Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the All Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe Whysenthal.
Speaker 1: Joe, I'm kind of nervous about this episode.
Speaker 2: I am too.
Speaker 3: About fifteen minutes ago, the same thought flashed through my mind,
Speaker 3: I too, am a little nervous about this episode.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, we do some preparation for our episodes,
Speaker 1: although maybe it doesn't always show this particular episode, I
Speaker 1: haven't done a lot of reading into this topic, and
Speaker 1: I'm really hoping the guest doesn't notice. But I think
Speaker 1: my chances are very low because we are literally going
Speaker 1: to be speaking to someone whose whole career is about
Speaker 1: basically spotting lies.
Speaker 3: I mean that's essential. Like in the business world, if
Speaker 3: you really think about it, you know, companies come on
Speaker 3: their calls. I think they don't typically lie per se.
Speaker 3: I don't think executives lie that much, but you know,
Speaker 3: they shade the truth. They highlight some things, they don't
Speaker 3: highlight the other things. I feel like it would be
Speaker 3: a pretty good skill to have in life to just
Speaker 3: generally and especially in business, to just generally know whether
Speaker 3: someone is being honest with you or not.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it feels like a sort of module they should
Speaker 1: have at Wharton if you're doing a business degree in
Speaker 1: an MBA.
Speaker 2: That I've never seen in an MBA program.
Speaker 1: Well, the person we're going to be speaking to actually
Speaker 1: came to us via Brad Jacobs. You might remember him
Speaker 1: from the episode in which he was talking about his
Speaker 1: latest acquisition and the new part of his logistics empire.
Speaker 1: And he's written a new book and we were reading
Speaker 1: it and one of the things that we thought was
Speaker 1: really interesting was there was a mention that he was
Speaker 1: working with a man called Dick or Phil Houston, an
Speaker 1: ex CIA person who was basically a polygraph examiner for
Speaker 1: a long time, and Brad and Phil were working together
Speaker 1: as part of the due diligence process for Brad's many, many,
Speaker 1: many serial acquisitions. So the idea was he might go
Speaker 1: in and buy a company and then Phil would interview
Speaker 1: some of the senior execs and basically try to see
Speaker 1: whether or not what they were saying about the company
Speaker 1: was true.
Speaker 3: Right, you know, speak of nice skills to have. There's
Speaker 3: always that information asymmetry, whether you're just an investor or
Speaker 3: whether you're buying out a whole company, and you know,
Speaker 3: the seller is always going to know more. Sort of
Speaker 3: classic problem in economics. But if you knew the result
Speaker 3: of an answer is going to be one hundred percent true,
Speaker 3: then that would be pretty great.
Speaker 2: So that would be nice.
Speaker 1: What's that TV show with the Girl who Can Spot
Speaker 1: a Love?
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh, poker face? Poker face pretty?
Speaker 3: Yes, it's pretty. It's kind of entertaining. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like it's it's fun.
Speaker 1: It's a fun It does seem like a useful scar too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, another reason I'm slightly terrified of this
Speaker 1: episode is I used to know an XCIA person who
Speaker 1: then went into another profession. I don't want to give
Speaker 1: too much way, but it was finance related, so I
Speaker 1: used to speak to him about financial things. And I
Speaker 1: remember I met him once for lunch after a particularly
Speaker 1: terrible mourning where something really really bad had happened in
Speaker 1: my professional life. And I sat down and I was like, Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you. How's it going? I can't wait to
Speaker 1: have lunch. We're going to talk about capital markets or whatever.
Speaker 1: And he immediately leaned forward and was like, Tracy, tell
Speaker 1: me what's wrong. Something bad happened. And I asked him
Speaker 1: how he knew, and he was like, oh, you got
Speaker 1: this like little crease in the middle of your forehead.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't you know, this was like a casual
Speaker 1: source meeting. This wasn't someone I knew really really well,
Speaker 1: but he knew he knew that I was upset. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So on that note, very very pleased to say that
Speaker 1: we are going to be speaking to Phil Houston. He
Speaker 1: is a career CIA officer and also the author of
Speaker 1: the book Spy the Lie. Former CIA officers teach you
Speaker 1: how to detect deception, so we're going to learn how
Speaker 1: to spot the bi Phil, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining all thoughts.
Speaker 4: Tracy, thanks a ton for having me.
Speaker 1: So just to begin with, how do you become a
Speaker 1: lie detection expert? What is this career path?
Speaker 4: When I joined the agency fairly early on, I was
Speaker 4: called over to the head of polygraph in the agency
Speaker 4: and they had spotted the fact that I had developed
Speaker 4: a lot of information doing background investigations and they thought
Speaker 4: that I would be a very good candidate for such
Speaker 4: a position.
Speaker 3: There's so much to get into. Tracy mentioned that we
Speaker 3: came across you talking to former guest Brad Jacobs, who
Speaker 3: you apparently have worked with a lot. How do you
Speaker 3: deploy LIE detection skills in the corporate context.
Speaker 4: Well, we use them in every single day. It's not
Speaker 4: just in a regimen of due diligence protocol. We're looking
Speaker 4: day in and day out. It's continuous of value, especially
Speaker 4: with new companies that Brad acquires, because we never know
Speaker 4: if we've missed something in the due diligence process, so
Speaker 4: we're always paying attention. And Brad has been highly trained
Speaker 4: now by us and my team in the lie detection
Speaker 4: model that I developed when I was at the agency.
Speaker 1: What kind of things are you looking out for specifically?
Speaker 1: So you know, if Brad says he wants to buy
Speaker 1: a company, I'm sure he gets lots of information like
Speaker 1: printed information as part of the due diligence process, and
Speaker 1: then he has interviews with senior executives. What type of
Speaker 1: questions would you be asking them.
Speaker 4: There are multiple areas of probing that we do. Number
Speaker 4: one is first and foremost, is are there any problems
Speaker 4: or circumstances associated with the acquisition that are not a
Speaker 4: matter of record that no vera one has come forth
Speaker 4: and said, hey, this is a problem or might be
Speaker 4: a problem going forward. And so to gather that information
Speaker 4: Usually the first encounter is with a management meeting, where
Speaker 4: we sit down in front of management and ask them questions. Now, granted,
Speaker 4: the topics are fairly traditional, but the way that we
Speaker 4: word questions sometimes are very different. For example, on the
Speaker 4: really key issues, we rarely will ask a did you
Speaker 4: or do you so? For example, we won't say do
Speaker 4: you have any concerns in this area? We use what
Speaker 4: we call presumptive questions. And a presumptive question might sound
Speaker 4: simply like what concerns do you have in this area?
Speaker 4: It presumes that there's potential for a concern. The beauty
Speaker 4: of that type of a question is that if a
Speaker 4: person is telling the truth, it's still a very easy
Speaker 4: and fair question to answer. However, if a person is
Speaker 4: concealing something and we ask it presumptively, it generally and
Speaker 4: often plants what we call a mind virus. The mind
Speaker 4: virus is that thing that we've all been victims of.
Speaker 4: It's when you know, somebody walks in the door in
Speaker 4: the morning and their coworker comes running up and says,
Speaker 4: you know, Joe, the boss wants to see you, and
Speaker 4: you say, well, what's that about, and you know, they say,
Speaker 4: I don't know but but right away and as Joe's
Speaker 4: walking down there, is he likely thinking more, Geez is
Speaker 4: going to be a great day, I'm going to get
Speaker 4: a bonus, I'm going to get a promotion. Or does
Speaker 4: he immediately start thinking what's wrong? Or is there a problem?
Speaker 4: And if it is, then he's inventorying mentally what the
Speaker 4: problems might be and how he's going to deal with that.
Speaker 4: That mind virus triggers if someone's lying, it often triggers
Speaker 4: the exhibition of deceptive behaviors, both verbal and nonverbal behaviors.
Speaker 3: I already love this conversation so much, but let's continue
Speaker 3: to pursue. I imagine that when you're doing due diligence
Speaker 3: on a company, you know it's the unknown unknowns, it's
Speaker 3: the things that aren't written down. But you don't even
Speaker 3: know the right question to ask because it's not written down.
Speaker 3: But as you say the presumptive approach, talk to us
Speaker 3: about like, okay, take the example further with a question
Speaker 3: like that, what are the types of responses that would
Speaker 3: say trigger warning lights of either it's verbally or physically,
Speaker 3: this looks.
Speaker 2: Like a lie?
Speaker 3: Like what might be gleaned in the response and to
Speaker 3: such a question, sure.
Speaker 4: In working with Brad, we've had all kinds of when
Speaker 4: people are lying, all kinds of crazy responses. We've had
Speaker 4: responses where we've said or made just simply the statement
Speaker 4: listen in describing our diligence, we are also going to to,
Speaker 4: you know, come in and take a look at your accounting,
Speaker 4: and the person immediately says, oh, there's no need to
Speaker 4: do that. And you'd think that they would realize how
Speaker 4: obvious that that dodge is the spot, But at the
Speaker 4: moment they're on the spot and they need it out,
Speaker 4: and so they're not realizing the kinds of responses they give.
Speaker 4: They'll also say, well, why do you need to go there?
Speaker 4: Or why are you asking that? Or how much do
Speaker 4: you need to know? Or here's what I can tell you.
Speaker 4: And that's an interesting statement we hear and we listen for,
Speaker 4: because if you think of the literal interpretation of that
Speaker 4: statement here's what I can tell you, it immediately in
Speaker 4: our world conjures up. What can't you tell us?
Speaker 1: Do people try to deflect? Having interviewed many people on
Speaker 1: this podcast, the most problematic response that we tend to get,
Speaker 1: hopefully not outright lies at least not often, but you
Speaker 1: ask a question and someone will say, oh, that's very
Speaker 1: very interesting. Now let me talk about this entirely different
Speaker 1: point that has nothing to do with what you just asked.
Speaker 4: That could be a product of their media training, but
Speaker 4: it also could be if it's accompanied by other deceptive behaviors.
Speaker 4: And if we talk a little bit later about the
Speaker 4: model for detecting deception, clusters are an important component of
Speaker 4: that model. So more than just one deceptive behavior in
Speaker 4: response to a stimulus, meaning a question or a statement,
Speaker 4: that's what gets our attention. And so when they start
Speaker 4: that deflection, deceptive people know that they can't just sit
Speaker 4: there like the proverbial bump on a log and say nothing.
Speaker 4: They have to say something. And so what they often
Speaker 4: do is we'll try to lead us as stray by
Speaker 4: talking about something they can comfortably talk about that you
Speaker 4: might be interested to you and perhaps even a suage.
Speaker 4: You know, what concerns they think you might have.
Speaker 1: Are lies in the business world different or do they
Speaker 1: exhibit different qualities to lies outside of the business world.
Speaker 1: So I guess in criminal activity or maybe in intelligence gathering,
Speaker 1: going back to your career at the CIA, are there
Speaker 1: differences in the way those lies benifest.
Speaker 4: The primary difference is tracy are the topics, but in reality,
Speaker 4: the lying the behaviors remain the same. They're intrinsic to
Speaker 4: human nature, and we have a very specific list of
Speaker 4: behaviors that we are looking for. The biggest problem in
Speaker 4: spotting lies if people are not trained, is when they
Speaker 4: see something odd that happens, or something different or uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: their instincts may kick in, but they might not recognize
Speaker 4: what's going on, and they're only guessing at that point
Speaker 4: as to whether they've just heard a line or not.
Speaker 3: Why do we back up and talk about the framework
Speaker 3: or the model that you first developed at the CIA.
Speaker 3: I imagined that over the years it's been refined more
Speaker 3: examples and you get better and better at applying it.
Speaker 3: Why don't you just sort of just bring us back to, like,
Speaker 3: what are the core, like underpinnings of your approach.
Speaker 4: The core is that we have codified the behaviors, so
Speaker 4: meaning that we've picked the behaviors that we know through
Speaker 4: research and anecdotal evidence are the most reliable indicators. What
Speaker 4: we learned in the early days is that many of
Speaker 4: the traditional behaviors that we thought were good were not
Speaker 4: and for example, take an eye contact for exams. Eye
Speaker 4: contact is not nearly as reliable as people would think
Speaker 4: it to be. Fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, both me and Tracy a big relief on that.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah. Eye contact can be very different, especially in
Speaker 4: different cultures, in different regions. I'm here in New York City.
Speaker 4: You know, if I were to walk down the street,
Speaker 4: you know and smiling and saying hi to people and
Speaker 4: so forth, that wouldn't look very good, right, or it
Speaker 4: probably wouldn't go over very well. But in the little
Speaker 4: town where I live in the reverse would be true.
Speaker 4: If I if I didn't smile, or if I didn't
Speaker 4: you know, nod, or even you know, verbally greet someone,
Speaker 4: they'll walk away with a different opinion. And so the
Speaker 4: eye contact piece is just simply not as reliable as
Speaker 4: we need it to be. The anecdotal evidence in our
Speaker 4: world uh supports that, as as well as some major
Speaker 4: research studies. Two in particular, one in the US and
Speaker 4: one in London, strongly suggests that the deceptive person often
Speaker 4: has better eye contact than the truthful person does, highly
Speaker 4: likely because they're forcing it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Earlier I was using the term bs and lie sort
Speaker 1: of interchangeably, but they're not exactly the same thing. And
Speaker 1: in the business world, one thing that tends to happen
Speaker 1: is you have people telling a good story about their business,
Speaker 1: and the story, you know, it might even be true.
Speaker 1: That might be the way particularly ambitious executive sees things unfolding.
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm getting at is, how do you
Speaker 1: tell the difference between an outright lie saying something fraudulent
Speaker 1: about their business versus someone who's like trying to sell
Speaker 1: the optimistic best case scenario story.
Speaker 4: Okay, first of all, let me go back to the
Speaker 4: model itself. In the model, we're monitoring both their verbal
Speaker 4: behavior or what's commonly been refined to a body language,
Speaker 4: and we're also monitoring their nonverbal behavior. What I said earlier,
Speaker 4: we're monitoring their verbal behavior is what they say. The
Speaker 4: nonverbal is obviously what they don't say. And those both happened,
Speaker 4: you know, often simultaneously or or in conjunction with a
Speaker 4: single response to a particular stimulus, and we're picking up
Speaker 4: on both of those. Now, what are we picking up?
Speaker 4: All of the behaviors that we use fit into five
Speaker 4: psychological buckets. The first bucket is the evasion bucket. Okay,
Speaker 4: these are These are behaviors such as, you know, failing
Speaker 4: to answer the question or qualifying the question. They're not
Speaker 4: giving you some or all of what you want from them.
Speaker 4: The second one is this persuasion bucket. And this is
Speaker 4: kind of tracy where you were leading to if I
Speaker 4: if I heard you correctly, where someone's trying to tell
Speaker 4: you something positive or good because they can't tell you
Speaker 4: the truth because the truth has consequences to it, so
Speaker 4: they start using convincing statements, Oh, we would never do that.
Speaker 4: We're a great company, we've been around forever, We've got
Speaker 4: the best team in the industry. And they're trying to
Speaker 4: convince you that you don't have to worry about, you know,
Speaker 4: whatever it is or whatever topic that you surface to them.
Speaker 4: The third behavior is aggression behavior, sometimes referred to as
Speaker 4: attack behavior. Sometimes it's very visibly or visible, other times
Speaker 4: it's more nuanced. So for example, you ask someone a
Speaker 4: question and they say why are you asking that? And
Speaker 4: or sometimes they say why are you asking me that?
Speaker 4: You guys always ask these things. I've gone from you know,
Speaker 4: to five different banks today, and it seems like every
Speaker 4: single person has this has fixated on this issue, and
Speaker 4: so forth. They're trying to get you to back off.
Speaker 4: The fourth behavior is what we call manipulation. This is
Speaker 4: where they're manipulating the circumstances of the interaction to their favor.
Speaker 4: A good example of that is when you ask them
Speaker 4: a question and they repeat your question. Now, you might say, well, geez,
Speaker 4: what value does that bring to them? Well, the value
Speaker 4: is that we think about ten times faster than we talk,
Speaker 4: So in that second or two to repeat the question
Speaker 4: could equate to twenty seconds of material to say or
Speaker 4: strategy to pursue, and that's how they stay up with it.
Speaker 1: That was good media training, right. If you need to
Speaker 1: buy yourself a little bit of time to formulate the
Speaker 1: thoughts in your head, you repeat the question or say
Speaker 1: something nonscript what a great point, Joe, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for bringing that up.
Speaker 4: A non answer statement is another one in the manipulation bucket,
Speaker 4: and for the same purposes, it's buying time. The fifth
Speaker 4: and final bucket is the reaction bucket, and this is
Speaker 4: again the body language when people respond either as a
Speaker 4: result of the fight, flight or freeze response, or there
Speaker 4: are a couple of other things that aren't caused necessarily
Speaker 4: by that response. For example, something we call a verbal
Speaker 4: nonverbal disconnect, where you ask someone a question and they're
Speaker 4: saying no, I wouldn't do that, and at the same
Speaker 4: time they're nodding their head yes in response to the question.
Speaker 4: You see that kind of thing. But the other big one,
Speaker 4: two big ones in the reaction bucket are when people
Speaker 4: have anchor point movements in response to something you ask
Speaker 4: them or see them. I remember, early in the early
Speaker 4: days when I first started working in the investment world
Speaker 4: at a hedge fund, and I was sitting there with
Speaker 4: the hedge fund manager interviewing a management team, and I
Speaker 4: remember he asked someone a very direct question about what
Speaker 4: the street was saying was a problem, and the moment
Speaker 4: he started answering the question, he reached across the table
Speaker 4: and started making huge sweeping gestures on the table. And
Speaker 4: we call those grooming gestures or anchor point movements. And
Speaker 4: it can be as simple as a swivel in the chair,
Speaker 4: a leaning forward after answering, or in the midstore or
Speaker 4: in preparation for answering your question leaning backwards.
Speaker 3: In the case of the sweeping of the table that
Speaker 3: they has, what is the respondent doing there implicitly or
Speaker 3: why is that what makes that a tell or a edwy.
Speaker 4: From a psychological standpoint, what he's doing is cleaning up
Speaker 4: the surroundings. He in his mind, is making life better
Speaker 4: at that moment, because right now life's terrible because he
Speaker 4: doesn't have a great answer to the question. And that example,
Speaker 4: by the way, the company went under a few weeks
Speaker 4: later for the exact issue that he was doing. That's sweeping. Now,
Speaker 4: we don't rely on any one of these behaviors in
Speaker 4: response to the question. We're looking for a cluster two
Speaker 4: or more deceptive indicators will tell us immediately that we
Speaker 4: have more work to do. More work simply means not
Speaker 4: that we're leaping to judgment, but that we're going to
Speaker 4: ask more questions, We're going to follow up, or we're
Speaker 4: going to talk to somebody else once they leave whatever,
Speaker 4: or do research whatever. More work means. But the beauty
Speaker 4: of it is is that we don't get snookered, so
Speaker 4: to speak.
Speaker 1: How often do you get false positives where you're interviewing
Speaker 1: someone and you think this person is lying or there
Speaker 1: are some bread flags here to suggest that maybe he's
Speaker 1: not being one hundred percent truthful, and then you go
Speaker 1: out you do additional info gathering as you were just describe,
Speaker 1: and you find out, actually, maybe he's just a weird
Speaker 1: guy or socially awkward or something like that.
Speaker 2: Sure, Sure, he just likes to straighten up the table.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very meticulous individual. More often than not not likely
Speaker 4: to see. But if we're going to see one, it's
Speaker 4: likely going to be in a situation where we're dealing
Speaker 4: with multiple issues. So, for example, for Bradford years, we've
Speaker 4: done a ton of employment pre employment screening, especially for
Speaker 4: the senior executives, and there may be more than one
Speaker 4: lie or more than one problem that they're worried about,
Speaker 4: but because of something called psychological set, it means that
Speaker 4: they have a fixation or fear on one particular area
Speaker 4: of deception and they're not nearly as worried as much
Speaker 4: about the other areas, And so most of their behavior
Speaker 4: comes out on that particular issue that they're worried about,
Speaker 4: and as a result, we may miss you know, which
Speaker 4: would be a false negative. But if our bias has
Speaker 4: the pitchfork effect, in other words, we're thinking, oh, that
Speaker 4: this guy's not telling the truth about anything, then we're
Speaker 4: starting to see false positives, and it happens I.
Speaker 3: Mean, I know you mentioned that eye contact is not
Speaker 3: as robust as maybe people imagine in popular belief. But
Speaker 3: I'm curiously in a world where more and more is
Speaker 3: done zoom digitally, et cetera. Have you had to update
Speaker 3: your tactics at all our approach? Can you talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about lie detection in the pre and post
Speaker 3: zoom era.
Speaker 4: Sure. We always, if we can, want to be doing
Speaker 4: the interaction in person and in particular when we're there,
Speaker 4: whether we can do it overtly or even covertly, we
Speaker 4: want to head to toe observance of them as we're
Speaker 4: talking to them, because the behavior can leak out anywhere.
Speaker 4: For example, you know, we know that the feet are
Speaker 4: always an anchor point, and if the fight or flight
Speaker 4: response kicks in, it will often go to the feet first,
Speaker 4: because that's our primary anchor point in life, and that's
Speaker 4: what gets us out of trouble, that's the escape mode
Speaker 4: and so forth. So we want to be able to
Speaker 4: see those In the zoom we lose a lot. We
Speaker 4: lose at least fifty percent of the reaction bucket, and
Speaker 4: so we rely very heavily then or more heavily even
Speaker 4: on the other four buckets, because those are all almost
Speaker 4: completely related to the verbal activity.
Speaker 1: What about eye contact in zoom, because I will admit
Speaker 1: I have a hard time focusing my eyes on zoom calls,
Speaker 1: partially because I don't want to look at the screen
Speaker 1: and see myself when I'm talking. It's just very awkward,
Speaker 1: so I sort of look off in the distance.
Speaker 4: Does that mean anything, No, Tracy, there are people that
Speaker 4: will tell you the opposite, But our research and again
Speaker 4: the anecdotal evidence, and a lot of your taxpayers he
Speaker 4: has gone to, you know, to invalidate some of that.
Speaker 4: When you're on zoom, one of the biggest problems you
Speaker 4: have both as the interviewer, if you're the person asking
Speaker 4: the questions, or you know, if it's just a conversation,
Speaker 4: one or the other is likely to experience what we
Speaker 4: call mental drift, where when you're sitting there, you have
Speaker 4: all kinds of distractors that are drawing your attention, whether
Speaker 4: it's an email that pops up or a dialogue box
Speaker 4: that pops up, whatever the case may be, or someone
Speaker 4: sticks their head in the door or a sound outside
Speaker 4: or whatever. It's so easy to become distracted, and it
Speaker 4: happens a lot and so we have to be very
Speaker 4: careful with, you know, using eye contact as a lie behavior,
Speaker 4: so to speak.
Speaker 3: So in the CIA context, obviously a lot of people
Speaker 3: engaged in intelligence gathering, it's good to.
Speaker 2: Know if someone is being honest or not.
Speaker 3: But I also have to imagine that in the CIA
Speaker 3: content there are a handful of people for whom the
Speaker 3: ability to lie is actually a valuable skill, including save
Speaker 3: people who are going undercover in some situation which case
Speaker 3: deception is actually.
Speaker 2: Part of the job.
Speaker 3: Can we learn to be better liars? Can we learn
Speaker 3: to identify our own leaks and tells and behaviors and
Speaker 3: sweeps and anchors and pivots so that we come off
Speaker 3: more trustworthy than we should be in some situations.
Speaker 4: Most of the time, when people try to avoid light detection,
Speaker 4: they're doing two things. Number one is they're trying not
Speaker 4: to do things that everyone believes is obviously a deceptive behavior.
Speaker 4: The second is they try to do things that and
Speaker 4: focus on things that mask or carve out the other
Speaker 4: behaviors that sound better, so to speak. And we know
Speaker 4: that because once we develop this methodology in the CI
Speaker 4: was the principal developer of both the model and the training,
Speaker 4: we started training federal law enforcement, and they loved the
Speaker 4: training we in fact did years ago before Homeland Security
Speaker 4: with the US Customs down at the southern California border.
Speaker 4: We did a lot of training for them, and they
Speaker 4: actually did a study, a little mini study, to see
Speaker 4: how well this worked, and it showed that their agents
Speaker 4: were much much more better skilled at spotting who has
Speaker 4: the contraband versus who doesn't.
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the intro that we hadn't done much
Speaker 1: prep for this particular conversation. That was in fact a lie,
Speaker 1: because I've done a little bit of prep. But one
Speaker 1: of the things I saw that I thought was really
Speaker 1: interesting was a bit where you were talking about cognitive
Speaker 1: dissonance and how that feeds into asking the right questions
Speaker 1: or interrogation techniques. And you are basically suggesting that someone
Speaker 1: who is lying or misrepresenting the facts is dealing with
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance because more likely than not, they still think
Speaker 1: of themselves as a good person even though they've done
Speaker 1: or are doing a bad thing. And so the idea
Speaker 1: is to allow them space to sort of deal or
Speaker 1: sort through that cognitive dissonance out loud to you and
Speaker 1: provide a narrative that explains their behavior. Is that a
Speaker 1: useful technique in business as well, like the idea of
Speaker 1: just providing people space to try to walk through their
Speaker 1: mindset at a particular time.
Speaker 4: If you really want them to be truthful with you, your
Speaker 4: demeanor is very important, number one. Number two, you need
Speaker 4: to present yourself as doing your job, whatever your job.
Speaker 4: If you're an investment analyst, you know, for example, if
Speaker 4: you simply you know, present the questions or the opening monologue,
Speaker 4: you know, to the meeting, saying hey, listen, you know,
Speaker 4: let me just say up front, we're really interested in
Speaker 4: you guys, but I really need to ask some direct questions,
Speaker 4: so please if I don't mean to offend you or
Speaker 4: anything of that nature. And then you lower their guard
Speaker 4: a little bit. And it's amazing. Just simply opening up
Speaker 4: the conversation that way and then presenting your question in
Speaker 4: a non threatening manner, you can begin to get people
Speaker 4: to open up. There is another methodology that we use
Speaker 4: if and when we think that someone is lying and
Speaker 4: we have the green light from the client to use
Speaker 4: that methodology, and it is much different than what you
Speaker 4: would think of as interrogation. It's a persuasion technique that
Speaker 4: is enormously effective, and sometimes you get the whole story.
Speaker 4: Most of the time, though you get at least more
Speaker 4: than they'd given up at that particular point.
Speaker 3: Could you explain that a little bit further? What's this
Speaker 3: approach about?
Speaker 4: Sure? I once had a hat in my office It said,
Speaker 4: if your lips are moving, you're lying, okay, And in reality,
Speaker 4: if I think the person's lying, I want to go
Speaker 4: for a period of time where their lips are not moving.
Speaker 4: I want to be the one talking to them, and
Speaker 4: I'm going to be not saying random things. I'm going
Speaker 4: to be using very selective influence techniques that will help
Speaker 4: me make it easier in their mind at that moment
Speaker 4: to fess up. And we've used these techniques on spies,
Speaker 4: on criminals, on double agents. I know I have three
Speaker 4: confess essions from double agents in my career at the agency,
Speaker 4: and to get a confession from a double agent is
Speaker 4: like solving the most major crime you can you know
Speaker 4: you can solve, so to speak, in our world.
Speaker 2: So what does that sound like?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: How do you like what are some of the things
Speaker 3: you say?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do they actually admit it? Do they go like, oh
Speaker 1: you got me, I'm a double agent, but.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, and how like what are the things you
Speaker 3: say to like put them in that framework.
Speaker 4: Like that that is is a longer monologue, so to speak,
Speaker 4: if you will. And so you know, if you think
Speaker 4: about the interview and interaction, it's a dialogue. And so
Speaker 4: when we go in the monologue mode, we're in the
Speaker 4: in that direct elicitation mode. And it sounds very low key,
Speaker 4: so different than what you see in the movies where
Speaker 4: somebody starts, you know, the conversation by yelling, you know,
Speaker 4: screaming you better tell me or you know, we're gonna
Speaker 4: and they list a series of consequences. We do the reverse.
Speaker 4: We lower our voice, we start talking. We start telling
Speaker 4: them reasons why people have done this and that we
Speaker 4: understand those reasons. So there are just a lot of
Speaker 4: different categories of things that we can say and do
Speaker 4: that make it easier and over time to talk about it.
Speaker 4: And often it doesn't come out as the big confession.
Speaker 4: It often comes out as an admission about something related
Speaker 4: to it. And then we take that admission and it's
Speaker 4: like a thread or perhaps peeling the onion to use
Speaker 4: another metaphor, and you start just peeling or tugging and
Speaker 4: you begin to get the information.
Speaker 1: That reminds me, actually this is a little bit media
Speaker 1: naval gaisy. But Joe and I have talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but every once in a while we will get comments
Speaker 1: saying like, Oh, I wish you'd pushed back on this
Speaker 1: point a little bit more in the interviewer. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you press them on this particular point. And it feels
Speaker 1: like people have an idea in their heads that like,
Speaker 1: if you just ask the right question enough times, eventually
Speaker 1: you'll get that kind of gotcha moment from the interviewee
Speaker 1: and they'll just throw their hands up and say like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're right, I'm completely wrong, blah blah blah blah. But
Speaker 1: that hardly ever happens in my experience, Like even the
Speaker 1: best interviewers in the world, it's difficult to elicit that
Speaker 1: particular reaction because everyone is so on guard for that
Speaker 1: like major admission. So it's interesting that you sort of
Speaker 1: you go for the smaller admissions that maybe are tangential
Speaker 1: to that, and then try to pull those threats.
Speaker 4: In some cases yes, in some cases no, we're reading
Speaker 4: them very closely as we're talking to them. If we
Speaker 4: think that they're prone to confessing the you know, yes
Speaker 4: I killed them, or yes I we cook the books,
Speaker 4: or yes we did this, then we'll go for that.
Speaker 4: But if it's clear that they're being cagey and they're
Speaker 4: trying to dance around the issues and so forth, then
Speaker 4: we'll go for much smaller chunks of information. And it's
Speaker 4: very effective. And keep in mind the more questions you
Speaker 4: ask someone a human being. But we know from the
Speaker 4: behavioralist is that every time a person lies, their resistance doubles.
Speaker 4: So if you were keeping score and you were lying
Speaker 4: to me and I said, Tracy, did you do it?
Speaker 4: And you say no, you get two points for your answer,
Speaker 4: but I only get one for my question. And then
Speaker 4: I ask it again in some other other way, and
Speaker 4: now the score is four to two, and then eight
Speaker 4: to three, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of building up a wall.
Speaker 4: I guess exactly. That's a great analogy, you're great metaphor.
Speaker 2: Does everyone lie?
Speaker 4: The research set as that in the western world, meaning
Speaker 4: in the in the Western hemisphere, that the average person
Speaker 4: lies at least ten times every day. Now, now they
Speaker 4: include in those lies, you know, in the metrics for
Speaker 4: that research, they include what we call you know, the
Speaker 4: white lies. I like to call them the smart lies.
Speaker 4: If I go home from this trip and my wife
Speaker 4: has a new hairdo and I and my immediate thought
Speaker 4: is yikes, and she goes, hey, honey, how do you
Speaker 4: like my you know, my hairdew, I'm definitely not going
Speaker 4: to say yikes, but I'm going to try to soften
Speaker 4: the blow, you know, at a minimum. And if I
Speaker 4: can get away with all, that's nice. And then you
Speaker 4: know she'll she'll pick up on something. She worked for
Speaker 4: the agency as.
Speaker 2: Well, So it's got to be Yeah, that's so easy.
Speaker 4: It's a two hit short. You're going to be very
Speaker 4: very careful.
Speaker 1: Wow, communication in your household must be both excellent and
Speaker 1: at times fraud but phil At times. You have been
Speaker 1: described as the human polygraph. I think, can we play
Speaker 1: a little game, a little live spotting?
Speaker 4: You can, but I will tell you up front that
Speaker 4: what causes deceptive behaviors is the fear of detection, and
Speaker 4: so parler games, it's difficult, if not impossible, to spot
Speaker 4: the deception because the person doesn't have any fear. The
Speaker 4: game is and they know and they know how the
Speaker 4: path to win it.
Speaker 1: Oh, maybe it's not a good idea.
Speaker 3: Though, I want to know what your lie was going
Speaker 3: to be, Tracy, I'll give it a shot as well.
Speaker 1: And okay, all right, Three things. Number One, I went
Speaker 1: on vacation to Brazil and it is my favorite place
Speaker 1: in the world. Number two, I have a corky named Pablo.
Speaker 1: He just turned four. Number three, I want saying karaoke
Speaker 1: with sir Ian McKellen.
Speaker 2: I think I know the answer.
Speaker 1: I think you might know something because I just like
Speaker 1: of enough, like you're.
Speaker 4: You're you're exhibiting almost zero deceptive behavior. So I if
Speaker 4: I were forced, I would have picked number one.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, that's right, that's right. That was there
Speaker 3: something at all in the way.
Speaker 4: She said that absolutely, she she went to the persuasion bucket.
Speaker 4: To the others, she didn't there was nothing persuasively.
Speaker 3: Wait, what did she say?
Speaker 2: How did she phrase?
Speaker 4: She said? That was? She says, I went on vacation
Speaker 4: to Brazil and that's my favorite place in the whole world.
Speaker 1: I emphasized it, and I don't normally emphasize words.
Speaker 3: That's really good. That was really good because like I
Speaker 3: knew it because I had heard you talk about karaoke
Speaker 3: and I know your dog, so I just knew it, Brazil,
Speaker 3: but I did not pick up on your embellishment of
Speaker 3: that fact.
Speaker 1: So this is I swear, this is such a frightening
Speaker 1: episode for people who talk for a living.
Speaker 3: Do polygraphs work. You mentioned you're the human polygraph but
Speaker 3: where do we stand the conventional wisdom on actual.
Speaker 4: Polygraphs in the in the hands of a well trained polygrapher,
Speaker 4: they're incredible.
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, Maybe just to boil it all down,
Speaker 1: what is your top tip for spotting lies in the
Speaker 1: business world?
Speaker 4: At a minimum, pay attention to the evasion bucket. So
Speaker 4: whether it's in a pre employment interview you're doing, whether
Speaker 4: it's in an m and A situation, whether it's in
Speaker 4: an employee malfeason situation, if they don't answer your question,
Speaker 4: and if they don't answer it entirely, don't think of
Speaker 4: yourself as a human light detector, but take that as
Speaker 4: a catalyst for doing more work. I give you a
Speaker 4: great example. I remember interviewing a very senior executive candidate
Speaker 4: at a Fortune two hundred company, and they love this guy.
Speaker 4: Everybody had interviewed him, they loved him. And when I
Speaker 4: interviewed him after the one hour interview, I walked back
Speaker 4: out into the CEO's office. They said what did you think?
Speaker 4: And I said, well, he's got a lot going for him.
Speaker 4: But the problem I'm concerned about is he's been either
Speaker 4: fired or separated involuntarily from his last five jobs.
Speaker 1: How did you know that?
Speaker 4: Because when I ask him the first time, I asked
Speaker 4: the normal questions, but then I ask a question that
Speaker 4: no one typically asks. So somebody comes in and says, oh,
Speaker 4: we had a restructuring and you know I was thinking
Speaker 4: about maybe changing jobs. So I put up my hand
Speaker 4: and said, I you know, hey, I'll be glad to
Speaker 4: take one of those or whatever and so, and people say, okay,
Speaker 4: that makes sense. We hear a lot of people that
Speaker 4: do that, but they fail to ask the simple question,
Speaker 4: could you have stayed if you wanted to? Wow?
Speaker 3: I just have one more small question, out of curiosity,
Speaker 3: have you or anyone approached you or is there any
Speaker 3: work on AI machine learning of pro just to lie detection?
Speaker 3: If you have all these video of interrogations and texts
Speaker 3: and documents other is there any work being done on
Speaker 3: that approach?
Speaker 4: Joe, I'm so glad you asked. We are working on
Speaker 4: it furiously and we've already had some success and we're
Speaker 4: making great progress.
Speaker 1: Exciting stuff, all right, Phil Houston, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on all thoughts and telling us how to
Speaker 1: spy the lie. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys. It's been fun.
Speaker 2: That was really fun. Thank you so fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was terrifying and fun. Joe, that was really fun.
Speaker 3: I was super impressed that he caught your lie. I know,
Speaker 3: especially because, as you said, you don't make sense that
Speaker 3: parlor games when the stakes aren't really there, that you're
Speaker 3: not going to have that same response, but that he
Speaker 3: caught that embellishment your first question and flagged it.
Speaker 1: And it's definitely going to make me think about what
Speaker 1: words I'm emphasizing you.
Speaker 3: Didn't mean to like at that point, right, No, Like
Speaker 3: you didn't think I'm going to give a little clue
Speaker 3: here on this one right now. No, I s not
Speaker 3: voluntarily offered up a clue that, like you did not
Speaker 3: intend to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I tried to make them like fairly neutral.
Speaker 1: Obviously you have to say something, but I was trying
Speaker 1: to make each of them like roughly similar to the others.
Speaker 1: But he absolutely nailed it. No, I thought that entire
Speaker 1: conversation was really interesting, especially given that our day jobs
Speaker 1: is to interview people, and the idea of like, maybe
Speaker 1: you don't seek out the big admission if people are
Speaker 1: cagey or if they're in pr mode and you know
Speaker 1: they have a story that they want to tell, but
Speaker 1: maybe you try to nibble around the edges at smaller admissions.
Speaker 3: Well. And the other thing too is even if we're
Speaker 3: not in our jobs like trying to like, you know,
Speaker 3: most of our interviews aren't like gotcha now views, But
Speaker 3: I think that there's something to be gleaned about question
Speaker 3: structure and what is it that's going to elicit the
Speaker 3: most fruitful answer? And so even in his first example,
Speaker 3: are you concerned about X? It seems like that's the
Speaker 3: question we might ask on a range of things. Are
Speaker 3: you concerned about what AI is going to do to
Speaker 3: your business? Are you're concerned about what the energy transition
Speaker 3: is going to do to your oil company? Versus? Maybe
Speaker 3: we can frame it as what are your biggest concerns
Speaker 3: about how AI will affect your business? What are your
Speaker 3: biggest concerns about the energy transition? Even when we're not
Speaker 3: trying to catch people in a lie, there's probably good
Speaker 3: lessons and hear about higher quality questions.
Speaker 4: Just in general.
Speaker 1: Absolutely also asking the questions that other people haven't asked yet.
Speaker 1: We do try to do that, Like sometimes we ask
Speaker 1: the obvious questions. Yeah, and they're the most interesting ones,
Speaker 1: but no one has asked them before because they seem
Speaker 1: so obvious. Totally, Well, anyway, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1: This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 3: Check out the book Spy the Live former CIA officers
Speaker 3: teach you how to detect deception from our guest Phil Houston,
Speaker 3: follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand Dashel Bennett
Speaker 3: at Dashbot and kil Brooks at Cale Brooks. And thank
Speaker 3: you to our producer Moses ondm and from our Oddlogs content.
Speaker 3: Go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots. Weable blog
Speaker 3: transcription in the newsletter, and check out the Discord chat
Speaker 3: twenty four to seven with fellow listeners Discord dot gg
Speaker 3: slash od.
Speaker 1: Loots and if you enjoy odd Lots, if you want
Speaker 1: Joe and I to tell more lies to each other
Speaker 1: and play parlor games around that, then please leave us
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Speaker 4: In