How much can we really learn from people’s words and behavior—and where do we risk fooling ourselves? In this talk, former Secret Service agent and polygraph examiner Brad Beeler explores the practical realities of interrogations, deception detection, statement analysis, and reading people in high-stakes situations. We discuss why confirmation bias is such a threat to good investigations, why many popular body-language claims are overstated, and how investigators might make use of subtle behavioral clues without becoming wrongly overconfident in them. Brad shares stories from criminal investigations, explains how experienced interviewers think about truth and deception, and offers a polygraph examiner’s take on the controversial subject of polygraphs. We also talk about the importance of rapport-building and listening to what people are actually trying to communicate.
Episode links:
- YouTube (includes video)
- Apple Podcasts
- Spotify
Resources mentioned in or related to this talk:
- Brad Beeler’s site
- Brad Beeler’s book Tell Me Everything
- Episode with Mark McClish, author of I Know You Are Lying, on statement analysis
- Episode with Leonard Saxe, on polygraph criticism
- Propublica article on SCAN statement-analysis pseudoscience
TRANSCRIPT
(transcripts are automatically generated and will contain errors)
Brad Beeler: You look at the Amanda Knox situation… She was being emotional and she was kissing and hugging on her boyfriend after she was told that her roommate had been violently slain… So my perception, if I’m an Italian investigator, I might say, “That’s weird. Wow, that’s really strange. You know, why is she doing that?” But if I get into her perspective, she doesn’t know anybody here. She’s been given this horrific news that somebody has come into her room and violated that, and now she’s afraid. Who’s she gonna go to? The only person she knows, her boyfriend, and of course, she’s gonna show emotion. Comfort, that’s what we look for….
Gut instinct is for walking down the street, bottle breaks, walking up to a car as a police officer, hand on the back of the next stands up. My pattern recognition says something’s not right, call for backup, run, whatever the case may be. Too often, though, we use that same principle in an investigation and say, “Oh, my gut tells me this.” Gut instinct is terrible for personal and professional relationships because cognitive biases are more powerful.
Zach Elwood: That was a clip from my talk with Brad Beeler. A bit about Brad: he’s a retired United States Secret Service Special Agent with more than 25 years of experience in high-stakes interviews, interrogations, and protective operations. He conducted the most criminal polygraph examinations in Secret Service history and was named Special Agent of the Year for his work combating crimes against children. Brad later trained federal law enforcement and intelligence professionals at the National Center for Credibility Assessment in interviewing, deception detection, and credibility assessment. He is the author of the book “Tell Me Everything,” which shares practical strategies for building trust, improving communication, and uncovering the truth in difficult conversations.
Brad and I get on topics related to the polygraph, interrogation strategies, rapport-building, and the dangers of confirmation bias. We talk about examining statements for clues and about the importance of listening closely to what people are saying. Along the way we discuss some interesting stories from Brad’s career and from some well known criminal cases, and we talk about fake behavior experts who make false, inflated claims about what you can do with reading nonverbal behavior; people like Chase Hughes and the Behavior Panel.
In my recent talks for this podcast, I’ve been trying to understand some puzzling aspects of how people talk about nonverbal behavior. For example, why do some law enforcement people talk about how important nonverbal behavior is in interviews and investigations, while some law enforcement officers say: it is of very low importance? One realization I had in that area when reading Brad’s book and talking to him is that the concept of rapport can be responsible for some of the talking past each other in that area. A good chunk of Brad’s book is about establishing rapport, and how to adjust one’s nonverbal behavior to do that. That is a worthwhile and good thing; I think that clearly matters. But adjusting behavior is also an entirely different area from reading and making use of behavior; in fact, our ability to adjust our behaviors in order to manipulate others’ perceptions helps show the challenges in getting useful and accurate reads based on nonverbal behavior. I think there are other aspects of behavior that can help explain the very different views people can have about nonverbal behavior, and Brad and I talk get on that topic.
If you like this talk, note that I have a good amount of episodes in the backlog related to crime and investigative-related topics. For example, a July 2024 episode of mine features a talk with Leonard Saxe, who criticizes the use of polygraphs due to their known fallibility. I also have an upcoming talk with Maria Hartwig and Christian Cory, who work on promoting interview techniques rooted in what the scientific research shows is useful. I also may myself be getting a polygraph in August, and doing a report about that; I’ve always been curious to experience that and see firsthand how it works. If you appreciated what I’m doing with this podcast, hit subscribe on the platform you listen on, and maybe go to my site behavior-podcast.com to sign up for updates or look at episode summaries and compilations.
Okay, here’s the talk with Brad Beeler, author of Tell Me Everything.
Zach Elwood: Hi, Brad. Thanks for joining me.
Brad Beeler: Thank you very much for having me on.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the time. Um, so how is, how’s the, uh… I was curious how the book launch has been going.
Brad Beeler: Yeah, it’s been, it’s been really good. You know, you get the Secret Service angle, you get the tech deception, uh, the business angle negotiation.
So a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but it’s been, uh, it’s been fun.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Can you talk a little bit about, uh, what kinds of cases you worked on at the, for the Secret Service?
Brad Beeler: Yeah. So Secret Service was founded in 1865 to stop counterfeit. A lot of people don’t know that, but about 20 to 30% of the money supply, the Confederates were using that as a weapon of war.
Because when you lose faith in anything, whether it be honesty or, uh, someone’s veracity of their statements or the currency, it is, uh, is a problem. So that was one of the last acts that Abraham Lincoln signed into law. So it wasn’t until 1901 that we picked up protection, and then we just kind of grew from there.
But starting in Chicago, I was assigned a counterfeit squad, uh, a two-way counterfeit squad, and then, uh, worked some organized crime in the form of, uh, organized credit card fraud, identity theft, stuff like that. And then, uh, you would do, uh, basically protection from those type of duties. You’d get pulled off for protection.
Uh, then you go to a permanent protective assignment, which for me was H.W. Bush. Uh, so my protective experience was more like guarding tests, uh, versus in the line of fire, to use ’80s and ’90s, uh, Secret Service movie references. So basically, I took care of grandparents more than anything else. And then I got into polygraph.
So after that, 17 years of polygraph and teaching it for the last seven years at the Federal Polygraph School.
Zach Elwood: What was that reference you made, uh, Guarding Tess? What, what was that?
Brad Beeler: Yeah. So Guarding Tess is a, is a movie where, uh, it’s, it’s a very forgotten movie, but, uh, Nicolas Cage plays, um, a former protectee, uh, a former Secret Service protectee spouse detail leader.
Um, so it, it is a, it’s a decent movie, uh, if you- Hmm … if you’re bored, uh, someday.
Zach Elwood: One of my favorite movies from back in the day was In the Line of Fire, and that was like how I- … you know, how I got a good amount of my, my small amount of information about what I know about the Secret Service. And I’m curious, you know, how, uh, probably what I imagine it wasn’t too accurate, but how, how accurate did, did you view it?
Brad Beeler: Yeah. We– I mean, well, when you’re a snot-nosed high school kid, it’s a great recruiting tool, and it’s probably one of the things that shaped my interest in the Secret Service. But once you get there, you don’t realize there’s too many 65-year-old guys being called back into service to, uh- … run next to the limo and single-handedly saving democracy.
But, uh, uh, to each their own.
Zach Elwood: Cool concept, though. I mean, it was-
Brad Beeler: Yes …
Zach Elwood: yeah, it was a great, it was a great concept, and they had such great acting and script. Uh, yeah, I, I, I was curious, one thing that stood out from that movie was, um, you know, the Clint Eastwood character in the very intro scene where they’re doing some kind of counterfeit bust, and he, he’s able to tell that the gun he believes is empty, and that plays a, a role.
How, how realistic is it that a, that someone could tell if a gun was completely empty or might have a few bullets in it?
Brad Beeler: I would say in that situation, because I can’t remember if it was a revolver or a, uh, semi-automatic. I mean, obviously, if you had taken all 13, 15, 17 rounds out of a semi-automatic, you might be able to tell ’cause that’s almost half the weight at that point.
But, uh, if you’re talking a revolver, I wouldn’t wanna bet my life on the, the fact that it’s either empty or it’s missing a round, especially when your heart rate’s about 150 or 160. You know, old Clint looked pretty cool in the moment, but, uh- … I’m sure if that was your partner that had a gun pointed to his head, uh, it’d be a little different.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, he said something like, “Eh, it coulda had one or two bullets in it,” something like that.
Brad Beeler: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Uh, yeah. And it, yeah, for people that don’t get that reference, watch the movie. It’s a g- it’s a great movie. So to more, to more serious questions. Uh, so when it comes to, uh, criminal interrogation type work and getting people to tell you everything, if you only had– Say you only had like a couple hours to train somebody who was a complete layperson who didn’t have any interrogation experience, if you were gonna train them on some one or two or three basic concepts that they would go in and, you know, have to interrogate someone, say that that was a scenario, what, what kinds of scenar- uh, what kinds of concepts, uh, would you focus on to maybe get them to avoid some of the m- worst and most common mistakes maybe?
Brad Beeler: I’d say the biggest return on the investment for me would be prep, primacy, and perspective. And I guess at a 20,000-foot view, that’d be what we do obviously before the interaction, how we stage or the first impression of the interaction in the form of a primacy effect, and then perspective because it’s so important that when I’m talking to horrible people that I try to look through things through their lens because everyone is the hero of their own adventure.
Uh, so if I’m interrogating, uh, Osama bin Laden, I have to view him and speak to him as if he’s George Washington from that perspective. So those are the three things I’d look for. Prep is so important in any communication. Um, I don’t care if we’re talking a business deal or if we’re talking a criminal interview.
And my focus first off has to be is to get to the truth because confirmation bias is a thing. It is amazing at how it can affect me. It’s affected me before, how we put horns and halos on people. So I wanna prep neutrally as much as possible. You know, we, we, we don’t realize how much we put out there in our digital footprint, and 30, 40 years ago, we’d write things in a journal, we’d write things on a Bible.
We, we didn’t want anybody to see these things, and now, uh, we’ve gotten all narc- narcissistic, I guess, to a point where we just throw everything out there on Instagram, TikTok, whatever the case may be. So I’m gonna suck that up as much as possible, and that’s gonna give me a really good sight picture of the person that I’m talking to.
Look at pain points, look at areas to explore, look at all those things in which what I’m trying to do is create a metaphorical social media reel for them because access is everything. I want them to be on my information, um, kinda superhighway to where they’re constantly swiping right, they’re constantly hitting thumbs up as I’m talking to them.
And having the idea of what makes them tick ahead of time i- is priceless. So that’s a good thing for me, and it’s also something we need to realize that it makes us an easy mark to predators out there on dating sites. Uh, people that go on dating sites, somebody can come a mythical Prince Charming by looking at what you have.
I, I always tell the ladies that I, I, I talk to at these groups, I’m like, “You are making yourself out to be an easy mark because, uh, they know what you are looking for, and they can easily become that, uh, in a short period of time.”
Zach Elwood: Yeah, that’s a good point about the same ways that, you know, we, you, or anyone might attempt to, you know, get information or, you know, manipulate someone in an interrogation setting.
That’s the same kind of things that people are exploiters, scam artists and, and such are using On us. That’s a, uh, that is a good point. Um, the second thing you said, uh, primacy. Uh, what– I might have missed what that was.
Brad Beeler: Yeah. So real quick, you know, it’s the first impressions and, and we sometimes confuse this with, uh, what truly is a first impression.
If I think first impression, I think of safety, and we go back 200,000 years ago. If I’m walking around a corner or if I’m listening in the bushes, my ancestors, they were using their ears and their eyes to understand, is something gonna eat me? Okay, is that branch, is that a tiger or is that a, a friendly tribal member?
If I see a tribal member that I don’t know, is their face coded neutral or aggressive, meaning they may cause harm to me. So now I’m gonna have a dump of adrenaline, epinephrine, norepinephrine to run away, climb a tree, whatever the case may be, fight harder than I ever could. So I’m gonna try to prime that interaction as much as possible to create a perfect, um…
You know, we talk about eyebrow flashes, we talk about some of this Amy Cuddy/uh, Vanessa Van Edwards stuff, uh, Paul Zak. I mean, there are neurochemicals that we can put out into the world that the person receiving them is more likely to put a halo upon us, and that’s what I wanna do. Um, not even from a manipulative standpoint, I just don’t want their confirmation bias to be negative because it’s gonna stay negative or it’s gonna take me a long time to, to get into positive territory.
So- Mm-hmm … I can do that either with the setting. So think about a dental office. If you walk in and you hear drilling, you hear people banging their credit card for $1,500 for the crowns that they got, and you’re, you’re sitting there, you’re like, “Oh, this is gonna suck.” If you come in and you hear the right music, you’ve got things to read, you’ve got choice in the Keurig that I can pick up or the soft drink that I can pick up or the tea that I can brew for myself, um, I don’t hear the drilling because of good soundproofing.
I walk into a room that’s completely separate. I have choice on the fluoride. I have choice on the toothbrush I can pick. Um, choice leads to perceived control and it brings anxiety down. And the thing about anxiety is one of the best predictors on detecting deception is not what you think. It’s a lower resting heart rate And we take a lot of things w- like, what does that have to do?
Because if I’m in a heightened state of awareness, Yerkes-Dodson law, if I, if my heart rate’s at 140, my tunnel vision of what I can take in is severely throttled. It’s governed. Whereas if my heart rate, my resting heart rate’s 60, I have the ability to do a lot of things. Everything slows down for me. And, you know, they tried to recreate Ekman and, uh, O- Sullivan’s, uh, 19, I think it was, uh, ’91 research on who can catch a liar, and they couldn’t find a lot of correlations on what makes someone good at catching a liar.
But the thing that they saw above all else was lowest basic heart rate or resting heart rate. Um, so I just thought that was interesting. So I want to get their heart rate down. I want my heart rate to down with the setting, with that initial interaction. I want those halos, and as a result, I’m more likely to allow the truthful person to tell me the truth because they’re not anxious.
They don’t have the Othello effect. And I create that broad dichotomy between, uh, what a guilty person and what a truthful person, what they can show me. I don’t want that noise in the signal. If I’m running a polygraph, I want everybody’s heart rate to be low so that I can see through the noise. I don’t want there to be a jumbled signal physiologically.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Um, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was your extensive polygraph, uh, experience, and obviously polygraph, uh, you know, everybody knows that that can be a controversial topic because it’s, you know, obviously far from 100% reliable. Uh, but I’m curious, you know, with your extensive experience on that, how, how do you see the usefulness of the polygraph?
Brad Beeler: It’s a tool that needs to be used at the right time, on the right person, in the right place, at the right stage of the investigation with guardrails. And if done, it’s a very effective tool in that manner. If it’s used in the Jerry Springer manual or the Jerry Springer type that we see, it gives us a bad name.
So sometimes there’s mission creep when you have an amazing tool, and people use it in situations that they probably shouldn’t use it. So from an applicant standpoint, we’re gonna have very good luck with it because I’m only looking at what you’re putting down in your application forms. Um, you know, a lot of times people make polygraph out to be something that it’s not.
I’m looking at the veracity of what’s in that application form, and as a result of that, it is exponentially the greatest tool in getting derogatory information in the screening process. Um, and I will tell you, having been in the Secret Service polygraph program for a long time, we’ve had applicants admit to rape, robbery, murder, sexual assault, um, you know, downloading inappropriate child-based images a-at numerous times that without that, a background check would not have turned that up.
I mean, what’s a background check? They run criminal record checks, but most criminals haven’t been caught. Um, especially most sex-based offenders have never been caught for their offenses at this point. And what are neighbors gonna say? “Oh, John was just such a, such a great young lad.” I mean, that’s like every serial killer.
They, they talk to the neighbors, and what do the neighbors say? “Oh, he was just a quiet young boy.” So polygraph lets us kind of look under the rock, so to speak, as far of how– as far as how they’ve lived their life. In a criminal setting, once again, you need to use it at the right time, the right place, on the right person, um, as part of a process.
It should never be used in court. It shouldn’t be used to say you’re gonna go to jail because you had a bad outcome on the polygraph. But I can take a coin flip ability to detect deception or maybe slightly better, and I can turn that into mid-eighties to ninety percent. And if you have a scoring criteria on the polygraph where there’s a broad gulf between passing and failing, that means, okay, I have an inconclusive result, so it’s not gonna help you, it’s not gonna hurt you.
So, um, if you sit there and have a very narrow gulf in how you score the polygraph, then it becomes problematic. So for me, I want the person to have to respond multiple times at a significant amount, um, in order to come up with an accurate result for the polygraph. I know that’s– I’m trying to make it lay-layman’s terms for your, for your listeners.
Um, but I, I guess that’s the best twenty-thousand-foot I- view I can give you is, uh, use it, but use it with caution.
Zach Elwood: I guess so. I mean, uh, and I’m just giving some of my, my views on it as being someone pretty distant from it, obviously, as ways f- things for you to bounce off of. But I’m, I’m curious, you know, uh, it’s not clear to me how our, our organizations, our departments Using it in such a way, like say they’re using it for applicants hiring procedures, like knowing that, knowing that it’s far from 100%, would they be using, you know, fails on a polygraph alone to like reject people?
Or would it have to be like using the polygraph to get people to actually tell information, if that makes sense?
Brad Beeler: Yeah. Without getting too specific, it, uh, depends on the agency, and I think, uh, there’s been a sea change a little bit where some agencies might say, “Hey, if you have a problem on a polygraph, you’re done forever.
You’ll never get a job with this organization.” I think most agen-agencies now take that with a grain of salt and people can reapply, you know- Hmm … go through the process. So, um, you know, the belief out there that if somebody fails a polygraph with Agency X, that they’ll never get a job in law enforcement ever again, I just, I don’t believe that.
I don’t believe that that’s accurate. Um, but I understand your concerns and, uh, they’re concerns that a lot of people have. Uh, that’s why there are polygraph protection acts in the civil sector where, you know, you can’t, you know, if you apply for certain businesses outside of government that don’t require security clearance, you have rights to refuse to take that polygraph.
It can’t be part of the hiring process. So, um- Hmm … it, it is a very limited scope typically, uh, where polygraph is used, um, if there’s some type of national security nexus.
Zach Elwood: And, uh, yeah, I don’t pretend to have strong opinions on this because I’ve gone, you know, I have, I have conflicted views just based on my limited information.
I mean, d- based on what I know, it seems like it’s mainly useful as a tool to like manipulate or kind of pressure someone to give information. It’s like, we see that you’re showing responses for this and, you know, and using that as a way to get information out of them. Is, am I– Is that accurate in like the main way it’s used, or would you push back on that?
Brad Beeler: I mean, I would obviously push back on it, but, uh, that’s the company line. So people would say, “Well, of course you’re gonna push back, uh, on that, Brad.” Um, I think when I went to polygraph school, it’s kind of like a red pill, blue pill moment where you go to the polygraph school and you start doing it, and you start seeing the results and you start seeing it.
And, and I think there’s– If you, if you look at detection of deception, what am I looking at? I’m looking at three to five second periods of time around yes or no questions. And I think outside of polygraph, we do the same thing when we’re looking at credibility assessment. When I am a, a– When I have a broad Area of questioning.
You know, yes, we, we, we can talk about statement analysis scans, peers’ work. Um, there’s some great stuff out there. But I’m looking at transitional moments. I’m looking at so, then, next, after that. I’m looking at, you know, lost time, all the w- why did you use left versus went? You know, some of these concepts that we, we talk about.
But the dog is off the leash, and it can take me wherever it wants to take me in an open-ended statement. What is polygraph and what is, in my sense, the best way to detect deception is making it a yes or no question. That’s what a polygraph is, yes or no questions. By forcing into a yes or no question, you create a cognitive load.
You have the spotlight on them, and we’re looking at brief three to five second periods of time where I’m providing you stimulus. You know what the truth is, and you’re either just speaking the truth, so that movie reel is playing without any interruption, deletion, addition, whatever the case may be. You remember seeing it, touching it, tasting it, feeling it.
It’s easy. Or you do the opposite of that. You say, “I didn’t shoot the man,” knowing that you did shoot the man, and now you’ve had to insert a new truth. You’ve had to cover up the truth. The amount of mental processes that were taking place and the fear of that detection in your body betraying you causes those parameters in the body to change.
And you can try to un- you know, hold it back. You can try to do X, Y, and Z. You can try to do the in- what the internet says as far as countermeasures. We’ve seen that. We’ve trained in that. We know that.
Zach Elwood: Clenching the anus or something
Brad Beeler: as well? Yeah, various things. Yeah, various things. Yeah, various things.
It’s like, like one of the things I always get is, so if I fly and I fly armed, I’ll, uh, I’ll have to stop by and talk to the pilot, and the pilot will be like, “Where you headed, son?” “Oh, I’m going to Toledo to run some polygraphs.” And they’ll be like, “Polygraph? Man, I heard those things don’t work and you could beat them.”
I say, “Well, sir, you know, uh, there’s 350 people on this plane that walk through a magnetometer that’s not 100%, but you probably feel a lot safer as a result of having that magnetometer there.” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s a pretty good point.” “You mean, so some people, yeah, they may not have came on or tried to go through the magnetometers because of the magnetometers.”
I said, “That’s a pretty good point, right?” And I said, “A really good person that operates that instrument, they’re probably really good at it, right? And a, a really bad person that really doesn’t care, that’s just kinda pushing buttons, and they may miss some things, right?” And I said, “Well, that’s polygraph.”
And I said, “As far as beating it,” I said, “Is there a manual to this plane?” He said, “Yeah, it’s about 1,200 pages.” I said, “Could somebody read it?” “Yep, somebody could read it.” And I said, “So I could read that and then fly the plane?” And he’s like, “No, you couldn’t fly the plane.” And I said, “Why not?” He said, “Because you wouldn’t know what the throttle and what the rudder and what this button and that button, what it would do as far as how it would affect the plane on the horizon.”
“So, so I would actually have to fly the plane and see the biofeedback in real time?” And he goes, “Yes.” I said, “It’s the same thing. You can read all you want about a polygraph, and you can do this, squeeze that, push this, push that, whatever you think you’re gonna do, think this, think that, take this into your body or take it out of your body.
You don’t know how it’s affecting what I’m seeing from your physiology.” So right now on this podcast, we’re seeing those little wavelengths. I don’t know how much I’m speaking is affecting that wavelength on that recording. So if, if I couldn’t see it, I wouldn’t know what it said. And that’s the problem.
People, there are so many more people that read the online hype, that read the TikTok, do this, do that, come in and ruin an opportunity to get a job. It would be just like trying to water down urine on a urinalysis. They’re trying to affect the outcome. It doesn’t work, and unfortunately, that’s what removes them from the process, whereas if they’d have just been honest on their application forms, they would’ve been fine.
Zach Elwood: Does it often come up in, in practice where, say, you’re doing a polygraph and someone’s like, “Well, I, I don’t, I don’t care what it sa- or I don’t know why it’s doing that, but I’m just telling you the truth,” and, and, and you’re seeing, you know, the spikes you see, the– you’re reading the polygraph and, and you’re thinking, uh, I guess how often does it happen that someone’s denying that they’re lying, but you are very confident based on the machine?
Sure. Does that, does that often happen, and if so-
Brad Beeler: No, and it-
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Brad Beeler: Yeah, and it, and it happens, too, when people fail a urinalysis, and then they tell me that the cocaine fairy put cocaine in their beer, uh, accidentally You know, what, what do I say to that, right? I say, “How often do you think that happens?” And I give them an opportunity to clear that up, and if they don’t, it’s a consensual process, and that’s their choice.
Zach Elwood: Mm.
Brad Beeler: Um, but we don’t like question marks. We like exclamation points. So if somebody wants to go down that route, that’s, once again, completely their, their choice. But, you know, polygraph’s been around since the 1920s, and it’s been refined, and a lot of money is spent on it to, to make it the perfect version of itself, to make it the best mousetrap that we have.
I would love to create, and there is much research on this, to create a perfect environment where I can look at an MRI or I can look at thermal or I can look at other things and get 100% read on are you creating that thought process or is that coming from the recesses of your memory? And if, if that day comes, that’s great, but as of right now, what we have is what we have.
And we can debate it, but the efficacy as far as what comes from it, that’s what people don’t see. You know, and, and it’s not like we publish that on a website going, “Hey, guess what?” You know, the intelligence agencies aren’t gonna come forward and say, “Hey, guess what we caught. We caught a spy today. We caught an applicant that was trying to infiltrate this organization.”
Those are things that don’t get said. But you know what gets said on TikTok or Reddit is user41296 that says, “Oh yeah, that Brad guy, he was on, uh, that, uh, People Who Read People podcast today, and you know what? He’s an idiot. I beat a polygraph.” Uh, you know, that’s what gets put out into the world, not the other side
Zach Elwood: Well, there’s– Yeah, I mean, I’d say for a lot of topics there’s a lack of nuance.
I mean, y- y- leaving aside all the controversy and debate about polygraphs, I mean, I think we could both agree or many people could agree that they are useful even just for, uh, getting information out of people. Like I saw, you know, I watched a good amount of interrogations, and one that stood out recently was, you know, they were– they gave a polygraph to a guy, and I, I don’t think he, he probably wouldn’t have admitted it except for the pressure that he felt in the polygraph, uh, situation.
And that’s how they, you know, that was a big part in, in cracking the case. So it’s like leaving aside all the debate about how accurate it is- Yeah. Yeah … or, you know, what you can, what you should be able to do with it, I think it’s clear that it has played a role in, you know, cracking many cases.
Brad Beeler: If you look at it from the standpoint of our agency has done over 1,000 exams on individuals who have traveled to meet undercover police officers posing as 12 and 13-year-old boys and girls, or subsequent to people who have downloaded child sexual abuse material.
And when we polygraph them after that, we have no evidence that they’ve been hands-on offenders. But 60% during the polygraph admit that they’ve been hands-on offenders in their adult years. So just to kind of speak to your point, the efficacy and what comes from it, does it justify a tool that’s not 100% perfect?
In some aspects, yes. So but I, I think the, the thing that I try to get across is, once again, it’s not perfect. It shouldn’t be used in court. And where we use it there, it needs to be a really, really tight parameters on where and how we use it.
Zach Elwood: It gets into the subject of like, you know, it’s, you know– ‘c- ’cause often in interrogations they might be like, “You know, we know you’re lying based on the polygraph,” which gets into the area of like manipulation or d-deception of subjects and such.
But then it’s like, you know, h- it gets into the question of how much, how much deception is okay, which is a-also a controversial topic. But then it’s like If you, even if you are deceiving a subject to get a result, as long as you’re doing some things to avoid false confessions and, and things like this, it seems like there’s a, there’s a whole– What strikes me is the nuance.
It’s like, uh, for a lot of these things, there is so much nuance and discussion about, like, where the line should be drawn or, you know. So, yeah.
Brad Beeler: I agree. So Frazier versus Cupp is the Supreme Court ruling that talks about you don’t have to be 100% honest to people when you’re talking to them in an interrogation setting.
And sometimes you can say that you have evidence that you don’t. It’s called a false evident ploy, the evidence ploy, which I don’t agree with at all. It’s led to false confessions. It’s very problematic. So just let me, 30 seconds here. When I talk false confessions, I, I don’t talk to juveniles because that prefrontal cortex is not set up yet.
We have to be ultra careful when it comes to talking to juveniles. Uh, they don’t understand the ramifications sometimes of their actions. You look at the, uh, the Crow case from many years ago, where you saw a 15-year-old kid basically just be– There was a voice stress test, and they said he failed, and they, they basically interrogated him for seven, eight hours without his parents, and they made up false evidence saying that he killed his sister.
It’s just a travesty. And, you know, so when we talk to juveniles, not making up fake evidence, not interrogating people for six, seven, eight hours, not office– offering promises or guarantees, and having hold back information that I can validate whatever they tell me, is that we have to be very, very careful about.
The worst day in any law enforcement official’s life would be getting a false confession.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Does that mean you’d, uh, avoid saying something like, “You know, th-this machine is 100% accurate. We know you’re lying,” and you would instead, like, word it in, like, you know, other more ambiguous ways and being like, “We can tell by the indicators that you’re…”
You know, uh, just wording it a little bit different. But I, I’m curious.
Brad Beeler: Yeah, I’d be a, I’d be a little bit more nuanced, uh, than that as far as, as focusing on 100%.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, avoi-avoiding making outright, uh, false claims in the, in the, even in the context of the interrogation.
Brad Beeler: Correct.
Zach Elwood: Okay, let’s segue to the, um, more general behavior, uh, areas.
O-One thing I often think about with the behavior, uh, analysis, reading behavior type stuff, it, it kind of relates to the, the polygraph. I mean, the, the question I think is often, um, unstated in the behavior analysis space is how useful Is it when you have, you know, a, a hunch or, or a deduction that’s far from 100%, right?
This applies to like, you know, reading non-verbals, it applies to statement analysis, it applies to so many behavior-related areas, and I rarely see that talked about. You know, it’s like where, where– when is the situ- where are those situational types where that is useful? And I think, you know, to name one, I, I, I wanna get your take on that, but to name one it’s like, you know, if you’re in an interrogation and you think somebody’s s- reacting in an unusual way to a specific question, that might be a reason to ask a few more questions about that at the very least.
That’s one place where it might play a role. The- these kind of areas where things could go multiple different ways. But I’m curious to open it up to you to, to get your, your take on that question.
Brad Beeler: Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, the, the thing about it is I look at behavior from the standpoint of lyrics, soundtrack, and the music video.
So if you, if you break it down like that, my best friend growing up, and this is maybe what got me interested in communication, was deaf, and I had to be present, I had to look him in the eyes, I had to sign, I had to really focus on my body language and, and read his body language. And he was the most impressive individual at determining hidden emotion that I’ve ever seen, because when you lose one sense, you, you get another, and you’d think, wow, if you can’t hear, how would you be good at, at– Well, his, his ability to read body language was just next level.
And then emojis came along and that kind of got habituated. Uh, emojis were great for him, but if you think of it from the standpoint of words, I have to look at that word choice, and that’s where obviously when statement analysis comes in. So that’s one component of it. So, you know, for, for one, I’m gonna look at their word choice and I’m gonna be very careful about my word choice.
Like I’m gonna– After– I’m not gonna use the word murder. I’m gonna say this situation. I’m not gonna use the word sexual assault. I’m gonna say inappropriate contact. I’m gonna use words that are not triggering. That’s why doctors say injection and not shot. That’s why politicians say not taxes, they say investments.
I mean, word choice is important. Um, and sometimes when you’re looking at truthful or not truthful statements, we recently had a, um… You know, if you look at it, the senator that recently posted the word awesome on a tweet after, you know, one of the, uh, Iranian vessels got past the US blockade. Well Some people are saying, “Well, that was, uh, uh, something that a traitor would say,” is the word awesome.
You’re, you’re going against the United States. Well, all it is is a tweet. So did he say, “Oh, that’s awesome,” as if I wish we had a better blockade? Or did he say, “Awesome,” like, “This is great the Iranians get around it”? So the words without context are that– are not that helpful. Does that make sense if I just say that?
Is that, uh, there’s a no with an exclamation point, and then there’s no with a voice inflection. Well, how you said that no can clarify everything. If I ask my daughter, “Sydney, did you clean your room?” “Yes.” Well, that’s not very confident. That’s a problem. But if she just texted me, “Yes, I cleaned my room,” and I have nothing else to go on, it’s very difficult.
So lyrics are important. But then how the– We go to the soundtrack. That’s so important, okay? How Eddie Vedder says his lyrics make the music. I don’t know… Nobody’s gonna look at Pearl Jam lyrics and go, “That’s amazing lyrics.” But they’re gonna look at the soundtrack and be like, “I’m gonna, I’m gonna buy that record right now.”
So how we say it is so important. And then lastly, the music video. Why was Milli Vanilli, the group, so successful? It wasn’t because the lyrics of “Blame It on the Rain.” The, the, uh, m- the soundtrack was decent, but it was a two dancing, good-looking, attractive actors that were basically not the true, you know, artists.
They were the ones that once it came on MTV, that’s why it was effective. So how can I look at all that as far as how I’m perceiving them, right? Is that congruent? Meaning is their spoken word with how they’re saying it, with how they look while they’re saying it, is that good? Meaning am I getting the no or am I getting the yes?
So the shaking of the head no with the speaking of the word yes, that’s not congruent. If am I getting R. Kelly when he’s interviewed by Gr- uh, I think it was Grace King, uh, about the sexual assault allegations, and he goes from zero to 60, how I think this is kind of what led into the question as far as almost like a barometer for how somebody takes your question.
And he went from I’m just chatting with you to now he’s pounding his fist and he’s standing up and he’s screaming and he’s doing fake emotion. That is incongruent with how we communicate. So one of the ways I’m looking f- at communication is, is all of this congruent, right? Is there comfort? Is there not comfort?
That’s how I look at non-verbals. Non-verbals, you can ask Joe Navarro, no, non-verbals are not about detecting deception. They’re about comfort and discomfort And that’s how I’m taking in information. Now, how am I putting information in the world, out into the world? This is the hidden part because if my body language sucks, if my vocal inflection sucks, if my word choice sucks, I may be contaminating them by their reaction to what I’m putting out into the world.
So am I just seeing a mirror as a result of my emotional contagion? So it’s, it’s twofold. When people look at body language, they don’t realize what we’re doing, um, what we’re putting out into the world. They always view it as I’m reading body language, which is so difficult based on contextual clues. And they’re looking at the wrong things.
They should be looking at the feet. They should be looking at the lower body. That’s where the longest cabling from the brain stem is, and that’s where we get a lot of our really good diagnostic stuff. So, so much of… I, I know I’m taking you down a, a little rabbit hole here, but so much of the stuff that’s out there with body language, uh, they make it for 20-second TikToks.
It’s nonsense or it’s taken out of context.
Zach Elwood: I mean, I, I, I tend to think, uh, and correct me if you, if you disagree, it seems like, I mean, for, for these– If we’re especially talking like nonverbal things in an interrogation setting, it seems like the main practical application would be Just like changing your line of questioning, um, uh, but, you know, asking more questions about a specific area.
But I’m curious, you know, uh, would you agree with that? Is that, like, the main practical outcome, would you say?
Brad Beeler: So for me, non-verbals on my end are going to be– And when I say non-verbals, I’m also talking vocal language. I’m, I’m talking, um, uh, the way I speak the words. So too many times, once again, we’re just saying non-verbals from body language standpoint.
I throw in there also- Right … how we’re speaking. So think of a Catholic confessional, right? A Catholic confessional, how is it set up? It’s set up for privacy. But if the priest was on the other side and he could see you, you wouldn’t have privacy. If there was one of these fancy microphones, there wouldn’t be any privacy.
If you could hear people outside of the confessional, there wouldn’t be any privacy. So privacy trumps a lot of things. But how is the priest reacting? The priest isn’t saying, “What? What did you do?” He’s not being judgmental, and he’s speaking in a very soft con- con- um, tone with a very– a little bit of a deeper tone.
A higher pitch is going to be coded as either not confident or it’s going to be scary by the person hearing it. Because once again, we go back in history, what did a higher pitched voice mean? It mean- it meant danger. It meant summon the tribe for help. That’s what, you know, police officers when they get on the radio the first time as a rookie and they call for assistance, they sound like the 12-year-old version of themselves.
Yeah,
Zach Elwood: the
Brad Beeler: anxiety raises the voice. So I need to hack that a little bit. Yeah, the anxiety. So even there are times where I’m anxious, but I have to deepen my tone a little bit. I have to slow down, I have to be non-judgmental, and I have to lower my volume slightly because people don’t scream secrets, they whisper them.
So from a non-verbal standpoint, I have to do those things to create an environment in which a truthful person can feel like they can be truthful and a guilty person, once again, can feel like I can unburden myself potentially with this information. So from non-verbally for me, and I’m also– When I do talk verbals, I don’t want anchor points, so it’s kind of hard to see.
I, I don’t want to get too far away from the mic. But when we talk anchor points, obviously within context, if it’s cold or, you know, if they’re always having their arms crossed, I’m looking for the reception of my message. For me, body language is not about detecting deception, it’s about reception of my message.
So if I’m saying something and all of a sudden I get an anchor point, okay, don’t say that again or let’s reframe it. If they’re like this and they uncross their arms after I set a new point, rinse and repeat And then also I’m gonna wanna have a slight forward lean because what is a confession posture?
A confession posture is a slight forward lean. So if I’m leaned back like a therapist where I’m all the way back in my chair and I have multiple anchor points, they may be mirroring me, but that’s mirroring me in a very closed, restrictive posture, and that’s negative for communication. So, uh, open communication for me is having my forearms on my knee– on my thighs, leaning slight forward with a slight head tilt, and once again, with good active listening, uh, skills with my head.
That’s more likely to have them mimic, and when they mimic that, they are in a very receptive body language to make a disclosure.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Um, when I talk to, uh– I mean, you probably know ’cause you’ve listened to my podcast a little bit, but, uh, one thing I focus on is the, the practical difficulties o- of using, uh, behavior when we’re talking just like reading non-verbals, leaving aside the rapport aspects.
Uh, when I talked to Eric Robinson, a, a former FBI agent and some other people, uh, in law enforcement, they talked about, you know, the, the difficulties in using the, the reading non-verbals part. Eric gave an example of when they had talked to a, uh, somebody they suspected of doing something, uh, and they got– they showed him a picture of someone, and it was clear from his non-verbal reaction that this guy, you know, knew something even though he wouldn’t admit to it.
I mean, they felt pretty– You know, it was one of those cases where it was on, on a more extreme end of, you know, non-verbal reactions, so they felt quite confident. But y- their– his point was even in that context, it’s like, well, if he’s not gonna talk about it, there, the, you know, we already have… Usually, you know, there’s already some evidence pointing to someone.
He’s– So his, his point was, um, it, it can be pretty hard to make use of it even when you have quite a strong read on somebody. It’s like if they’re not gonna talk, what can you do? But I’m curious for your take on that. Yeah, and I guess that gets back to my, my general question of like finding the, you know, pinpointing the, the practically useful parts of it, yeah.
Brad Beeler: Yeah. So, uh, I’ll, I’ll tell you real quick about a case. And so with the Secret Service, the way our polygraph program worked is we love to give back to the locals for all the resources that we take from them in our protective investigative missions. So we would– Most of my criminal polygraphs were done in the form of offering it up to the local police department.
And I can think specifically about a missing persons case that I worked where we had a one percenter and a hang-around in a motorcycle club. And for your listeners that aren’t familiar with one percenter, it goes back to the ’50s where one percenters were coined as being the troublemakers and the, they made all the problems for the entire club, and the other 99% of the club members did the right thing, right?
Yeah,
Zach Elwood: the motorcycle
Brad Beeler: outlaw
Zach Elwood: types. Yeah.
Brad Beeler: Yeah. Motorcycle outlaw types. He had a 1% patch, and I think the ATF agent working this case remembered, it was t- was basically telling me, “I think this guy’s killed people. He’s a bad dude.” So the missing person is dating both of these people, the hang-around and the one percenter.
And the hang-around is maybe 5’6″, 140 pounds, doesn’t even own a bike, looks like a banker. The hang-around’s about 6’4″, 230, and he looks like if you were typecasting the next “Die Hard 7” movie or whatever, right? He would be the perfect foil, uh, to be the, the terrorist in that situation. Um, so from a body language and just from a picture standpoint, you thought, “Well, that’s probably the guy, so I’m gonna test the hang-around first.”
Plus, when you ta- throw confirmation bias in there and you have the locals saying, “Yeah, this is a bad dude,” the one percenter, what’s my frame of, you know, uh, my thought process here is the hang-around failed the polygraph regarding being involved in the disappearance. Well, I viewed that word involvement as, okay, he must have seen it.
He must have participated. Maybe after the fact, he came into this information. So for a couple hours, I’m, like, theming him from the standpoint of, “Hey, you’re probably afraid of him. You were in there. You were, you’re afraid of your own life. You went along to get along.” Whatever the case may be was my themes, and he kept saying this: “That’s not it Okay?
He’s not saying he didn’t do it, but my tunnel vision and confirmation bias was so high, I didn’t just peel the words apart. That’s not it. That’s not it. That’s not it. And about two hours after that, there were two detectives that didn’t have that confirmation bias, and they knocked on the door and they said, “Hey, can I come in and chat with him for a second?”
‘Cause they heard, “That’s not it.” And they just said to him, they said, “You keep saying that’s not it. What is it?” And he just looked at them and said, “Oh, I killed her, cut her up in six pieces, and threw her in the river.” And it was just like a Mike Drak moment for me that the confirmation bias had got me. I didn’t see him with horns, I saw him with a halo.
And it wasn’t about the one percenter, it was about everybody’s capable of a bad act, and that’s what he did, and he took us to the body right after that. And it was, uh, once again, ki- I realized at that point that horns and halos can be an issue, and maybe not body language, but just looking at two pictures, you can easily say, “Oh, that’s the bad guy.”
And that’s what I, that’s what I fell victim of.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, I like that anecdote, um, in the story i- in your book. Um, yeah, it really does highlight confirmation, uh, hov- highlights confirmation bias. It also, you know, maybe is a good segue into this, the statement analysis or just listening to what people say. I, I, uh– Well, I’m curious if you, if you, if you would agree with me on, um…
I mean, I, I– Some of the same, you know, major cav- caveats apply about reading, uh, small statements, reading too much into small statements. But I tend to think statement analysis and what people say is, like, much, much more relevant and meaningful than the non-verbals, you know. Uh, y- you know, leaving as- leaving aside, like, overall, uh, rapport kind of building things entirely, if we’re just talking about reading specific non-verbals for, you know, clues about what somebody’s thinking.
I tend to think, you know, things like that, that Mark McClish talked about in his book, “I Know You Are Lying,” these kinds of, uh, small clues about, you know, what people are thinking based on what they say. Like that guy saying, “That’s not it,” it’s like, well, what is he really- Yeah … what’s he communicating? Uh, but anyway, I’m curious if you agree with the general point that, like, in general, listening to the things people actually say is, is gonna be much, much more important than non-verbal.
Brad Beeler: I typically do, because once again, especially if I’m looking at deception, because once again, body language is about reception of message and comfort, discomfort. So the– whereas word choice is them trying to potentially erase, change perspectives, you know, erase time, whatever the case may be. And it makes me think, I just saw something today about the redistricting, and, and this is not a political statement, but the redistricting in Virginia.
And they looked at the, the question for the, the governor was running. When she was asked about that, when she was running for governor, you know, “Are you gonna be involved in redistricting?” And she said, “The short answer is no.” Now let’s break that down. What’s the question? Are you going to support redistricting?
Is that a yes or no question? Yes. Was yes or no answered? No. What was said? The short answer is no I mean, I just, I just- More information
Zach Elwood: there. Yeah.
Brad Beeler: Yeah. There’s way too much information there. You’re right. The short answer is no. Or
Zach Elwood: more, more– There’s
Brad Beeler: more
Zach Elwood: infor- Yeah. Yeah, there’s more
Brad Beeler: in that. Yeah. And, uh, you know, so seeing that, seeing, uh, there’s a really good– I mean, obviously Jerry Sandusky, uh, his interview with Bob Costas is, is beautiful for true sandwiches because, you know, he’s asked a very legalistic term, “Are you a pedophile?”
He does not view himself as a pedophile, so he says no with an exclamation point. Then he’s asked, “Are you sexually attracted to young children?” What does he do? He buys himself time. “Am I sexually attracted to children? Sexually attracted to children?” Then he does a true sandwich because we don’t like to lie.
We don’t like the feeling it gives us. So what does he do? He gives two truthful statements where he says, um, “I like hanging around kids. I like spending time with them.” Those are two truthful statements. I agree with both those statements. But he answers, “Well, the, the answer is no.” So anytime you say the answer is no, that’s not a no, right?
That’s a, that’s a problem. Um, you know, same thing with, uh, Rachel, uh, Dolezal or Dolezal when she was asked about, you know, if she’s African American. She doesn’t answer the question. She says, “That’s a strange question. I don’t know why you’re asking me that. Um, you know, I did tell you my father was unable to come, uh, you know, to the wedding, you know, X, Y, and Z.”
You’re not answering the question. Um, and if your viewers will look up the vice presidential– uh, vice president of French Guiana, uh, during the Vice interview, he’s asked about who his best friend is, uh, individ-individual named, uh, s- uh, Su, uh, Sugiron. And, uh, he’s asked about this, and it’s his best friend for like 20, 30 years, and they know that, and they ask him directly.
They say, “And you– you know, do you know a guy named Sugiron?” And he goes, uh, “Yeah, he’s a tenant in my place.” The distancing language. Then he’s asked again, “Well, you’re friends with him, right?” “Uh, he’s a friend of ours.” Once again, distancing language. It’s, uh– So yeah, just to– I wanted to just throw you and your listeners a couple examples of ways in which you’re giving simple yes or no questions, and then you offer that up.
That’s, uh, it’s not 100%, but it’s a nice red flag that we want to go back and, and dig into again.
Zach Elwood: I mean, I, I was a big fan of Mark McClish’s “I Know You Are Lying” and, uh, uh, just in general, you know, the hidden ways that people, uh, try to conceal information or misdirect you in various ways. I mean, that’s le-leaving aside the discussion of how practically useful it may be, you know, the same questions that apply to the polygraph for things that are, you know, not 100%.
It’s like, A, it’s interesting and there’s often information there, and then B, it might be useful in actually like directing how you conduct an investigation, how you do an inq-interrogation, you know, your, your confidence that you’re on the right track, especially if there’s no other, you know, major forms of evidence, these kinds of things.
Zach Elwood: A quick note here: as with a lot of behavior-reading areas, there is a lot of controversy in the area of so-called “statement analysis.” Similar to nonverbal behavior-reading areas, there are people who claim you can make highly confident proclamations about someone’s guilt or innocence based on examining the small ways someone has phrased their sentences.
One prominent example of this overreach is the SCAN system, that’s S. C. A. N., which is, in my view, unethical and unreasonable bullshit spread by a guy named Avinoam Sapir who strikes me as one of many con artists in the behavior-reading space. There’s a great Propublica article about that titled Why Are Cops Around the World Using This Outlandish Mind-Reading Tool? The subtitle is: The creator of Scientific Content Analysis, or SCAN, says the tool can identify deception. Law enforcement has used his method for decades, even though there’s no reliable science behind it. Even the CIA and FBI have bought in. https://www.propublica.org/article/why-are-cops-around-the-world-using-this-outlandish-mindreading-tool
So I wanted to distinguish this overreach of statement analysis from what I view as more reasonable and defensible versions of statement analysis. For example, I enjoyed Mark McClish’s book I Know You Are Lying, and I was inspired by that book to write my own book on verbal clues in poker titled Verbal Poker Tells. I do believe there are many small clues in people’s phrasing as to their train of thought and, more importantly, their communicational attempts at managing other people’s perceptions. One common pattern is that innocent people are more likely to make vehement and direct proclamations of their innocence, and state directly that they did not do something. I was watching the reality TV show The Traitors recently, and there are many manifestations of that general pattern in that show, and in social deduction games in general. And in poker, I can confidently say that there exist some highly reliable verbal tells, and in general verbal tells are much more reliable than nonverbal tells.
But also, clearly, such small verbal patterns are far from 100% reliable and it would be a mistake to reach highly confident views in law enforcement scenarios based on one or even a few small phrasings, and it would be a mistake to act as if such things are anywhere close to actual physical evidence.
Anyway, I just wanted to address that, as you’ll see statement analysis often referred to as a pseudoscience, which I think is unfair, because, if such things were studied scientifically, which they have not been, I think you would find that many of the patterns that people like McClish have written about do have significance, even if they’re also far from 100% reliable. It’s just that so many decent and interesting observations of human patterns have been jumbled together and associated with the bad ideas and approaches of unethical charlatans. Which I think is also related to how group polarization and toxic conflict tends to work: the traits and beliefs of an entire group can become associated with the traits of a few prominent toxic representatives of that group. But I digress.
Okay, back to the talk…
Brad Beeler: And that ties into behavioral indicator questions very, very well because it’s a, a– it’s separating the wheat from the chaff in that if I ask you, you know, “Hey, Zach, can you give me…” Or, or, “What do you think should happen to somebody that…” And you, especially in serious crimes, what do you think should happen to somebody that, that shoots somebody?
Uh, I, I think they should go to jail. That’s a pretty easy question. But when I ask that question to somebody and they says, “Everybody deserves a second chance.” That’s a problem because that’s what they want to have happen to themselves. I mean, this is a Reid technique from the 1940s, and Reid has a lot of issues.
But when it comes to that question, it’s really good, uh, due to, um, certain biases that we have where we open up that file cabinet of our brain and we don’t think about it long term enough and we just provide that answer that’s extremely diagnostic. When I ask somebody that’s accused of hurting a child and I say, “What do you think should happen to somebody that causes significant harm to a child?”
“Well, you know what? I think they, they should, they should get treatment.” That’s a big problem, and that’s, uh, of the reddest of the red flags. Same thing with I… If I ask you an evidence connecting question. If you tell me you’re on the north side of town and the crime happened on the south side of town and I say, “Hey, is there any reason why your GPS or a license plate reader would show you down on the state streets on the south side of St.
Louis on such and such date?” “Uh oh, you know what? You’re right. I did.” You know. Yeah. When, when you hear that, that’s a, that’s a problem.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. It just seems like there’s so many– I mean, getting back to the general question of, you know, there, there’s so many ways that we can reach deductions and clu- and, and have hunches and logical hunches about how what people say or, or what they do, uh, you know, lead, relate to their, their guilt or what they’ve done.
And it, it’s like, it seems like, well, I’m curious. I mean, we know, uh, the, the, the cliched thing or the, the true thing is, you know, often crimes that are… that go 48 hours without being solved, you know, have a much less likely chance of being solved. I, I, I would think that some of these small clues, even if, you know, people can debate, uh, how accurate they are, how useful they are, it’s like as a practitioner, if you’re a law enforcement person trying to get an answer to something quickly, a lot of these things help you get a read that you’re on the right track, right?
It’s like if you’re trying to like sort out a bunch of information quickly, especially like, say, you’re not even– somebody might still be alive or something. It’s like you’re trying to get a read on like where to direct your attention, right? So tho-those things can be, can be useful in a very short term, like time pressured scenarios especially, I’d imagine.
Brad Beeler: Yeah. How does, uh, how does… When we– when you, when you get down to bedrock you get the best gold. But to get to bedrock and, and when you do get that gold or close to bedrock, what do you do? You filter it. You put it through a, a very broad coarse filter first and then you get it down to a fine filter. So I’m trying to get a coarse filter level, say, where should I sort you?
Are you this person here that, uh, we don’t have anything to worry about or are you this person here we gotta ask some additional questions for?
Zach Elwood: Right. And, and it can be that, you know, people would say like, “Well, what about the, the actual evidence?” And usually that’s going on at– sometimes it’s going on at the same time where it’s like you’re talking to people and people are gathering evidence.
So it’s like, yeah, obviously you’re not– you’re gonna go where the evidence leads, but you’re also in the, in the context of these interactions you’re gonna also try to feel your way to the, to the truth, yeah.
Brad Beeler: Nothing’s gonna be better than DNA. But unlike what people that watch NCIS or Criminal Minds think, they think that D- you know, uh, they, they think that DNA just falls off of our body and is just vacuumed up, and in real time we see it and get it analyzed.
It’s not that easy. Juries think that, unfortunately.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Brad Beeler: Uh, but, uh, I wish, I wish it was that easy. There are some amazing advancements in DNA technology that are currently, um, on the horizon, but… And it’s an amazing tool, but, uh, it’s not the way, uh, it appears.
Zach Elwood: That, uh, Sandusky example you mentioned, yeah, reading that in your book, I mean, that, that is such a textbook example of like S- somebody really giving away, uh, you know- Yeah
that, that something is going on there. And I, I think it leads to a interesting psychological fact about people. It’s like, it, it is very strange, uh, when you read, like, “I Know You Were Lying” by Mark McClish or, you know, just looking at these things in general, it is very strange that people who have done horrible things seem to have such a hard time directly just saying that they didn’t do them right.
They, they, they word them in all these unusual ways, and it, it does seem like a big part of it is surprisingly, like, just that people have such a hard time lying directly. Uh, i- i- it’s like I think it’s a combination of, like, people are uncomfortable lying directly, even for people who have done- Mm-hmm
horrible things like murder and other things. Uh, but then it’s also, like, the other aspects of, like, they don’t wanna be caught in a lie sometimes, so they word things ambiguously because they want to avoid being caught in a lie. But I’m curious, how much do you think boils down to just the fact that for whatever reason, people are just uncomfortable lying, even when it would be to their major benefit to just lie directly and lie, you know?
Brad Beeler: Well, it’s, it’s uncomfortable lying. Once again, everything that you said is truthful, but there’s also a physiological component, and that’s why polygraph gets us to the level that it gets us, is there is a physiological and a mental component put together. When you put people in a yes or no question, they have to provide a yes or no answer, and that editing and things are happening because of cognitive load.
There’s a lot going on, and our brain, it, it’s almost like this computer, if, if our, you know, if our internet connection was slow or you were running eight other programs, uh, at the same time while you were recording this, the recording quality would go down as a result of that because the RAM would be stressed.
And our brain has a certain amount of RAM, and we got all these things going on and, “Oh, shoot, this reporter may ask this question,” or, “Do they have that evidence?” I’m thinking Anthony Weiner when he’s asked, you know, “Did you send those text messages?” Or, “Did you send that, that post on Twitter?” If we go back about 10 years when he was involved in his scandal.
And I just think about all the mental processes he had to be going through ’cause he’s like, “Well, I can’t turn it over to the FBI because then I might get caught for lying to a federal agent, and then I can’t do this, and is there gonna be any other accusations?” And there’s so many things running through that we don’t really think about the words that we’re saying, and that’s where we pick up those inconsistencies sometimes.
Zach Elwood: I, I do think in general, like, the, the behavior space can be really hard to talk about because there are so many factors that kind of, like, bleed into each other and are, are overlapped. So for example, you know, we have We all, we all every day know that, you know, interacting with other people, reading people happens every day.
Like, we, we read that our people we know are uncomfortable. We read that people we work with are, you know, s- feel certain ways or might feel certain ways, and so that’s obviously true. But then there’s also this spectrum going up to, like, people who make claims about, like, this, you know, looking a certain way tells us a specific thing- Yeah
and all these granular things that- I looked up
Brad Beeler: to the left.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, like this Behavior Panel- I looked up to the right … Chase Hughes stuff. Yeah. There’s this spectrum going up to, like, you can make all these amazing deductions with specific granular things, so the- you have that spectrum, but then you also have, like, the rapport spectrum of, like, obviously rapport is a big thing, and that involves you adjusting your behavior, which is separate from the reading behavior.
So just to say there’s this space that, uh… And, and also that, oh, yeah, one more thing. You know, law enforcement or, uh, professionals, people doing interrogations, I think even they can have a hard time understanding where, like, their reads of, like, the meta level situation, like ev- the evidence, the things people have said, uh, and the things that they have done and re- suspicious things they’ve done in, in a case, a- and then you, a- and then the behavior, the non-verbal behavior itself, all those things can kind of blend together.
Yeah. So you could come away from, like, interrogating someone and be like, “I think they were… You know, their non-verbals were suspicious,” but- Yeah. My gut, my gut
Brad Beeler: says-
Zach Elwood: Yeah, but their gut might be all these other things- Yeah … in the mix, so I think it can be hard- 100% … to extrap- ex-extract that entirely. So I think all these things lead to this fuzzy area, which I think helps explain why there’s so much bullshit in this space, why you have people like, you know, Behavior Panel and Chase Hughes peddling a lot of bullshit where people, even, even practitioners can be like, “Well, I’ve, I’ve had value with some of these things, so maybe there is truth- Yeah
to some of these other things.” I, I think it kind of helps explain why there can be… I- it can be hard to sort out this amorphous area, but I’m curious if you’d agree with all that.
Brad Beeler: Yeah, it, it is. I mean, you, you look at the Amanda Knox situation. I mean, if you kind of take a look at that and say she was being emotional and she was kissing and hugging on her boyfriend after she was told that her roommate had been violently slain Now, what’s the context?
If you have a difference between perception and perspective, right? So my perception, if I’m an Italian investigator, I might say, “That’s weird. Wow, that’s really strange. You know, why is she doing that?” And I would be crying, and I would be this, this, and this, and why is she showing this emotion, right? But if I get into her perspective, she doesn’t know anybody here.
She’s been given this horrific news that somebody has come into her room and violated that, and now she’s afraid. Who’s she gonna go to? The only person she knows, her boyfriend, and of course, she’s gonna show emotion. Comfort, that’s what we look for. We are, we, we are basically 99.7% chimpanzees. What’s a chimpanzee gonna do in that situation?
They’re gonna, you know, c- you know, console each other, just like they did. So that’s the problem. They, they viewed it as their perception, uh, or their perspective, not with… You know, and that, and that was a problem. So I, I say that that’s where it all kinda gets jumbled up and, you know, gut instinct is for walking down the street, bottle breaks, walking up to a car as a police officer, hand on the back of the next stands up.
My pattern recognition says something’s not right, call for backup, run, whatever the case may be. Too often, though, we use that same principle in a investigation and say, “Oh, my gut tells me this.” Gut instinct is terrible for personal and professional relationships because cognitive biases are more powerful.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Brad Beeler: And those biases will lead you astray every time. The anchoring bias, the confirmation bias, all that.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, no, I, uh, it comes to mind the, uh, American Nightmare documentary. I’m not sure if you’ve seen that, but it was- Mm … really good. It, it kept-
Brad Beeler: Great show …
Zach Elwood: a bunch of… Yeah, it was a d- documentary about some bad reads and decisions some- Yeah
some, uh, poli- police made in regards to some quite honestly, yeah, it was bizarre series of events. So yeah.
Brad Beeler: But, but Zach, like go to that, go to that episode. Think about this, and I know any of your listeners that was seeing this, anybody that saw episode one, you’re going, “How many more episodes are there to this?”
Because that guy obviously did it.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, exactly. No, the, the-
Brad Beeler: Right …
Zach Elwood: the vibes and the reads can be very unintuitive- Yeah … especially for unusual situations where it’s like stra- you know, strange and unusual cases where, where your, your reads for the situation can be completely off.
Brad Beeler: Yeah. Anybody, if anybody knew that and they watched it, any of these experts that go back, and I’ve seen a couple on YouTube do this, “Oh, well, I saw this, and you saw how his feet were pointed, and you saw he looked here.
I knew all along that they had the wrong guy.” You’re full of it.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, yeah. No, no. No, that’s why, you know, the, a lot of these, you know, so-called behavior experts who make all the YouTube video content, it’s like they usually will… I, I thought about writing a, doing a piece about this where, like, where, how they tend to approach the content creation, ’cause it’s like they’re not gonna choose a case that just happened where they know it could go- Yeah
multiple ways, right? ‘Cause that could make them look foolish. You know, they wouldn’t have made, you know, done an analysis or at least a confident analysis of that g- uh, right after that case happened of the, the first suspect in that case, right? So there’s certain, there’s certain patterns you, you can know apply to the content creation.
And yeah, if, if he, if that guy had been found out to be guilty, they would’ve taken the same behavior and, you know, interpreted in a, a different way. Yes. And yeah, the, the, the, the confirmation biases are, are, are very real. I think that’s the most important thing about this is, uh, realizing how we can be led astray.
Even skilled practitioners obviously are, are often, in any, any domain, leaving aside law enforcement or anything, it’s like you can often be led astray, uh, especially for more unusual
Brad Beeler: situations. I mean, how many people dated somebody that they thought the person was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then it turns out they weren’t?
Their first impression was horrifically wrong, because people can change behavior shor- for short periods of time, but the pathology always wins.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and um, and in your book too, I think, uh, what stood out to me too, getting back to the statement analysis, is i- in your DECEIVES acronym that, uh, talking about, you know, uh, practical tips for, uh, reading people, getting information from people.
You know, a, a good chunk of that was, was just li- you know, about listening to what people say and, you know, uh, and avoiding, you know, confirmation biases. Mm-hmm. But a, a big part of it was, you know, l- listening is huge. I think that’s a very undervalued part of all of this is, you know… And, and when I talked to Gary Noesner, you know, the, the, the hostage negotiator- Mm-hmm
for, for the FBI, that was his thing too, and he act- he actually said doing the hostage negotiation work, because it was so auditory focused, you know, they, they were just usually talking on the phone, it actually allowed more focus on the words and listening and, and reaching deductions about what people were saying, which I thought was a, a very good point too.
Brad Beeler: No, that’s, uh, obviously that guy’s, that guy’s, uh, amazing with what he’s done and what he’s seen, and I think that’s an interesting point because some people would say more information is always better. But sometimes, especially if you’re having to make decisions, sometimes limiting that, that flow of information’s helpful.
Zach Elwood: Right. Yeah. Uh, do you wanna a- and this has been great. Do you wanna add anything else, Brad?
Brad Beeler: N- no, I really appreciate the, uh, the opportunity. I think we covered, uh, a lot of things. I mean, I think once again, I try to caveat everything by saying what gets the clicks is by saying absolutes, but absolutes just don’t exist when it comes to two individuals getting together and having a conversation.