A sequence of events, no matter how short or seemingly insignificant, is effectively a self-contained story – or is at least remembered and told like one.
When you ask someone a question about something they may have done, the answer will be in a story format from the start of the event to the end.
Even if the person can’t remember everything, the story is easy to tell if it’s the truth or if it’s a well prepared fabrication or it’s told by a skilled liar.
Once the “story” has been established by the person, ask for the story to be told backwards.
Depending on the scenario of this conversation or interrogation, you can ask for the person to tell the entire story again starting from the end to the beginning – if you can craftfully ask them to.
This is called reverse chronology – to tell a story starting from the end and moving backwards.
An honest story will flow naturally albeit slower when told backwards, even yielding additional facts through the process as they are just saying things that actually happened without trying too hard.
A deceptive story told backwards is a much more difficult process because it’s not natural and it has to be in a sense, reverse engineered on the spot. Previously untold “facts” often materializes as well, but counter or contradict the original story.
Asking the person to tell the entire story again may not always be ideal. Instead you can ask about specific points of the story, question by question.
Additionally, when a deceptive story is being told, other indicators of deception tend to show such as vocal stress, body language shifts, facial micro expressions and speech pattern changes.
Truth is recalling memories to make it a story.
Deception is creating a story to make it a memory.
