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Zusatztext "A psychologist and former FBI special agent, shares his tricks for getting people to tell the truth in this revelatory work...Concise and convincing, this toolkit will go a long way in helping readers suss out the truth." — Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor Jack Schafer with Marvin Karlins Klappentext This paradigm shifting how-to guide effortlessly teaches you how to outwit liars and get them to reveal the truth—from former FBI agent and author of the bestseller The Like Switch. Leseprobe Chapter 1: So Much for Shredders CHAPTER 1 So Much for Shredders All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. GALILEO GALILEI The desire to know if someone is lying or telling the truth is as old as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And why not? How we act, how successful we are—even our survival—can be profoundly impacted by our ability to determine if information is true or false. During my two decades as a special agent for the FBI, my job was to assess whether suspects, witnesses, and spies were withholding critical information and/or telling lies that could have far-reaching implications for the safety of specific individuals and, in some cases, the security of the entire country. The question became: What was the best way to get truthful information from persons of interest? The traditional approach involved attempting to determine if the person was lying in the first place. This involved using mechanical devices (polygraph machines), physical observation (watching for nonverbal cues of deception), and various forms of interrogation designed to get the targeted individual to admit his or her dishonesty. But there was a problem with this approach: Even if it was successful in determining a person’s veracity, it came at a high cost. When people become aware that their honesty is being challenged, their “shields” go up, and whenever that happens, they are unlikely to voluntarily reveal the information they know. In fact, the opposite occurs: these individuals “clam up,” “lawyer up,” or “dummy up,” making any attempt to get information out of them a daunting if not impossible task. Thus, what happened when the traditional approach was used was that investigators could sometimes tell if certain information was true but lost the chance to discover other information that might have been even more valuable. This made me and a group of my colleagues wonder if there was a better way to get people to reveal true information before they went into lying mode. I suspected that if individuals were not aware that I was trying to get critical information from them, they would be more likely to reveal it. Only if they became cognizant of my intentions would they become defensive, raise their shields, and begin withholding information and telling lies. Our strategy, then, was to get to the truth before the lies—in other words, extract the relevant information from a person of interest without them becoming aware of our intentions. If this could be achieved, the credibility of the information would almost always be solid and we could obtain it without the person shifting into information-withholding, lie-generating mode. ELICITATION: LEARN THE TRUTH BEFORE THE LIE Noting the flaws in the traditional interrogation techniques, I worked with my colleagues to come up with less confrontational techniques based on psychology and natural human behaviors as opposed to the more confrontational, old-school law enforcement interviewing techniques currently being used. The result was the noninvasive approach of elicitation—so named because it was designed to elicit the truth rather than...