role player for elicitation training exercises. During one training event, I was sent to approach a student to elicit information from him; my goal was to collect basic biographical information such as his name, address, employment, occupation, and so on. I approached my target and started an unassuming, friendly conversation. I extended my hand and said, “By the way, my name is Lena.” Predictably, he shook my hand and said, “My name is [and here he paused] John,” as he broke eye contact and looked down. At one point in our conversation I said to him, “I can tell you’re not from here.” (I didn’t want to ask him point blank where he was from, because it could have raised some concern as to why I wanted to know, so I used an elicitation technique instead.) He broke eye contact again, looked at his drink, took a hard swallow, took a sip of the drink, sighed, looked back at me and said, “I’m from Arizona?
“Really?” I responded doubtfully.
He looked surprised and became defensive. “Yeah, why?”
I replied, “Oh, it sounded like you were unsure.”
“No, I’m from Arizona.”
Well, he wasn’t, and as a trained body-language expert I knew he wasn’t. The reason I knew this was because he displayed a cluster of tells: (1) he broke eye contact, (2) he swallowed hard (which could indicate that his mouth was drying out from stress), (3) he sighed (a calming response), and (4) he made a statement using an inflection. These four tells pretty much told me that he was lying. I later found out he was from Pennsylvania, and of course his name wasn’t John. I knew that, too, because who pauses to think when asked their name?
3. Context
The third rule states that you have to consider the context in which you are receiving information from someone in order to accurately assess deception. For example, trauma, shock, sickness, stress, distress, and intoxication are factors that can greatly influence how a person communicates, both verbally and nonverbally. You may perceive certain nonverbal “tells” to be deceptive when they are actually just a result of fear. Context affects verbal tells, as well. If someone just had dental work, suffers from severe TMJ (as I do), has a sore throat, is hoarse from yelling at a concert the night before, is a heavy smoker, or is on an antidepressant or muscle relaxer, all of these factors can change patterns and rate of speech, as well as volume, tone, and pitch of voice.
When detainees would arrive from Bagram, Afghanistan, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they did so by plane. Most Afghans and the foreign fighters fighting in Afghanistan for al Qaeda and the Taliban had never been on a plane before. So you can imagine that many were fearful of flying; most got motion sickness. After a long flight from Afghanistan to Cuba, they were then put on a ferry, then a bus, and then driven to the prison camp where they were screened medically, washed, issued their prison attire and accoutrements, and ushered into an interrogation booth for about 20 to 30 minutes to be questioned. I was one of those initial interrogators. We wanted to get a quick assessment of who had information of intelligence value and who was most likely to be willing to give us that information in the least amount of time. This usually meant identifying the detainees who required the least amount of effort from us regarding interrogation plans, focused questioning techniques, elicitation, and approaches. During this 30-minute interrogation it was very difficult for me to detect deception because I was seeing their stress, shock, and anxiety from the ordeal they just went through to get there. Some were throwing up in a garbage can, and others were just plain exhausted, so it made no sense to me to try and assess their truthfulness and accuracy at that point. I collected information but would have to check it for truthfulness and accuracy later, after they had settled in for a day or two and I could conduct a full interrogation.
Now you know my rule of three when it comes to detecting deception: baseline first, look for clusters of tells, and know the context in which you are observing those tells. In the next chapter I am going to talk about how to spot deviations from the baseline, and how this can help you detect deception.