The next idea I want to think about is detecting deception. The broad idea that I want you to take away is that detecting deception is hard. We're more likely to be suspicious or feel like, hey, something isn't quite right. As I mentioned before, we're often overconfident of our ability to detect deception. And what I'd like to do is diminish your confidence and say, look, if you're feeling like something isn't quite right, that's the cue to go dig deeper and push further. Now, here's what we can do. The first thing we do is gather information. So as we prepare, gather information from as many sources as we can. Again, that's a key pillar of negotiations. The second is to build relationships. So we know that people are far less likely to deceive friends than strangers. And so if we build rapport even a little bit, we're less likely to be targets of deception. People are less likely to deceive you if you seem prepared, if you seem like you're a friend, and you seem like you're serious about what you're trying to do. Whereas if people feel like this is a stranger I'll never see again, this person is unprepared, they're not serious, they might feel entitled to teaching you a lesson. And you'd like not to be the object of that lesson. Here's what to focus on. So when you are exchanging information with someone, you want to focus on the content of the message. So first, is what they're saying making sense? Is it consistent with things they've said before? And recall that I mentioned this idea about taking notes during a negotiation. If you're taking notes, you can look back to see if the story's changed in some way. And next is there something unusual or odd that they said? Did they add in extra information that isn't really relevant perhaps as they're biting time to think about what to say? So we can think about the content. So is the content strange or off in some way? Second, how is the message being delivered? How are they saying things? And is there a match between the content and the delivery? So are people describing something that should make them very upset but they're not seeming upset at all? Or are they saying one thing that is negative, but they're nodding as if they're agreeing? We're looking for some mismatch, which again is a cue that something isn't quite right. And then we should probe further. We should seek information and try to dig deeper, perhaps from other sources, to figure out what's right. When people tell lies, there are two things that change. The first thing is emotions. So, people who tell lies might feel bad, they might feel guilty or fearful or anxious as they're telling a lie. And we know this when people feel really anxious about telling lies, they're eager to get out of that situation. They want to switch topics. They want to create distance between you and them. They're eager for the meeting to end. We also know that emotions leak out. So there are micro-expressions and these expressions are very fast, less than a 20th of a second. We might not even recognize them as they're happening, but we might non-consciously realize, hey, something's not quite right. They smiled like they're really happy that I asked the question, but something didn't feel quite right. That could be a micro-expression that you're picking up. Now if you're recording a meeting, you could go back in frame by frame you might actually see micro-expressions. Where somebody might, when you ask a tough question, give you one expression before they change the expression. But we typically miss it in natural communication. Another is that we'll get incomplete expressions. So smiling for example, when I say I'm really happy to build this partnership with you, they might smile. But if you look at authentic versus inauthentic smiles, they're called Duchenne smiles. These authentic smiles have the crow's feet in the eyes as well as the mouth. When we're incompletely smiling, like the smile is probably in a lot of your photographs when you smiled for the camera. Those smiles have the mouth movement, but it's difficult to fake the crow's feet around the eyes. So that's emotions. The second thing that changes when people lie is the cognitive load. And by cognitive load I mean we just have more on our minds. We've got to keep two stories straight. So there's the lie that I'm telling and there's the reality and I've got to keep those two straight. It's just more on my mind. I've got to monitor my behavior. So I might normally be gesticulating or I might be shaking my head no when I mean no. But now if I'm saying yes so we're happy to do that or that's going to be no problem or the car is in great condition. I have to control my body in ways that are different than would be natural and authentic. And the next thing I've got to do is monitor the other person. I've got to watch if they're believing me and monitoring what I should say next if I have to build more color to my story or if you've got to dial it back. So altogether there's just more than a deceiver has to do. And that cognitive load means that we're likely to make mistakes. So when people are lying they're cognitively loaded. So they're going to do things like say no but nod yes. Or they'll catch and correct themselves midway. They'll say yeah, I mean no, that never happened. So that's the catch and correct. Or there's delayed timing, like I never did that, and there's a pause and then they'll shake their head no. Or they'll delay reporting something. So we'll see odd timing as well. Now, when we're cognitively loaded we have more in our minds, we,re more likely to use pause fillers like ums and uhs. We're more likely to take time before we answer a question. Or we'll add some irrelevant information as we're building up time to figure out what to say. People are more likely to stutter. Their gesticulation gets shut down. Our pupils sizes increase, though that's very difficult to tell in face to face communication. A lot of these things we now know because we've videotaped thousands of people lying and we can analyze those tapes. In natural communication, it's very hard. But again, you may find yourself detecting something that doesn't seem quite right and there you should push further. Another cue is people over doing it. Where people who were anxious pretend to be very comfortable, perhaps too comfortable. So they yawn excessively or they spread out on the couch. Sometimes even people self-medicate themselves when they really want to play it cool. They might add statements like, I'd never lie to you, or to tell you the truth, or to be honest, or I was always brought up to tell the truth. They're adding things to try to create the impression that they're really honest, trying to compensate for being dishonest. Now, some people just use these phrases naturally. But when these phrases get overused, that's a cue that people are likely to be deceiving you. So here's the idea, detecting deception is quite hard. There are cues. A lot of those cues are likely to make you uncomfortable and we should be sensitive to that. And negotiations is really this hotbed for deception because it's so tempting for people to try to deceive you.
