Mindreader

“Mindreader is a treasure trove of concepts, ideas, and tools that we can all master to be safer and happier. It is, in essence, the manual for understanding others. It’s a must-read!”—Joe Navarro, author of Dangerous Personalities

“David Lieberman provides a novel and practical approach to help you distinguish between perception and reality in any and all personal interactions. Mindreader is your key to cultivating healthy emotional intelligence, meaningful relationships, and success at home and the workplace.”—Mitchell Silk, former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury for International Markets

Auteur

David J. Lieberman, PhD

Texte du rabat

Tired of guessing what they’re really thinking? Read people in every situation—in person, on a screen, or in writing—using the new science of psycholinguistics, from a New York Times bestselling author and consultant to the FBI, CIA, and NSA.
 
“A treasure trove of concepts, ideas, and tools that we can all master to be safer and happier. It’s a must-read!”—Joe Navarro, author of Dangerous Personalities

What did your boss mean in that email? Is your mechanic stretching the truth? Whether you’re engaged in a casual conversation or a high-stakes negotiation, it’s critical to understand the subtext of a situation. But with so much interaction happening on screens—via email, texts, or video chat—we are losing the ability to interpret expressions and cues. Furthermore, since many are now savvy about the meaning of body language, it’s become even harder to discern someone’s true thoughts or intentions.

A leading lie-detection expert who instructs the FBI and other security agencies, noted psychotherapist David Lieberman, PhD, takes “people reading” to a whole new level. Drawing on the latest research in psycholinguistics—the cues embedded in spoken and written speech—he shows you how to apply his cutting-edge methods to countless everyday situations, including:

• Detecting the messaging behind passive language, personal or impersonal descriptions, and level of detail.
• Determining whether someone’s account of any incident is the truth or a work of fiction.
• Finding out whether a potential hire, dating app match, or new babysitter is trustworthy or hiding something.
 
Nobody wants to be played a fool. Mindreader will help us identify who can be trusted, and who may be out to get us.

Échantillon de lecture
**Chapter 1

What They Really Think

By paying close attention not only to what people say but also to how they say it—­their language pattern and sentence structure—­you can figure out what’s really going on inside their head. To demonstrate how this works, we begin with a quick and painless grammar lesson.

A personal pronoun, in the grammatical sense, is associated with a certain individual or group of individuals. It can be subjective, objective, or possessive, depending on usage. Grammatically speaking, when discussing a person or persons, there are three separate perspectives:

•    First person (i.e., I, me, my, and mine or we, us, our, and ours)

•    Second person (i.e., you, your, and yours)

•    Third person (i.e., he, him, and his; she, her, and hers; and they, them, and theirs)

On the surface, it might seem as if pronouns simply replace nouns so that people don’t have to repeat the same words over and again. “John lost John’s wallet somewhere in John’s house” is not exactly an elegant sentence. “John lost his wallet somewhere in his house” just sounds better. But from a psycholinguistic standpoint, pronouns can reveal whether someone is trying to distance or altogether separate himself from his words. In much the same way that an unsophisticated liar might look away from you because eye contact increases intimacy and a person who is lying often feels a degree of guilt, a person making an untrue statement often seeks to subconsciously distance himself from his own words. The personal pronouns (e.g., I, me, mine, and my) indicate that a person is committed to and confident about his statement. Omitting personal pronouns from the action may signal someone’s reluctance to accept ownership of his words.

Let’s take the everyday example of giving a compliment. A woman who believes what she’s saying is more likely to use a personal pronoun—­for instance, “I really liked your presentation,” or “I loved what you said in the meeting.” However, a person offering insincere flattery might choose to say “Nice presentation” or “Looks like you did a lot of research.” In the second case, she has removed herself from the equation entirely. Those in law enforcement are well acquainted with this principle and recognize when people are filing a false report about their car being stolen because they typically refer to it as “the car” or “that car” and not “my car” or “our car.” Of course, you can’t gauge a person’s honesty by a single sentence, but it’s the first clue.

A Distant Second

Even when a personal pronoun is present, a switch from active to passive voice may signify a lack of sincerity. The active voice is stronger and more directly interactive, revealing that the subject—­the person or the people, in our examples—­performs the action of the verb in the sentence. With the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by some other entity.

For example, “I gave her the pen” is in active voice, while “The pen was given to her by me” uses passive voice. Notice the shift in phrasing and how it subtly decreases the speaker’s personal responsibility. To wit, let’s say that two siblings are playing, and the younger one starts to cry. Most of the time, when mom or dad asks what’s going on, the reason the child is crying—­as stated by the other child—­is because “he fell,” “she got hurt,” or “he banged his head.” A child rarely says, “I did (action A) that caused (consequence B).” Indeed, it’s unusual for a child (the egocentric beings that they are) to assume responsibility and declare: “I pushed him into the wall, and he hit his head,” or “I should have been more careful when she climbed on my back.”

Let’s look at this in another context. In a study titled “Words That Cost You the Job Interview,” researchers assessed the interview language of hundreds of thousands of real-­life job candidates. Based on language patterns alone, they successfully divided these candidates into low and high performers.1 Here’s what they found:

•    High-­performer answers contain roughly 60 percent more first-­person pronouns (e.g., I, me, we).

•    Low-­performer answers contain about 400 percent more second-­person pronouns (e.g., you, your).

•    Low-­performer answers contain about 90 percent more third-­person pronouns (e.g., he, she, they).

High performers put themselves front and center in the action because they can call upon actual experiences. Low performers don’t. They can’t. They are more likely to give abstract or hypothetical answers, because they lack real-­world experience and success.2

High-­performer language: “I call my customers every month to see how they&rsquo…