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1-Page Summary of Spy the Lie

Introduction

A CIA officer was interviewing a field asset to determine whether the asset could continue working for them. The officer had worked with the asset for years and thought he knew him well, but when he asked a routine question during the interview, the man became suspicious. The officer dismissed it as nothing because his record was so clean and there were no signs of deceit in their previous interactions. However, when he repeated that question later on in the interview, the man admitted that he’d been working against them all along while they believed they were helping him out by providing information about their enemies.

Houston had expectations of Omar before the interview, as well as personal feelings about him. He was biased towards Omar. If he hadn’t been willing to put those biases aside and explore why Omar reacted the way he did, Houston might not have figured out that Omar worked for an enemy intelligence organization.

Even though you probably won’t be involved in international espionage, it’s good to know how to spot a lie. Lying is bad and should be called out whenever possible.

Navigating the Deception Detection Obstacle Course

People often don’t realize that they’re being lied to. They think it’s a breach of trust if someone lies to them, but research suggests that people lie all the time. Therefore, you may need to overcome your belief in the social contract and believe that people will lie to you just because it happens so frequently.

The second obstacle is believing that there are signs that show someone is lying. Most of the things you’ve heard about spotting a lie aren’t supported by evidence, so it’s best to forget them.

Another obstacle to detecting lies is bias. However, biases are not necessarily bad things and you have to be aware of them in order to manage them appropriately.

There is an obstacle of trying to gather every possible piece of information before making a decision about the character of someone. There is simply too much data, so if you try to cast the widest net possible instead focusing on key areas, you will end up wasting time pursuing lines of evidence that don’t reveal any useful information.

The Methodology: it All Comes Down to This

Polygraph tests are used to find out if a person is lying. Four different areas of the body (skin conductance, heart rate, respiration and blood pressure) are monitored for changes that indicate nervousness or anxiety.

You can apply the same concepts of a polygraph machine to an interview. The model operates on a single principle: ignore truthful behavior. It seems contradictory, but it’s important to remember that we’re trying to spot lies, not the truth.

One important guideline of the model is timing, meaning how soon after a specific prompt, such as a question or statement given during a conversation, an untruthful behavior occurs. If a deceptive behavior is observed within the first five seconds following the question or statement, it’s very likely that the behavior is directly related to your question and therefore could be evidence that they ate pizza.

If you’re conducting a job interview, watch for clusters of deceptive behaviors. If the candidate exhibits only one deceptive behavior, it’s safe to assume they’re not lying. But if they exhibit several deceptive behaviors, then there is a high probability that they are lying.

The Deception Paradox: Ignoring the Truth to Find the Truth

A CIA agent was interviewing a man about the theft of money from another worker’s purse. The man took him outside to show that he had many Bibles in his trunk, which didn’t provide any evidence as to whether or not he stole the money. He finally admitted to stealing the money after being pressed for an answer.