The Art of Reading Minds

by Henrik Fexeus

  You Sound Nervous; Is Something Up?

  Changes in the Voice

  Even though it’s easy for us to choose which words we want to use when we speak, we have a harder time controlling our actual voices. Our emotional states affect how we sound. And, actually, we’re not as good at choosing the words as we think, either.

  Tone of Voice

  As you have no doubt noticed, your voice often gets higher when you’re angry. The tone changes. The volume increases, too, as well as the tempo. When you’re sad, the opposite will happen. Your voice will come from the back of your throat and be deeper. You will speak slowly and a lot more quietly than otherwise.

  There are some indications that our voices are affected the same way when we’re feeling guilty about lying as they are when we’re angry. We start speaking quicker, higher, and louder. If we’re feeling ashamed of having to lie, instead of guilty, our voices will be affected the same way they are when we’re sad. We become quieter, our voices lower, and our speech slows down. If this is true, it means that if you observe these changes to somebody’s voice, and there’s no reasonable reason why she should suddenly have become angry or sad, you may need to consider the possibility that she’s lying to you.

  Changes in Speech

  When we’re lying, the way we speak changes, as well as the quality of our voices. Pauses will start appearing in our speech, for instance. We start using pauses that are too long or too short, compared to our previous speech patterns. We suddenly pause where we normally wouldn’t, like in mid-sentence. Or before we answer questions we ought to know the answer to immediately. We try to buy time by lengthening our vowels, making noises like “Ehhhhh…” or “Uuhhhhhh…” while we desperately think of something to say. Nerves can make stutters appear suddenly in people who otherwise don’t stutter.

  We use repetition and say the same thing in the same way, over and over. We use repetition and say the same thing in the same way, over and over. This has to do with the fact that we suddenly like to speak in long sentences, as if we were afraid of what could happen if we let somebody else get a word in, so we start speaking in long, endless sentences with no end. An easy way to do that is to use repetition, because that way you can keep going on forever, saying the same thing over and over again without anybody else getting a word in.

  Or we do the opposite. Suddenly. Begin. To. Speak. In. Very. Short. Sentences. As though we. Were afraid. Of slipping up. Of saying too much.

  All of these kinds of changes in somebody’s speech are a serious warning that there is something going on. At this point, you should start looking for other indications in the face or body language.

  Changes in Language

  People who lie often exhibit a number of linguistic peculiarities. They begin to say things in ways they would never speak otherwise. Many of these linguistic peculiarities are so well known by now that they have become clichés, so common that we suspect a lie as soon as we hear them. They can even seem transparent to the liar himself, but that doesn’t make it any easier for him to avoid using them. Many of these language changes get past most people’s lie-detecting skills. So it’s a good idea to learn to listen for them. Behavioral psychologist Peter Collett has identified the following:

  •   Digressions and Vagaries Liars will often digress more and give complicated explanations that don’t seem to be going anywhere: “Well, I guess you could say that, well, I mean, it could be, yeah, I mean sure.…”

  Direct questions will get short answers, however.

  •   The Same Thing Every Time Lies are often told without too much detail. And if you ask the same question later, the liar will probably repeat exactly what he said before. Somebody who’s telling the truth is more likely to include new information or shorten parts of what you were told earlier. Memories aren’t something we take out of some box in our mind every time we want to look at them, then put back the same. Our memories are affected by everything else that goes on in our minds at the time we talk about them.

  Somebody who isn’t lying is therefore able to focus on different things each time she tells somebody about something, while a liar always says the same thing, out of fear of self-contradiction, and seldom goes into detail. If you ask somebody who’s telling the truth to give you more detail about something than she did before, she can do it (unless the memory is so old she’s lost the details). But for a liar, this is impossible, unless she constructs a new lie on the spot. It goes something like this:

  “I was on my own all night. I watched TV, and then I went to bed.”

  “What did you watch?”

  “Uhhh … Let’s see … It was, umm…”

  •   Smoke Screens A liar will often try to protect himself behind a protective layer of impressive empty words, like using abstractions excessively, which I’ll tell you more about in a while, or pure non sequiturs. Liars will often respond in ways that are meant to sound like they make sense but actually don’t. Collett points out that this is what David Dinkins, ex-mayor of New York, did when he was accused of tax fraud: “I haven’t committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.” Duh.

  Example: “I could answer that question both ways, depending on how you put it.”

  •   Creating Distance with Denial A liar will tend to speak in terms of negatives. He will start to define things in terms of what they’re not rather than in terms of what they are, which would otherwise be the normal way for us to talk. A good example is Nixon’s famous statement: “I am not a crook.” It would have been natural to say, “I am an honest man.” He was so aware of, so focused on what he was denying, that he formulated his lie completely around it.

  Example: “I’m not lying” (as opposed to “I’m telling the truth”).

  •   Creating Distance with Depersonalization Liars avoid using words like “me” or “mine” as much as possible. This is a way of distancing themselves from the lie. For the same reason, liars will also tend to use generalizations like “always,” “never,” “everybody,” “nobody,” and so on, to evade having to define exactly who or what they’re talking about.

  Example: “You can relax. That kind of thing never happens around here.”

  •   Creating Distance Using Past Tense Another way of distancing oneself from whatever one is lying about is to relocate the lie to another time and express the content of the lie in the past tense rather than the present tense. An example of this is the common answer to the question, “What are you doing?!” A liar would answer, “I wasn’t doing anything!” (as opposed to “I’m not doing anything”).

  •   Expressing Reservations A lot of bad lies in movies begin with the words “Listen, I know you won’t believe this, but…” or “I know this sounds strange, but…” A liar who realizes she is straining credulity will often use these kinds of reservations. In this way, she confirms any suspicions the other person may have but simultaneously explains that they’re unnecessary. The problem is that this is such a common way of shielding a lie. The simple fact that somebody expresses reservations about what she’s about to say will often make us doubt whatever she then proceeds to say. The funniest kind of reservation is when we actually tell the person it’s a lie straight out, without even knowing it.

  Example: “I tell you, it was unreal! Let me tell you what happened.…”

  •   Linguistic Sophistication It’s a little strange, but people who are lying will often use stricter forms of speech than they otherwise would. Many will often suddenly begin to follow rules of grammar and pronunciation that they otherwise don’t obey, and will leave out favorite slang expressions and informal abbreviations. Collett claims that this is because these people are tense and so behave in a more formal fashion. I think it may also have to do with the fact that they unconsciously want to emphasize what they’re saying and get it all as right as they can. This is really about the content of the lie, but it spills over into how they deliver the lie. The lack of trut
h in the lie is overcompensated for by being on their best behavior in the linguistic sense. If we secretly don’t care about something either way, but want to pretend we care, we won’t settle for a simple “No, that doesn’t sound good”; we would rather use something like:

  “I feel that would be both regrettable and inappropriate.”

  •   Drawing Your Words Ooooouut A lie takes time to formulate, hence all of the vocal changes are used, like pauses, stutters, drawn-out vowels, and so on. This can also cause the lie to be told at a slower tempo than at which the liar would usually speak, at least initially:

  “Yeaaah, iiiiiiit’s liiiiiiiiiike thiiiiiiis—sorry—waaaaaas liiiiike thiiiiis.…” (Note the distancing in the change between “is” and “was”!)

  A Word of Caution

  Be Careful About Your Conclusions

  Before I end this chapter, I’d like to repeat some important things that a mind reader needs to think about when trying to tell if people are lying (or trying to hide their true emotions). Remember, spotting one of these signs isn’t enough. All a sign means is that you should keep a lookout for more of them. The signs also have to be changes in somebody’s behavior. If they were there to begin with, you can’t determine if they are caused by the person lying or if they’re just part of her natural behavior.

  You should also remember that the signs you will be spotting won’t tell you if it is a (spoken) lie or a case of repressed emotions. You will need the context to determine that. Just as with masked emotions, these signs can also be caused by something that has nothing to do with the context you’re involved in. If you were talking to that businessman who was afraid of flying, you’d be making a mistake if you assumed his displays of gestural slips were a sign that he was lying to you (unless you were talking about flying, of course).

  If you’re picking up clear signs that something isn’t right, proceed with caution. Give the other person an opportunity to change or add to her statement. Don’t say, “AHA! Caught you lying!” Instead, say something like, “I feel like there’s something else you’re feeling about all this, something you haven’t told me.” Or, “Would you mind clarifying what you’ve been saying? Maybe there’s something you’d like to explain differently, to help me understand better.”

  Remember your opinion aikido. If you confront a suspected liar directly and accuse her of lying, you will most likely get nothing back but resistance and denial. Show some understanding, establish some rapport. Find out what’s really going on. And finally, if you’re not sure, you should always presume the person is being truthful.

  * * *

  It’s obviously not very constructive to go around suspecting everyone of lying to you. The things you’ve just learned are good skills to have, but you’ll have a nicer life if you assume you won’t need to use them. And something that can make life very, very nice is to find a nice person to share some of it (life, that is) with. Which we actually do. All the time. Unfortunately, we are often so bad at consciously reading signs of interest from other people (and they are no better) that we keep missing each other all the time. The next chapter will help you change that.

  Some people exhibit more or less every single classical sign of lying in their natural behavior. I know a guy like that, and he had a terrible time with his girlfriend until she got the hang of it.

  Remember, you have to know how somebody acts normally before you can determine what constitutes a change in his or her behavior.

  8

  The Unconscious Pickup Artist

  HOW YOU FLIRT WITH PEOPLE WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING IT

  In which your ears will blush when you realize

  how shameless your own behavior is during coffee breaks,

  and you get a trip to the Caribbean as a reward.

  It’s obvious, really: one of the areas in which being able to read the body language of others and control your own is the most useful is when we find ourselves attracted to or otherwise interested in somebody. There is an entire library of wordless, unconscious communication that we can dip into when our unconscious mind gets into the mood. Perhaps this is making you feel guilty, and you think “But I have a boyfriend” or “There’s no point in my reading this; I’m happily married.” Your marital status is, however, completely irrelevant. Human beings are social animals. We require acknowledgment from others—and to be permitted to acknowledge other members of our pack—to be able to feel good. Just as is the case with emotions, this is an important mechanism for the functioning of our social structures and for our capacity to enjoy our lives. Flirting, a little bit of acknowledgment, can be a very small and very innocent thing. Of course, it could ultimately lead to procreation and the furthering of the species, but in its initial stages, it’s really just a more specifically directed kind of rapport, which is also a kind of acknowledgment.

  Also, I personally believe that those who live in steady relationships might be especially in need of putting a bit of flirtation back into their lives, to spice their relationships up. And besides, even if you don’t have any desire to flirt with anyone but your partner, it might be nice to get a boost of confidence from knowing that somebody is interested in you, just by looking at him or her. Or if you’re not in a relationship, how do you reveal your own interest without being too obvious about it? Or if that exciting person comes over to talk to you, how do you keep him interested so he doesn’t just walk away and disappear? And what’s the best way to reject somebody?

  I’m aware of flirting classes in which they teach things like “caressing somebody with your eyes” and doing a lot of licking the lips, but that’s not quite what I want to talk about. This is, rather, about all the things we actually already do, unconsciously and wordlessly. Let’s have a look at how we go about it!

  Rapport and Eye Contact1

  Imagine you’re in some kind of social space. There are lots of other people there. Maybe it’s a Christmas party at work, a movie premiere, or a wedding. It could also be a waiting room at a train station, an area where you are picking your kids up at day care, or in the lunchroom at work. Imagine that you’re there with some friends and talking to them. Suddenly, your unconscious mind sees somebody a few feet away to your right, somebody you unconsciously find exciting. The first thing you do is to establish rapport with this person from across the room or area. Do you remember the rapport exercise, earlier in the book? You begin adapting to the other person’s body language and tempo. You also make sure to keep your body “open” to the other person, removing any obstacles like a drinking glass, bicycle helmet, or anything else you’re holding in your right hand, so you won’t screen yourself off with your arm or an object. Your unconscious mind takes care of all this for you. In fact, it could even be that you haven’t yet noticed that this person is there. You’ve initiated a process of communication, whether you know it or not.

  Your next step will be to begin observing him or her discreetly, with a sideward glance now and then, just enough to show your interest. In purely mechanical terms, you look at this person until he or she looks back. Then you maintain eye contact for a moment or two, before looking away again. You don’t move your head, which is still facing the people you’re there with. The only part of you that moves is your eyes. Women have access to a devastating weapon here. Women often, when they first start to look away again after having made eye contact, look down at the ground for a brief moment. This is what the expression “furtive glance” really refers to.

  FLIRTING EXERCISE

  If you’re a woman, try this simple test. Imagine there is an attractive person at the other end of the room. Look at this person out of the corner of your eye, and then look away by moving your eyes to the other side. Look at the person again. But this time, when you look away, do it by looking down at the ground first. Did you notice any difference? Did it feel familiar somehow? I thought it might.

  Looking down is an invitation. It’s a sign of submission and says “I’m harmless” or even “I can/want to
be conquered.” I am well aware of how reactionary a statement like that might seem in our contemporary, #MeToo world. But unfortunately for our rational, enlightened minds, our unconscious flirtations often stem from a very primal programming from before we were human beings, and a lot of the time it revolves around the female’s submission to the male. It may not be particularly politically correct or even tasteful when it comes to gender equality, but it’s how these things work. It’s been this way since the dawn of time, and we’re far from the only creatures that behave this way. Most of the animal kingdom’s mating rituals involve elements of female submission, and the human mating dance is no exception to this rule. Otherwise, men might simply never have the courage to approach women at all.

  Showing Off Your Plumage

  Now, let’s go back to that room you were in. When you have (unconsciously) confirmed that the other person is watching you, you show off your beautiful plumage like a peacock. Or, rather, you do the human equivalent: you start trying to improve your looks for him or her. You adjust your clothing, hair, and jewelry. Your posture will become more alert and your back will straighten out. If you’re a man, you will, at least in theory, show off your muscular chest to show what an alpha male you are. And if you’re a woman you will present your assets in the best way you know how. To put it briefly: no matter who you are, you will start showing what you’ve got.

  And if you’re a woman, messing around with your hair or your earrings is a combined dual display. Just like other animals do to display submission, you expose your most sensitive body parts: your wrists. You also display your palms, which demonstrates that you aren’t holding any rocks or other implements that you could use to knock the head in of any man who approaches you. Showing an empty hand is a very old and primitive way of displaying friendly intentions. Chimpanzees that are fighting do the same thing to show that they don’t want to fight anymore. Even though we are no longer apes, our unconscious mind still registers the importance of the gesture, and we humans have even developed our own variants of it; the original reason why you extend your hand in greeting is actually to show that you are not holding a sword.