INTRODUCTION

People never lie so much as after a hunt,

during a war, or before an election.

—OTTO VON BISMARCK

DID YOU SEE YOUR NEW BOSS give that little shoulder shrug while she said, “What you’re doing contributes to the team and company’s success.

Your work makes a difference.”

Or hear that practically-perfect-in-every-way babysitter say, “Just ask any of my previous families—they all love me. I know they’ll tell you that I’m dependable and trustworthy.”

Did you happen to notice that your new girlfriend put a smiley face at the end of her handwritten “I’m happy I met you!” note?

In all of these examples, you might find yourself being lied to. But can you spot it? Even the most intelligent and observant among us can miss telltale signs of deceit and manipulation and fall victim to some unscrupulous folks out there. Whether the opportunist is a conniving ex-wife, a cutthroat coworker, a slick salesperson, or just an irresistibly sexy cheater, we need to be prepared.

But learning how to spot a liar is not a matter of becoming more paranoid. Nope, not at all. In fact, the skill that we most need to develop is how to look for the truth, not the lie. Because here’s the secret: more trusting people make better lie detectors.

People who don’t trust never really develop the skills to tell whether someone is lying or not—because they assume everyone is. The cost, of course, is never having any authentic or satisfying relationships. If no one can be trusted, how can you truly bond with someone? And then what kind of life do you live? A sad one, to my mind.¹

Research has shown that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, people who score higher on measures of trust not only spot lies more easily, they’re better at general assessments of other people, make better hiring decisions, and focus on the most important details that hint at other people’s trustworthiness. They follow up on their suspicions, but they assume most people are innocent until proven guilty.

And here’s the ultimate irony: people who lack trust in others are more willing to hire liars and are less likely to be aware they are liars.² People who show little trust in others suffer tremendous costs, especially in fewer genuine connections with other people.

So while other deception detection experts teach you to be suspicious, I want to do the opposite: I want you to enjoy more trust and to have better relationships. I want to get you back to that sweet spot between the gullible toddler and the bitter divorcée. I want you to learn how to trust your own gut again and to stop second-guessing yourself. When you learn the process I spell out in this book, you’ll tap into your own innate lie detection ability—what I call your “BS Barometer”—and you’ll have all the tools and the knowledge to spot harmful liars quickly. That way, you can relax, trust your instincts, and enjoy getting to know people.

The BS Barometer is a collection of your brain’s oldest instincts, long used to spot the virtues and ethics within others—and within ourselves. But our BS Barometers have been taking hits for years, decades—even for centuries. Take, for example, George Washington’s famous proclamation to his father about his favorite cherry tree, “I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet.” The truth? This is a total myth! Little Georgie never said that! That line was the concoction of Washington’s biographer, the equivalent of a Revolutionary-era PR hack, to make Washington seem like he was such an honorable, honest guy, he wouldn’t even lie as a child. So even a lie about lying itself can become a commonly accepted truth, simply by being repeated often enough.

Our BS Barometers have taken a beating, worn down from these constant exposures to BS and lies. We are now at a moment in history when we almost don’t expect to hear the truth anymore—we are so used to being lied to that we are often wildly out of touch with reality. But that’s no recipe for a satisfying authentic life. And that’s exactly where the You Can’t Lie to Me program comes in: While you may have lost some of your native ability to spot liars, using this program will re-calibrate your BS Barometer to spot the real truth, not the accepted reality of the truth. You’ll strengthen your BS Barometer so it can once again perform at the height of its abilities. You’ll build your self-confidence, because the stronger your BS Barometer, the more happiness and peace of mind you’ll have. Your BS Barometer will automatically keep you at arm’s length from potential manipulators, so you’ll be free to bring more open, authentic people into your life. Not only will you be a natural at detecting deception, you’ll also be a lot happier—because you can now confidently recognize the real truth.

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

Here’s the thing: on the road to that happiness and confident trust, countless valuable resources—time, energy, money, affection—can be squandered because of fraud and deception. We’ve seen how very smart people can wind up at the mercy of charismatic BS artists. After all, we saw the handiwork of Tiger Woods, Governor Marc Sanford, and Bernie Madoff all in the span of one year. Since then, we’ve been through Anthony Weiner, Casey Anthony, and Justin Bieber’s baby mama. We’ve seen public officials exposed as plagiarists. We’ve seen title-winning coaches exposed as child molesters. We’ve seen internationally renowned researchers get busted fabricating decades of “results” in gold standard scientific journals.

We see new, ever-more-shocking examples of bald-faced lying every day. But why? Consider these statistics:

• 80 percent of lies will go undetected.³
• Nine out of ten people who apply for jobs overemphasize, or downright fabricate, positive traits about themselves.⁴
• Between 66 and 80 percent of college students admit to having cheated at some time in their school careers.⁵
• Since 1991, lifetime infidelity among men over sixty has doubled. In women, it has tripled.⁶
• About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women under thirty-five have cheated on their partners.⁷ In those ages eighteen to twenty-five, the percentage is closer to 30.⁸
• Adult men and women lie in one out of every five social interactions; for college students, that number is one in three.⁹

Imagine—one out of every five (or three!) times a person opens his mouth, he’s probably lying.

Those odds are definitely not in our favor.

But what if you could learn how to detect a lie the moment it starts (or even before)? What if you had a test that tipped you off the instant a lie was being told? An innate lie detector so powerful it becomes an unconscious skill, applicable with any person, in any situation, to help you uncover the truth before the lie takes hold of you?

Let’s imagine how it could change your life.

Regardless of another person’s intent to deceive you, you would always hold the power. You would know whom to trust, and who gets shown the door. You would regain control. You could look anyone straight in the eye, and your whole being would calmly and confidently say, “You can’t lie to me.”

I have spent nearly two decades teaching hundreds of thousands of people—chiefs of police, titans of industry, suspicious housewives, jaded lovers—how to use the New Body Language to charm clients, bust criminals, and succeed on the battlefield of love. In this book, I uncover hundreds of proven winning techniques that have been used by federal agents and law enforcement officers to catch the most egregious liars in the most outrageous crimes. You’ll learn tricks used by the world’s best investigators to target history’s smartest con men (and con women!).

I’ve integrated all these tools into one easy step-by-step plan that quickly takes all the second-guessing out of detecting deception and gets you straight to the truth. You’ll gain an understanding of the favorite tricks of master manipulators, so you can effortlessly protect yourself and not get sucked in. Learning to spot manipulation as it is happening will make you the first—instead of the last—to know when things aren’t right. Because sometimes, a moment of manipulation can change the course of a person’s entire life.

MANIPULATORS DO LEAVE SCARS

I have been in this lie detection business for several decades now. Every so often, someone asks me, “What got you into this, anyway? Why deception? Why spend so much time looking for bad guys?”

I usually make some kind of cheeky answer. “I started off at ATF—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives,” I’ll say. “My dad says it’s because I just wanted to combine my favorite hobbies into a career.”

That’s usually good for a laugh. Which I’m grateful for, because it allows me to gloss over the true reason—which happened about eighteen years prior.

In 1976, I was six years old. Those were the days of free-range kids—my mom had no idea where I was for most of the afternoon. The town was safe. Everyone knew everyone. What could happen?

In those days, we weren’t worried about bike helmets, let alone about “swimsuit areas” and stranger danger. No one was talking about kids getting molested—it was just unheard of. And in the days before Megan’s Law, certainly no one was thinking that a nice guy in the community was a pedophile.

I was playing outside, climbing a tree I’d climbed a thousand times. An older man I knew from around the town called me down from the tree. We were going to play a fun game! Although I was curious, I remember hesitating a couple seconds because I was having so much fun climbing the tree. But this guy, whom I’d seen hundreds of times, who’d been at parties and barbecues, who waved to me whenever I rode past him on my bike, conned me out of the tree and led me into a shed.

Twenty minutes later, right after the streetlights came on, I was headed back to my house, with the course of my life forever changed.

He told me to come back after dinner; he said that “the game gets much better.” But I never got a chance to go back. Right after dinner, my mom gave me a bath, and while the water was running, she asked me what I did that day. I told her the truth.

When the child psychologist arrived at my home, later that night, with a box of crayons and a pad of paper, she kindly asked me to draw a picture of what happened in the shed. We know now that when children are untruthful about an event, often the picture will not match the story. Well, my picture had the tree, the shed, the chair in the shed that stood against the left side—I had even colored the man’s shirt the same color and pattern of the one he was wearing when the police knocked on his door hours afterward.

The psychologist told my parents that taking the pedophile to court and forcing me to testify would do me more harm than good. So they never had him arrested.

I get it—they were all trying to protect me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my parents warned all my friends’ families, and the man became a total outcast in the community thereafter. Of course, with the benefit of several decades of life experience, I realize that prosecuting the guy would’ve been better for everyone—especially me.

But I probably would be a different person today if we’d confronted him head-on. The scar of that day is still with me, still part of my story. In the years since those awful moments in the shed, I’ve mastered the very thing that all children who have endured trauma learn to do so well:

I’ve learned how to quickly spot the bad guys.

To this day, whenever I pass that shed, I can feel my fists curl up, as if I can somehow go back in time and stand up for my six-year-old self. But because I can’t, I am now driven by the need to protect other vulnerable people.

I followed my gravitational pull into law enforcement. The real reason I joined the ATF wasn’t to crack jokes about drinking, smoking, and shooting—it was to help keep guns away from little kids, to make sure people couldn’t profit from the selling of guns to bad guys. And I was determined.

During my federal law enforcement training, I mastered skills and procedures that brought down sophisticated forgers, manufacturers of contraband explosives, and international gun dealers. My supervisors saw that I had a knack for deception detection techniques, and I was tapped to be a trainer for other investigators and special agents, teaching hundreds of subtle tricks that even some of the most senior agents didn’t know.

Combining my drive to protect people with my newfound expertise helped me discover my life’s purpose: to empower and educate as many people as possible with what I know, what I see, all I’ve learned. To save lives.

TEACHING MY LIFE’S PURPOSE TO YOU

Since then, I’ve taught everyone from housewives to police chiefs to jilted lovers to crowds of 5,000 people at the Future Business Leaders of America and executives at Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. The demand for my presentations led to the formation of the Body Language Institute (BLI; www.bodylanguageinstitute.com), an educational forum to share my approach with the world. The BLI’s mission is saving lives through boosting credibility, confidence, and careers.

Then, in 2010, I brought my knowledge about many aspects of nonverbal communication to the public in the New York Times bestseller You Say More Than You Think. Teaching readers how to use the New Body Language to get what they want, my first book shares all the secret techniques needed to read and fix any interpersonal situation “in the boardroom, barroom, or bedroom” in seven seconds or less.

Still, for years, my students—everyone from top female business executives who want to have peace of mind that at least one person in the office has their backs, to pilots who want to spot suspicious behavior when people board their planes, to middle managers and new moms who second-guess their gut instincts and as a result waste dozens of hours a week or put themselves, or others, in dangerous situations—have asked that I collect all I know about wrangling the truth into one book. Now I’m ready to lay all that really juicy stuff out on the table, to reveal everything I know about getting to the truth. The book you hold in your hands gives you a front-row seat to my always-sold-out course, “Detecting Deception,” and it’s the book I was born to write: You Can’t Lie to Me.

In the pages of this book, I distill years of behind-the-scenes knowledge, cutting-edge science, and dramatic case studies into the simple, effective BS Barometer program that teaches you how to get the real story—in any situation. My techniques use the very same brain processes targeted in today’s sophisticated lie detection technology, such as polygraphs, fMRIs, and ultra-cool infrared eye scanners. But, despite the billions of dollars spent developing and operating these absurdly awesome tools, no machine ever built has been proven to exceed the abilities of well-trained human “lie detectors.” The simplicity and effectiveness of the BS Barometer program will prove to you that the only equipment you need to bust a liar is right between your ears.

You’ll learn to combine three professional disciplines of deception detection—the New Body Language, verbal and auditory tells, and Statement Analysis^® (created by U.S. Marshal Mark McClish)—into one integrated, easy-to-use, practical program. You Can’t Lie to Me will teach you to:

• Use the subtle, effective techniques employed in police stations, federal agencies, and by successful investigative journalists around the world
• Decipher nonverbal language clearly and accurately, without giving the other person a clue to what you’re doing
• Identify the most common temperamental and emotional responses of chronic liars and manipulators
• Master dozens of fascinating tricks and insider secrets of interrogation
• Detect the subtle “leaked” clues and problem hot spots in people’s inconsistent behavior—before they have a chance to wreak havoc
• Hear the vocal variance, or see the microexpression fluctuation, that can help you identify “angry liars”
• Spot deception in all media—phone calls, emails, Facebook posts, handwritten notes, even drawings
• Learn from cautionary tales of savvy people who were deceived as well as inspiring, instructive stories of my students who reclaimed their power from people who had taken advantage of them

We won’t just study liars—we’re going for the truth!—so we’ll look for honest people, too, and spot the differences between liars and honest people. Once you’ve powered up your own internal BS Barometer, you will:

• Outsmart disloyal coworkers—and beat them to the plum promotions
• Start relationships on the right foot—and avoid wasted months of worry, confusion, and pain
• Deposit at least ten more free hours a week in your personal life account
• Negotiate purchases with confidence—and avoid being “taken” for hundreds or thousands of dollars
• Stop feeling paranoid—by automatically surrounding yourself with honest people
• Protect your aging loved ones—and their nest eggs—from unscrupulous con artists disguised as trusted caregivers
• Hire loyal workers whose experience and résumés you can trust
• Stop lying to yourself—and live a happier, more productive, more passionate life

You Can’t Lie to Me will change the way you look at job applicants, coworkers, dates, salespeople, money managers, siblings, friends, lovers—anyone from whom you deserve the truth.

GETTING WITH THE PROGRAM

In the pages of this book, you’re about to learn a ton of information, much of which you’ll later want to access in high-stress situations. Now, you might be one of those people who can absorb massive amounts of information with no problems—lucky for you! I’m not one of those people. That’s why I’ve created a TCB approach—a Taking Care of Business program to help everyone beef up their own internal BS Barometers more easily by learning the five-step process of detecting deception:

Throughout the book, while I teach you this process, I also present a series of exercises to help prepare your brain and increase your retention of the information as you go. The more you can absorb now, the faster you can put this information to work in your day-to-day life, and the sooner you enjoy more trusting, secure, loving connections.

Ultimately, you’ll turn this process back on yourself and consider the most important question: How have I been lying to myself?

And, more important: How will I use my newfound power to draw more truth to my life?

This unique ability to protect yourself and the people you love, as well as to surround yourself with more honest people, will change into something far more powerful over the long haul.

You’ll stand straighter and face life with more courage.

You’ll feel stronger and more confident in uncertain situations.

You’ll develop richer, more trusting, more authentic relationships.

You’ll transform how the world sees you.

Take your best shot, world, you’ll say. You can’t lie to me.