The Operative’s Method of Detecting Deception: Theory

These are the tried, true and trained base methods of detecting deception for operatives in close proximity personal communication.

“The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.” -Hannah Arendt

Deception, for whatever purpose, is a very human trait. To lie is to be human. In fact, it’s a part of our default survival-instinct skill set, but the ability of detecting it, is not.

In order to efficiently and effectively know if someone is lying to you, you must first understand why the target subject would lie to you in the first place.

We all (need to) lie, it’s human nature. It’s necessary and highly useful in this social world we live in.

In most cases our (technical) lies are harmless and are often used for good, these are “white lies”. Then there are “strategic lies”, deceptions with the intent of personal gain, advancement or even pleasure.

Those are the two basic types of lies we can broadly categorize; white and strategic. That gives us the what.

The why is a bit more complicated and diverse, but the core goal is always because of the subject wanting something and deception is often a straight forward tool to acquire it – including pathological and compulsive liars.

Now to the parts of a deception. Unlike the (raw) truth where there is only 1 part to it, (all) lies have 2 parts; the creation of the untrue information and the intentional suppression of the true information.

Telling the truth is easy and effortless because we are merely describing a hard encoded memory. Whereas telling a lie takes significantly more effort (regardless if the subject is an expert or even a sociopathic liar).

Generally, a lie begins with the conscious decision to do so. Then using the imagination, new but false information has to be generated. And finally, the mind has to be constantly kept in check to withhold the old but true information.

There’s just so much thought processes compared to speaking the truth. That’s just how deception works.

Deception is indeed a survival-instinct but to the vast majority of people, it still feels unnatural and forced. This along with the strain of additional mental processing causes the body to react abnormally and involuntarily.

These are the indicators of deception. Most are hardly noticeable unless you already know what to look for and especially after determining the subject’s truth baseline.

Deception Indicators // Eye Movements, Facial Ticks, Hand Gestures, Body Language, Vocal Tones, Speech.

The guidelines and indicators of deception will be further discussed for practical applications in the real world the continuation of this series.