Can you really tell when someone is lying using NLP?

Recently I have seen some daytime television where shows are using Lie detector machines or so called experts who claim they know when someone is lying with 96% accuracy. Jeremy Kyle, Tricia and Judge Judy are some.

Judge Judy claims to know when someone is lying by their “Eye Accessing Cues,” a little more about them in a moment, Jeremy Kyle uses a lie detector machine and Tricia uses an expert. Some of the results and the shows hosts assertions change people’s lives; for the good or the worst only the individual’s concerned will know in time.

On a recent repeated show of Jeremy Kyle’s, five people took lie detector tests, four came back that they were telling the truth, the fifth’s result came back as inconclusive. Apparently the person being tested had a slight reaction, not enough for the expert to say they were lying. Jeremy Kyle then added, “One day you may tell her the truth.” This is a very damaging and dangerous remark because of the asserted implication that the person was lying and the seed of doubt is sowed in the other four minds. The preverbal, “Maggot eating away inside the apple,” as they now cannot help but question everything the other person says or does and go over events to look for clues that they may have lied.

At Talisman Training and Empowerment Training we know there is a difference between “The Truth” and someone lying. If someone believes what they are saying is the truth, then they are telling “Their Truth,” and cannot be said to be lying. This may not be the objective truth of say a video of a particular event, and even a video will only see and record sound from where it is placed, one perspective. For example four people can witness an accident; there will be four different versions of what happened. They can all be telling their truth and yet all four may not be telling “The Truth,” that’s why the Police have special accident investigators and scene of crime investigators. This is not done to prove someone is lying but to piece together their recollections and corroborate their experience of the event. Our truth’s are subjective and are limited by our sensory equipment, sight, hearing, feeling, taste, smell and our filters. Quantum Physics now accepts that the way an experiment is set-up and what the experimenter expects to prove has an effect on the results of their experiment. For more information have a look at Rupert Sheldrake Online

Electrical Lie Detectors

The lie detector or PolyGram only detects changes in emotions; it alone cannot tell if someone is lying. I will repeat that last bit, “It alone cannot tell if someone is lying,” only that the individual showed emotional reactions outside of a base mark about the question asked. This is the same for the so called experts. The only real way of telling if someone is lying is for them to tell you they lied. Anyone wanting more information about the PolyGram can visit Skeptics

Recent research suggests that in the future there may be a more accurate way of telling if someone is lying using brain scans, though as one of the researchers Feroze Mohamed, PhD, says, “There’s a lot more reseach required.”  See utube clip here

Firstly let’s look at the advice of the world’s foremost expert in lie detection and FBI interview trainer Paul Eckman PhD. “There is NO ONE THING that a person may or may not do that indicates they are lying.” Paraphrased, “There are indications of inconsistency which need to be gone over again and again and areas where corroborating evidence needs to be sort.”

In NLP we use the information from “Eye Accessing Cues” for increased rapport and the benefit of our client’s so this is very useful model. At Talisman Training and Empowerment Trainings we teach a combination of Analytical Interviewing, NLP and Clean Elicitation for interviewing, this is amazingly effective and is one of the most respectful ways of interviewing young and other vulnerable witness, and interviewing generally for jobs and critical incident interviewing.

Eye Accessing Cues Explained.

Eye accessing cues are the movements our eye’s make when we are seeking information. With calibrating, that is continually checking it out; Eye Accessing Cues can tell us how someone is processing information, not if they are lying.

The Eye’s can be split into three zone, Upper, Middle and Lower. When the eyes move into the upper zone either left or right the person is processing visually, in pictures or movies, when the eyes move left or right in the middle zone, that is horizontally, the person is processing sounds, which we call auditory. When the eyes move into the lower zone the person is either processing through feelings, emotions or tactile feelings and playing internal tape loops, called inner dialogue. Generally a right-handed person will look up and to the left to remember pictures or movies and right to construct pictures or movies, look left in the middle zone to remember sounds and middle right to construct sounds, look down and to the left for internal dialogue and down right for emotions and tactile feelings. See diagram. The big misconception is that is a person is constructing either pictures or sounds they are lying. The only thing it means, if they are right-handed and conform to the model, is that they are processing information by constructing or reconstructing it, rather than it being a remembered picture or sequence of sounds.

Let me give you an example. If I asked you what you had for dinner on a Wednesday four weeks ago can you remember? Some people can, some will work backwards and reconstruct, piece together, what they had and others like me would not have a clue.

The Eye Accessing Cues is a model, not everyone conforms to it, not all left-handed people are the reverse of the right-handed model. The only way to find out how a person is processing information is to check it out on an individual basis. Remember that this is only a model of someone’s processing and not a lie detecting model. Also remember that a constructed picture or sound, once constructed can become a memory and change to a remembered picture or sound.

Conclusions on lying.

If someone is willing to deliberately tell lies so the observer or a Polygraph can be calibrated to the act of lying then are asked simple questions of no value, for example they turn over a deck of cards one at a time and they can either tell the observer the truth of a lie about the cards then you may get good at telling if they are lying about this trivial matter. Ask them a question about something that is important to them, something they don’t want you to know or is sensitive, then you might get a reaction and still you won’t know for sure if they are telling the truth or lying, especially if they believe what they are telling is “Their Truth.”

It is unsafe to presume you know someone is lying without independent corroborating evidence and even then they could still be telling you what they believe, which to them is not a lie.

I would suggest that we should all be very careful what we consider to be a lie as everyone’s truth is only as good as their senses, their filters and what they paid attention too at the time.

Using the Clean Elicitation Interviewing model developed by Talisman Training and Empowerment Training you can effectively recover more information from the interviewee than they consciously remember in a safe and respectful way.

Alan Jones

Point of interest:

Paul Eckman PhD has spent years studying micro muscle movements of the face there is an interesting clip of a micro part of his work on U-tube.  To view the clip click here His interviewing technique is called “Analytical Interviewing.”

Clean Processing Elicitation Questions Syntax

This post assumes some knowledge of NLP, the Meta Model & Dilt’s Logical Levels.

 At Empowerment Trainings and Talisman Training there is an emphasis on ‘Clean Processing,’ in their coaching, modelling, therapy and training. Which honours the NLP Principle, “Everyone has all the resources they need.”

Caveat.
“Everyone lives in their own unique Model of the World.
All posts are opinions, either mine, mine through reading or experiencing someone else’s or those of other contributors. It is hoped that the opinions expressed here will inform and encourage you to question and develop the ideas; thereby forming yet another opinion, your own.
There is no such thing as ‘THE TRUTH’ only truths. Edward de Bono speaks of ‘Proto Truth’ a workable truth until another better truth comes along. What follows is my truth until a better one comes along. New truths are not always better. We now have Quantum Physics, however if you want to build a bridge you will still use Newtonian Physics. One builds on the other, Quantum Physics doesn’t usurp Newtonian Physic it adds to it.” Other times a truth changes and destroys the old truth. The Ancients thought that the Sun went around the Earth and that the Earth was the centre of the universe. We now believe that the Earth goes around the Sun and who knows we may discover that something else is also true.

The Article

Some of you may be familiar with the work of David Grove and ‘Clean Language,’ the modelling of David Grove by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley called ‘Symbolic Modelling.’ In my view Symbolic Modelling is a complete process in its own right and worthy of study and practice. And to me it is a tool, methodology and a principle I use both explicitly and implicitly in all my work.

Here ‘Clean’ in the term ‘Clean Language’ refers to the absence of content imposition by the therapist or facilitator, keeping their stuff, opinion and or judgments out of the session. Very few, if any, questions are totally content free; my aim is to keep my questions as content free as possible and to always be on my guard when a question I ask is loaded with my content.

My early introduction to Clean Language has disciplined me into keeping my stuff out of any session I do with clients. This is also in keeping with most coaching models and whilst I love the syntax of the ‘Clean Language’ of Symbolic Modelling, there has been many times I have not wanted to go into Metaphor and some people do find Metaphor uncomfortable. So thinking around the issue and with my commitment to ‘Clean Therapy’ I have come up with what I consider are operational principles based on ‘Clean Language’

Before I go into the questions I would like to set out my frame and what I mean by ‘Clean Therapy.’ One of the operating principals of NLP is that “Everyone has all the resources they need.” I would like to add something to that and that is, “though they may not have access to those resources.” If they did, they would not need a facilitator. Operating out of this belief I don’t have to install something in my client they will discover their resources themselves by my questions. Here I would like to paraphrase Dr Richard Bandler, “The dividing line between elicitation and installation is fine, if it indeed exists at all.” Or put another away, elicitation is installation.

Problems or issues cannot exist in a vacuum. What I mean by that is that a problem will have either or both a complex equivalence or a cause and effect holding the problem together and that the C>E and C.Eq. must have a comparison, either known or unknown consciously. This is also getting into the structure of beliefs which have a ‘Cause’ and ‘Effect’ and a ‘Meaning.’ More about beliefs in future post.

Patterns, habitual behaviours, are a product of our beliefs either known or unknown and they generally process outside of our conscious awareness.

Beliefs can occur through a one instance learning such as a ‘Phobia,’ or they can be constructed by multiple exposure to our empirical experiences or they can be installed by others. Here others can be anyone, parents, authority figures, advertisers, politicians, sales people etc.

Why do we learn patterns in this way and once learnt let them run at the unconscious level?

The answer is quite simple, as human-beings we like to label things and put them into categories. If we had to question everything, each and every time we had an experience, we would spend all our time checking things out.

Just think of the things you like, if every time you came to, for example an apple if didn’t have the pattern or memory of I like apples, you would have to go through a process of experiencing the smell, the look the taste to see if you liked apples. Not so bad when you think of apples; however a bit more dangerous if each time you came across a man eating tiger you have to check out if it is dangerous or not. If that were the case then there would certainly be fewer humans alive. Your system, I’m not going to say ‘your brain,’ because it might not be, processes information at the speed of or faster than light. See a man eating tiger and your system immediately goes in to fight or flight, outside of conscious awareness.

Another example might be useful, if you drive a car, when you drive you are constantly adjusting the distance between you and the car in front and varying your speed to other factors such as weather conditions and speed limits etc. Most of the time this is done outside of your conscious awareness, even the sudden breaking you do to avoid the odd bad driver in front of you. You react then think consciously. That process is one best left to your unconscious mind, also referred to as unconscious competence.

So what is ‘Clean Processing Elicitation?’

To us at Empowerment Trainings and Talisman Training clean elicitation is any question with the minimum of presuppositions in it. So, “Tell me more,” is a clean question. Here the presupposition is that there is more to tell. A friend of mine who is a teacher has a nice one word clean question and that is,“Explain?”

One stock question that NLPers use is ‘How do you know?’ Whilst this is a very good question and is seeking process, there are in my view better ones.

When (x) is true for you…what’s going on inside that’s letting you know that this is true?

This question paces the client’s belief and validates it, “When (X) is true for you,” also has the opposite possibility that there are times when (X) is not true, a possibility that the individual may not have considered. “What’s going on inside that’s letting you know that this,” has a number of implications, here the ‘That’ disassociates the client and puts them into the observer position of their process and the ‘This’ re-associates them into their belief. They maybe observing their process or questioning their own belief for the first time.

What processes are you going through that is letting you know this is true for you?

How do you know this is true for you?

What comparisons are you making that is letting you know this is true for you?

The use of Dilt’s logical levels is also very useful. For example you can take, “When (x) is true for you…what’s going on inside that letting you know that this is true?” and replace the ‘When’ with ‘Where.’ Again this question, by implication opens up the possibility that there are places where the issue, problem or belief is not true.

Clean questions give you the most information and lets you know how someone is processing, I hope this is useful and that you will go on to develop many new clean elicitation questions of your own.

© Alan Jones 2008

Drop-down through Process

At Empowerment Trainings and Talisman Training Ltd we use our own updated version of the process known as ‘The Drop-down through.’ We find this is a very useful process and readers can find other versions on the internet.

What I like about this process is that it is simple and is what we call ‘Clean.’ Clean means without content imposition from the facilitator. And has been derived from ‘Symbolic Modeling’ More about this in a future posting. For now lets get back to the process.

Drop-Down Through

Dropping through a feeling is only one direction and does not appear to be very flexible, so taking the feedback from a colleague’s wife I decided to look at other ways of running the principals of this process.

The presupposition is that there is another feeling outside of the current feeling, whether this is beneath the original feel, above it or to the side of it all directions work. It may be that some clients have an anchor to the idea of dropping through something. When a client chooses to go sideways, backwards or forwards I ask them to imagine that when the push through a feeling that they are pushing through big plastic doors like the ones you see in warehouses, supermarkets or hospitals.

The wording of question changes slightly depending on the direction the client chooses to explore.

Process

Client has an unwanted feeling or state.

1. Explain to the client that you are going to facilitate an exploration of the feeling or state. To do this they will either drop-down through the feeling, float up above the feel or push through the feeling to find out what lies beneath, above or beyond this feeling.

2.a. Ask the client which they would prefer to explore.

2.b. Ask the client on a scale of one to ten, with ten being very strong to calibrate the feeling.

3. Ask the client to then, “Get the unwanted state or feeling fully and completely and only when they are ready either:

a) Drop-down through it and tell you what lies beneath this feeling?”, or:

b) float up above this feeling and tell me what feeling sits above this feeling?”, or

c) “Push through this feeling and tell me what feeling lies beyond this feeling?”

4. Allow client time to process and wait for their answer and make a note of it.

5 Repeat step 3 using their word for the new feeling or state until the client either says something like, nothing, no feeling, void etc.

6. Ask the client to feel this, whatever word they use, fully and completely and when they are ready either drop-down through, rise above or push though “Nothing” and tell you: What lies beyond “Nothing”? (Here Nothing is taken to be their word.)

7. This is usually a positive state though you can go one more step beyond this state or feeling.

8 Ask the client to try and get any of the original feeling or state back. If they can repeat steps 3 to 7.

Please note that the feeling chain may be the same with fewer feelings or contain new feelings. A chain of feelings can be as short as 3 or 4 feelings, or as long as 25 feelings.

Once past the void repeat step 8 and see if they can get any of the original feeling or state back. If they can repeat steps 3 to 8 again.

9. Ask the client, “When you try and get (Original feeling) what happens?”

Some clients will collapse the chain with just one exploration others can take four or five explorations before they can’t get the original feeling or state back.

Example.

Original feelings 9 After 1st Exploration 3 After 2^nd Exploration 0

Anger Anger Can’t get Anger

Hate Powerless Feels Peace

Powerless Fear

Fear Nothing

Nothing Peace

Peace

(c) NLP4Everyone 2007

Welcome to the wonderful world of NLP

NLP 4 Everyone is a blog dedicated to informing everyone about the benefits of Neuro Linguistic Programming which, is the study of subjective experience originally developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder back in the late 1970’s.

Richard Bandler developed the first NLP model called the Meta Model, which was extracted from watching two therapist who were getting remarkable results, Fritz Perls and Virgina Satir. Grinder and Bandler were joined by other interested students, Robert Dilts, Leslie Cameron-Bandler, to name a couple. And in only thirty years has developed into a world wide understanding of how humans process information.

In less than thirty years the methods of understanding human processing and modelling excellence have established themselves into nearly all European languages. It is independent of race or religion and it’s goal is to improve the quality and capability of every human being willing to investigate how, what, where, when and why they do and think the way they do. And to ask the questions, “Is this way of thinking or acting useful to me?” Once you know the answer to this question NLP gives you the processes to enhance or change, if you want to. The important thing is that NLP always gives you a choice and choice is better than no choice, isn’t it?

NLP has a number of operating beliefs. These are not truths and I would suggest that you fully consider them. And maybe, if you want to, try them on and see what happens when you ‘Act as if’ they are true.

Operating beliefs courtesy of Talisman Training

1. Everyone lives in their own unique model of the world.

2. NLP is not a model of repair… it is a model of acquisition… it is generative and provides choice

3. A person is always communicating.

4. Choice is better than no choice.

5. Memory and imagination use the same neurological circuits, and potentially have the same impact.

6. Failure equals feedback. There are no mistakes, only results. Without failure and mistakes, learning would be impossible.

7. Mind and body are the same system. What affects one, affects the other.

8. The meaning of a communication is the response it gets.

9. If one person can do it, other people can too.

10. People make the best choices available to them at the time.

11. Everyone has all the resources they need.

12. Every behaviour has a positive intention (for the person doing it). The
intention may well be different from the effect.

14. If what you are doing is not working do something else.

Just thinking about these beliefs can change the way you perceive the world and make it and even nicer place. Try it and have fun.