Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception

This book's authors have many years of experience interviewing CIA assets, CIA employees, and a variety of ordinary people in non-CIA settings. Their specialty is in determining when someone is lying. And they are good at it. This skill in detecting deception has done a lot of good, helping their clients make better decisions about hiring the right new employee, trusting the right baby sitter, and prosecuting the person who really "did it." Sometimes the skills bring pain, making clear that the waiting doctor's politeness covers bad news or that a spouse isn't really joking about "her boyfriend." Still, it's better to know, isn't it? Detecting deception isn't magic and it isn't infallible. But it is possible to become better at it than most of us are now. The book identifies several barriers to accurately detecting deception. We expect most people to tell the truth, we ask the wrong questions, and we look for the wrong "tells" in other people's behavior. And we try to watch everything they do instead of focusing on a small number of reliable indicators. Such reliable indicators of deception include certain kinds of verbal hesitations and evasions as well as specific body movements of which a deceiver is largely unaware. Readers learn to ask questions that require different mental processing from guilty versus innocent suspects. One technique is to ask questions a good guy will answer with an immediate--and perhaps angry--"No!" while the bad guy will need to give a longer, more carefully worded response. We watch for deception indicators that begin in the first five seconds after a question. And we look for clusters of indicators rather than for single actions. There is more to it, of course, but this is the core methodology the book presents. It's good stuff. And it's learnable. I attended a training session conducted by the authors' company (QVerity, in partnership with hemsleyfraser) this week. I had listened to roughly three-quarters of the audiobook during a long car ride the day before. Based on what I learned from the book I was able to do well in the video pre-test, successfully distinguishing a lying suspect from the four who told the truth. Almost everyone was also able to do this after two hours of training. So it seems to me that the book is nearly as valuable as being taught these skills by the authors themselves. It is a well-written, fascinating book on a very useful topic. I highly recommend it. A final comment. The book closes with a warning to use these skills only for good. And to not practice them on our significant others. Apparently catching your spouse in all of those little white lies can put unnecessary stress on the relationship. I may have made a variation of this error by giving my wife a copy of the book and inviting her along to the training. Not sure that was such a good idea. We'll see.

I do not understand how the authors got so much information so comprehensibly into such a short book. It's 272 pages but it felt so short because the information is jam-packed in there and presented so well. It's one thing to know your stuff, it's a whole other ballgame to present it so people (without the level of training the author's have) can dive deep and really understand what you're saying and these authors nailed it. Great book, so interesting and easy to read.

"There is no such thing as a human lie detector" (p. 14). Three ex-CIA agents, the authors!, who are now working privately spill the beans on the system they apply to detect lies. This method, L-Square Mode System, focus on observing what 'the suspect' says, does and reacts, and by learning to make the right kind of questions to spot deceiving behaviour. It all comes down to body language, congruency in speech and behaviour within the subject's own idiosyncrasy. It also come down to being aware of our self-defeating beliefs and limitations to spot a lie: the belief that people will not lie to us, the reliance on behavioural myths, the complexity of communication, our own biases, the 'global' influence, and how smart we think we are.The system relies on getting clusters of deceiving information, not just individual clues. However, one of the most surprising statements is that if we can identify the first deceiving behaviour (verbal or non-verbal) in the first 5 seconds (seconds!) we can reasonable conclude that that behaviour is directly linked with the stimulus. (p. 31). Of course, the higher the number of deceiving behaviours exhibited by a person, the most likelihood of deception. One of the most important things to keep in mind when applying the L-square System is that its virtue relies on its simplicity, that deceiving clues do not always equal deceit or a lie, that the system is not infallible, that the more we practise it the better we get at it, and part of the success depends on obtaining information in a non-confrontational non-judgemental way. The authors have successfully applied this system for years, and once we go through the book and see some of their examples (especially the long transcript and examination in appendix 2), you will notice that you can, too, start spotting deceiving behaviour. The book has a glossary with a short explanations of all the specialised terms the authors use throughout this work. I always appreciate the effort when electronic books have the index properly hyperlinked, which is the case here. The main downside of the book is that is not particularly didactic if you want a step by step sort of book. Some of the things that prevent the book from being more user- friendly are: > Some of the summaries, oddly enough, are placed in the middle of a page, interrupting the narration and some of them not directly related. Why not placing them at the end of the chapter they relate to? > The amount of information and types of questions they offer can be complicated because their names and because involve different and dynamic approaches that vary depending on how the subject of interest reacts. However, there is not a cheat-sheet scheme or figure to help readers navigate the system easily. > There is no section with exercises for us to practise, with hidden solutions at the end of the book. That would have been so handy especially because the book is about spotting lies. > Some of the statements about body language are familiar to me, but it would have been really useful having some figures or photos with some of those mentioned in the book shown, but there is none. Overall this a fascinating book that it is usable for daily queries about your family, friends and co-workers, not just to learn how intelligence and law enforcement institutions operate. However, not as practical as I was hopping for.

Very good book. The authors state in a clear and unambiguous way several "tips" that may help us detect deceptive behaviors. They repeat the points, making them easier to "stick". What's interesting is how simple they appear in their application; we are not talking about mathematical topology...The glossary completes admirably the book. Would I read it again? Definitively (a quality "seal" for me). As a physician (psychiatrist) I would definitively suggest it to all physicians that perform clinical work, but, above all, to psychiatrists...

I learned a lot in this book. It is clear, provides examples and really drills the information into you. There were times I wanted to put it down and move on, but I stuck with it and feel I had a huge benefit as a result. I feel the lessons learned in this book will stay with you vs the typical close it and forget it type read. If you have interest in this topic and push to the end, you will get benefit. I even read the glossary at the end which was a great concept review.

Spy the Lie is an amazing book primarily about detecting deception in communication. However, it provides great universal insights into the way people behave during communication and how we can interpret such behavior to better understand how they really feel about what they are saying. The book is really comprehensive and covers the important topics in great detail, yet it still reads very well and the text is clear and easy to understand. The authors present numerous examples to illustrate the presented information and they truly do their best to transfer at least some of their remarkable experience to the reader. Of all the interesting topics in the book, the most important ones include - the basic guidelines ("the model") how to approach deception detection during interviews, - behaviors (verbal and nonverbal) that indicate that the person you're talking to may be lying, - behaviors that should generally not be relied upon as indicators of a lie, - types of questions to ask and how to formulate the questions for maximum effect. While the authors repeatedly emphasize how well the method presented in the book, if applied well, can work in practice, they don't forget to warn how cautious you need to be about interpreting any indications of deception and that you need to carefully consider the information you're getting and follow up with further questions to confirm your possible suspicions. Overall, the book is a very good guide to interpreting human communication; it gives you guidelines to follow and points out what to look for as well as what pitfalls to avoid. I'd recommend the book to anyone interested in lie detection during interviews. However, anyone who would like to learn quite a lot about how to handle potentially tricky communication situations and how to interpret certain behaviors in these situations would benefit from reading the book as well.

All the points in the book could have been easily said without the obvious Democratic bias. Oh sure they have the Clinton bold face lies but those are a gimme for the DNC and laughed about in DNC circles. But with Bengazi, Fast and Furious, IRS that could have been addressed for recent examples they chose Tea Party Candidates. Cowards! Why they could not have stuck to mass murderers that have been used by the others who are in the same line the authors were. When they stuck to the point their points were valid but left the farm when they took a far left political bent. They also played micro-expressions off as a trick as no one can learn to catch an expression that lasts less than 1/2 second. Well, sorry to tell you CIA people, but Paul Ekman, the person they imply is a fraud of some sort, HAS a teaching part of his web site and I have scored consistent 80% even after months of not practicing. Maybe they just watched the TV Series "Lie to me" and assumed that Dr. Ekman was making the same claim as the series character. We use micro-expressions for law enforcement daily and it DOES work! The authors tell us to look for 'tells' that happen within 5 seconds of the question. This is correct. That is the Limbic response time that Ekman, Navarro and McClish talk about also. This book would have been a GREAT textbook for law enforcement had they just kept to the subject and not made it all about the DNC and their beloved press corpse while vilifying the evil Tea Party.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book. I purchased it on a lark after spying it (see what I did there?) in a list Amazon presented me with books I might be interested in reading. I'm always interested in all kinds of aspects of communication from storytelling to persuasion techniques to negotiation tactics, and I'd seen similar titles on the topics of lying and truth evaluation in the past. I decided to buy this title because of the intelligence agency background of the authors, and they described their method of detecting deception as a relatively simple and straightforward one. They weren't lying (see what I did there?). The book provides clear, real-world examples of subjects who've been less than truthful when questioned about a variety of topics, and for me, those examples went a long way toward crystallizing the specific points being made about the methodology the authors have developed. As the book points out, there's no such thing as a lie detector, and I doubt most who read this will ever become as adept at deception detecting as the authors are, but the book does provide interesting insights into human nature and how people can give themselves away when they aren't being truthful. I'd say the book is full of solid concepts to keep in mind as you go about your daily life interacting with other people in all kinds of different situations where truth is critical. You won't become a human lie detector, and you won't be able to observe someone's body language and determine whether or not someone is being truthful (despite what some TV pundits claim they can do – they can't). Just keep the book's methodology in mind and be mindful when you see some of the behaviors discussed.

The content of this book is very good. They comprimised their practical knowledge in this book. And it actually works. It is not about being a lie detector - that does not work. And the science behind it also shows, that lie detection on a specific person can't be trusted. But this book combines detecting lies and getting the lie out through interaction. They minimize speculation and show, not to trust your bias. Their theory behind their practical knowledge also makes sense and is biological based. It is amazing, how much you can learn about lies and learn to uncover it in everydays interaction - the more important, if they lie to you, because they want to sabotage you. I also read scientific papers about this theme and try to learn from other sources. But I made the decision, most of them are actually not helpful and by far not practical. But this book is. This book actually gave me much more for the money, than I paid for (both) of their books.

Books was received in good quality

This body language book gives points to learn as well as anecdotes and analysis to help develop skills. Its not going to make you an expert but it is going to equip you with some very cool skills to go and practice.

Very informative book. Arrived in perfect condition, well packaged, thank-you

Muito bom!