How the CIA Spots A Liar

September 12, 2012

Interview with Michael Floyd, author of the book Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception

________________

Mike Carruthers:
The people in the CIA have developed some interesting techniques to tell very quickly if someone is lying.

Michael Floyd:
We’re looking for specific non-verbal indicators in direct response to the question – not just an overall level of anxiety.
 

Former CIA Officer Michael Floyd, co-author of the book Spy the Lie, says for example if you ask someone if they stole something you may get something called a non-specific denial.

In other words there’s a lot of difference between, “I wouldn’t do it” and “I didn’t do it”. They on the surface sound the same but in our world those are entirely different responses.

Grooming gestures can be a sign of deception.

Going to their hair, hand to face, hand to ears, brushing imaginary lint off their clothing – those kinds of things all in direct response to the question. These behaviors just in isolation are not significant but if they occur in direct response to the question then we’ll pay attention to that.

Michael says it also has a lot to do with how you ask the question – what works best?

Very low key non-accusatorial, kind of a blank slate so that we will be confident that any deceptive indicators were to our words and not to our style.