The Jordan Harbinger Show - 773: David Lieberman | Deciphering What People Really Want

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

Dr. David Lieberman (@dr_lieberman) is the author of the book Mindreader: The New Science of Deciphering What People Really Think, What They Really Want, and Who They Really Are. He is a respected expert on human behavior and relationships, with a focus on improving communication and understanding between individuals. What We Discuss with Dr. David Lieberman: Common misconceptions about body language that can be safely discarded as nonsense. The difference between self-esteem and confidence. Why guilty people usually want the conversation to end as soon as possible, while innocent people often want a further exchange of information. What spatial immediacy is, and its impact on how people interact and the nature of their communication. Why the less emotionally and mentally healthy someone is, the less comfortable they are with people who hold opposing viewpoints. And much more… Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/773 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. What you want to do is you want to gather facts, and then you introduce a piece of evidence that's not true but could be true, and you watch how your suspect handles it. So, for example, oh, I heard there was a water main break and traffic was backed up for hours. It must have taken you a while to get out. Now they've got a problem.

If they weren't there, they don't know how to respond. They may think you're trapping them. They may not. But they're going to do the one thing that everyone who is lying about a story does, and that is hesitate. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional investigative journalist, arms trafficker, rocket scientist, or cold case homicide investigator. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a way to tell your friends, about the show. I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of your favorite episodes or our favorite episodes, soon to be your favorite, organized by topic to help new listeners

get a taste of everything that we do here on this show. Topics like persuasion and influence, the subject of today's interview, disinformation and cyber warfare, negotiation, communication, crime and cults, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Now today's guest, I have been reading his stuff for a long time, And I mean a long time. This is probably going on 20 years. It was some of the genesis of my interest in human behavior even before podcasting was a thing I knew existed. He is one of the world's foremost experts on human behavior and interpersonal relationships.

teaches at the CIA, FBI, NSA. Also works with the behavioral analysis unit over in the FBI. Robin Drake, who's been on the show, was over there. Joe Navarro, who's been on the show, was over there. Today we're going to discuss lie detection. Not the YouTube stuff. We're going to debunk some of that stuff, the so-called lie detection and body language reading. that you learn online, especially on YouTube.

We're also going to dive into our use of language, and what that tells us about the mindset of the people that we are talking to while we are talking to them, what they're thinking, whether they might be telling the truth or not. Also, a little tangent on ego, narcissism, threats, busting people who are telling us a fib or a bad alibi, and this one, by the way, is great for kids and teenagers especially, and a whole lot more.

David is really a fascinating guy who I really enjoyed talking with. I loved this episode. I know you will as well. This is the perfect way for us to start the year here on the Jordan Harbinger show. So here we go with David Lieberman. It was surprising because when I booked this, I was like, why does that name sound familiar? Oh, the guy whose books I've been reading since I think the 90s, actually. It was a superpower. Well, it still is a superpower, but it was kind of like a superpower at that time because I was 18, 19 years old. And I get this book where it's like, never be lied to again or something along those lines. And I thought, wait a minute, Does everybody know about this?

How do people not know about this? And so I started reading these things as a, basically an old child right in high school, early college. And I remember being so giddy because I'd catch my friends or girlfriends or whatever fibbing and I'd be using these tests on my parents. And it's like nobody had ever heard of this stuff before. Yeah. Well, I think speaking about my second book and what it does or what it did is it introduced

the public for the first time to. formal techniques on lie detection. And before that book, there were no other books. Now, there's a million great books, by the way. But that was really the first book that introduced the concept of being able to detect deception in everyday life. There's actually too much information on this subject now, in my opinion. I would imagine that you probably agree with that because a lot of the information is crap, actually. So I'm curious what you think about some of these YouTube, body language experts, because you and I both know Robin Drake, Joe Navarro, these guys from NSA, CIA FBI behavioral analysis unit who are using a lot of real stuff that you taught them

in many occasions. But some of it is like, if their feet are aimed towards the door, they want to leave. And I'm like, I don't know. Sometimes I just sit with my feet towards the door because that's the most comfortable position that there is. Right. And I think one of the biggest misconceptions with reading people in general and lie detection specifically is the reliance on body language, which simply does not work. Now, there is an area where it is effective in terms of looking for congruency and certainly in unguarded situations. But the fact that someone's arms are folded, the fact that they're looking away, the fact they're scratching the nose doesn't mean anything in and of itself. And if you're talking to someone who's even a mildly sophisticated

liar, you're going to get false readings time and again. That's interesting. So they have to be a sophisticated liar to trip you up because I would think what happens if their nose is itchy or the room is cold? Then they're like this and they're going, gee, I don't know. I can't remember where I parked the car. And it's like, well, maybe the dude has a bugger stuck on his nose and he's freezing. I mean, that's happened to me before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So you're exactly right. So there are some clues. You're right. In terms of arms being full, the person may be cold or maybe comfortable. nose itches, there is some wisdom to some of them. For example, when we lie, eye contact increases

intimacy. So a unsophisticated liar, in this case, maybe a small child might look away because they feel uncomfortable maintaining eye contact, which is why I say when you're dealing with really somebody who's unsophisticated. But because body language, first off, is so easy to fake, anyone that relies on it again, they're going to get misreads time and again. That makes sense because I suppose if I've read any book or even watched a few YouTube primers on lying, and it's like, what if they're not looking at you and they're closed off? Now I go, okay, well, I'm going to go lie about having not done something. So I'm going to spread one arm across the chair, look them in the eye, tilt my head,

smile a little bit and be like, I have no idea who forgot to take out the garbage. This was not on my list of chores. And, you know, it's a shame when this kind of thing happens. And it's just like, oh, I've totally tripped everyone up because I watched 13 minutes of YouTube, and now I know the tells they're looking for it. I'm just going to reverse those, at least in the short term. Right. That's right.

If something is too easy to fake, it's irresponsible to use them as markers of deception. It reminds me of these polygraph tests where the old stuff from the 70s was like, just clench your butt cheeks or put a rock in your shoe. and then within a year or two, probably whoever designed these machines was like, well, we got to circumvent that stuff. Now we're going to have a heart rate monitor. Good luck fake in that stuff. You know, and it just becomes more sophisticated. But our brains don't necessarily become more sophisticated at picking up deception just because we've read a book about how people fake being a good lie or improve their skill at lying, right? Yeah, that's a great point. Also, the reason why, by the way,

we want more books and more information on things that don't work is because if they're easy to do, they give us the illusion of security. In other words, if I can just rely on whether somebody's arms across or they're looking away, then I can feel that sort of sense of comfort in a conversation. And so that's sort of diluting ourselves into feeling more secure. I think trumps the fact that a person will go in eyes wide open and actually legitimately be more secure because they're looking objectively at the information rather than relying on some sort of outdated body language signs. You know, body language, the reliance on it gives us the illusion of security, meaning that if I know what somebody is thinking, what they're feeling based on a couple of gestures,

then I can go into a conversation and feel more secure. But the opposite is true is because I'm not really present. I'm not really observing what's happening. I'm just relying on something that's not true. So I'm deluding myself into feeling more comfortable. What about a psychopath or a sociopath or somebody who's so delusional they actually believe their own lies and they just don't have the same physical reaction to pressure and manipulation or deception? Because I'm actually a really bad liar. And I'm not just saying that to sort of, it's not a smokescreen. I'm just a terrible liar. Yeah. When I try to make up something, which I don't even do now because I'm so bad at it, I find myself so self-conscious about everything that I'm doing and at the same time while being self- I'm still doing all of the obvious things that people do. So maybe a YouTube doctorate of body language would help somebody see if I'm lying, but it would definitely not help somebody who's even remotely good at. This is why I would be a terrible, I think, probably spy or undercover type of person because I remember people saying, did you do this? And I'll go, uh, and I'm looking at the ground,

I'm scratching my head, I'm scratching my note. I mean, it really is like what my toddler does, what my three-year-old son does when he's lying about leaving out the Legos that are sitting right in front of me. It's just so bad. But if I could convince myself that I wasn't lying because I lived in an alternate reality or just didn't care about anybody else at all, I feel like I'd be so much better at deception. Yeah. Well, you know, you suffer with this thing called integrity, which makes it difficult for you, you know, to lie with conviction over something that you have a conscience. But just parenthetically, you mentioned your toddler. I know we're not talking about parenting here, but a great technique I do with my own kids to make sure that they don't get in the habit of lying

is I let them plead the fifth, meaning if I asked them to leave out your Legos and I know that a no is going to follow, I'd say, no, I want you to tell me the truth. If you want to plead the fifth and not answer, that's also okay. So pleading the fifth is tacit really admission of guilt, but at the same time, it doesn't allow for them to get into the habit of lying to me or to, you know, to mom. That's interesting. So they can plead the fifth where they know they're going to have to lie to get out of something, but then you just know that the answer is they did it. That's right. And they don't have to lie to me and get into that awful habit of lying to a parent. And certainly the worst habit of lying to me who's an expert in this. Yeah. And they're trying to double down.

Like, no, Dad, you're wrong this one time in your career, even though you know me really well. And it's completely obvious that I'm guilty. So what do you do then if you know, they plead the fifth. They get punished anyways, I assume, right? Because. So in my house is whatever it is you've done, pales in comparison to lying about it. Because you want to raise kids who do have that sense of integrity and authenticity and honesty. And so what it is they done, we can deal with. But lying, that's where we draw the line into the land of unacceptability. And they are always better off telling the truth, which is why, by the way, whether you want to get a confession from a five-year-old or a serial killer, one of the mistakes I think people make is that we don't incentivize the truth.

You know, we'll say something like, have you left your Legos out here? And if I find out you did, you're going to be blah, blah, blah. Where's the incentive for coming clean? Yeah, if you lie about this, you are maybe going to get away with it. But if you tell me the truth right now, you are definitely in so much trouble. You're never going to know what hit you. It's like, well, okay, this is a really easy choice now. Right. And that's not the incentive program. Unfortunately, by the way, those you know, in law enforcement who are not properly trained will even engage in those types of tactics, which doesn't really offer much of an incentive for the bad guy to say I did it. Just being a former attorney here, I know better than to even try to talk to the police whether you're

innocent or not, because it's not their job to decide if you're innocent or not, it's their job to catch a criminal. And if you're not one, and they can make you look like one, or get you to say that you are one, they're probably not supposed to do that, but it happens all the time, et cetera. So it seems like the last thing you'd want to do is also make an actual criminal disincentivized to tell you just about anything. I mean, this is one of the reasons we have all these checks and balances in the legal system itself. But I want to digress. into all of that. I'm curious, you know, a lot of folks will count on these arms cross feet pointing towards it or these sort of one-off observations or tactics. It's usually about a whole picture of a person,

right? Like a profile. We've heard about baselines and things like that. You know, you've got to get a baseline on them. That's why your mom can always tell that you're lying, but maybe like your teachers can't. Right. So look, you know, one of the reasons why the book has gotten so much attention is because it's practical. You don't always get a baseline on somebody. Meet someone in an elevator. I don't know the history. I don't know what's going on. I just want to know where whether there's someone that's going to harm me or not. When it comes to body language, there are a couple of things that are effective. One is, you know, just to look in terms of congruency, to make sure that the nonverbals match up with the verbals. That's sort of low-hanging fruit. So, you know, a person who

is saying one thing, but their body language is contradictory, that's something I would certainly pay attention to. In an unguarded situation, certainly is a whole field called embodied cognition, which explains that our thoughts are not just reflected in our posture, but they can originate from it, meaning that if we are slunched over or humped over and a head is down, we're going to probably be thinking less optimistic thoughts. It's likely that we're in that sort of state, whereas you see somebody in a more expansive posture. It's likely they're in a more positive state. Again, if it's in a guarded situation where they know you're watching them, it doesn't work. But in unguarded situations, you can very easily just sit in the park and look at people

and you get sort of a snapshot into their mood. The problem is now when we enter guarded situations where I know you're paying attention to me. We're in a negotiation. We're in an arbitration, mediation, whatever it is or conversation. And I know that you're watching my posture. Forget about using it as any sort of barometer. It's almost like the, what's that, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, right? It's like if you're watching it and people are paying attention to that and I know you're doing that, then everything changes. And the second I start focusing on these things, they become irrelevant and can't be used. The slit particle experiment. Wow. Didn't think we'd hear from that one. Yeah. I mean, it's not really a perfect metaphor for what we're

talking about. No, but you're raising interesting point is our perspective, you know, is going to change, you know, the objective reality. And in fact, if our perspective becomes our reality, meaning that, you know, the subjective lens through which we've used something is how we're going to to act, then we want to make sure that subjectivity is limited to become as objective as possible. We all look through our own lens of subjectivity, right, our perspective. So the less eye we have in the picture, the more clearly we're going to see reality. The more clearly the objective reality will line up with our experience. But if we're looking vis-a-vis, you know, heuristics or cognitive biases, which is where stereotypes come from, if we're looking through

our own lens, we're not seeing what is. We're seeing only a projection of our own wants and securities, needs, what we need to see. And that's really when we become less emotionally stable in general and also less able to be the person. Because if I'm looking at you with the end in mind, I'm not seeing what is. I'm already deciding what is. And then I'm going to see what fits that narrative. That is often the problem, I think, with witness testimony too, right? Or eyewitness testimony, I would say, not like court testimony, but people, you hear about leading questions or you see all these problems where the police officer says, when did you see these cars smash into each other? And the person's like, you can just see the whirlwind of their story rearranging because maybe

they didn't, maybe a truck hit both the cars. But then they just change the story based on the question and it becomes a completely different thing. It can become something along the lines of we're almost pre-programmed to feed the person what they want to hear or what they want to see or what we want to hear or what we want to see, even if we're not paying attention to that kind of thing. Like, it could happen on a subconscious level, which is a little scary. It is. I think you're raising a great point. Not just leading the witness is an issue, but also when you use the word smash,

you're going to get a different answer than if you say an attorney would likely object when the car hit the other car. When you say smash, you're already framing it at something other than, you know, a, is a fender bender. What's your expression? Bender bender bender. Right. So, you know, the language you use is very powerful in terms of framing it.

Sure. It's funny you bring up fender bender because I was going to ask you about euphemisms and psychological distance, right? We have friendly fire. We have the powder room. We don't say, well, I mean, my family, we do say I have to go to the crapper. But what we mean is the powder room. And when we say, I got laid off.

And I remember when I was younger, I would go, so what's the difference between getting laid off and getting fired? And my mom would go, oh, sometimes they call you back to work after you get laid off. And that might have been true in the 80s in the auto industry, but it wasn't really true anywhere else and it still isn't. That's right. That's right. You know, euphemisms have a powerful way of how it shapes our perception. Certainly, we'd rather hear about friendly fire than, you know, our forces firing on each other, casualties rather than deaths, collateral damage rather than innocent people died.

It changes our perception. So certainly that comes in handy when somebody's using the euphemism. It's likely that they feel uncomfortable using, you know, the language outright. And certainly in politics that, you know, it's very charged with euphemisms. I remember back when I think maybe late 70s when the term was changed from unwed mother to single parents, it completely sort of shifted people's perceptions and polls. So language has a lot to do with how we frame not just our world, but how we see things. That's, I think, one of the problems that, and this is heavily politicized, and we don't have to go down that road too far, but it's one of

the reasons I think a lot of people on certain, especially extreme sides of the aisle, try and change what we are allowed to say, and the other side says, you're not going to make me use that, right, or you're not going to make me say that. Because we do, even if we don't, know consciously, we have a subconscious appreciation for the effect that language has. And we see this in countries that have totalitarian or authoritarian regimes, right? You're not allowed to say, this is a war in Russia, because that would change the perception. It would bring back psychological baggage from other wars that Russia has been in. In North Korea, for example, in China, you can't say certain things about, forget the leadership.

You can't say certain things about the party that the leader runs, about the country. You have to use certain words when you're talking about the United States or other enemy countries. It's really, really controlled. I don't know if we're slaves to the language we use, but certainly we are guided heavily by the language that we are using. No, dad. I don't know if most people appreciate the impact from a neurological level. It has language and the verisceral response that can come about. You know, an incursion is going to be felt differently, neurologically than the word war.

So, you know, rape or assault, you know, these are words that there's a very real reason why people choose to use different language because it's going to change how the person hears it. They'd much rather hear they have to undergo a procedure than a surgery. You know, it's going to impact on how we feel about it. So languages make no mistake, it is a powerful weapon. And if we don't realize the impact it can have, you know, on how we feel about things, we're being unduly influenced to a great extent. Tell me about spatial immediacy.

This is an interesting concept I really had never heard of before. Right. So that's something we actually developed, which is why you probably never heard of it before. Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah, in terms of the language. And you notice that when people use words like here and there, like here's a nice idea, there's a nice idea, there's my boy, here's my boy, here's and so on. When we feel more comfortable and confident with something, we use spatial immediacy.

We want to bring it closer. When we feel uncomfortable, we sort of want to distance ourselves from it. I mean, that much makes sense. So you'll notice it comes up in language, and specifically what we brought up here is the word here and there. By the right, I encourage everyone to recognize that there is no one trick pony. Just because somebody says one thing, there's one marker in a sentence, it means absolutely positively nothing. Don't, you know, assume something based on that. You know, when you've got seven, eight, nine markers in a single sentence, okay, then you've got a higher degree of reliability. But, you know, we're not speaking in absolutes here. These are tools. They're not, you know, undeniable 100%

absolute givens. So when a person says, for example, here are the blueprints versus there they're the blueprints or here's a nice idea versus there's a nice idea. When they use the word here, there's a greater likelihood that they appreciate what it is that is in front of them. If they use the word there, they're already setting themselves up for some sort of distance. And you mentioned before in terms of, you know, sociopaths or psychopaths. And it's different if somebody believes what they're saying is true because then they're technically not lying. But even the most polished liar can give themselves away when it comes to this field of psycho-linguistics. Because we're not paying attention to these small words or to our language as much as to, you know, how we're giving it over.

So we've well practiced and making sure that I convince you of something in a certain way. But the actual words that I use, we're not well rehearsed. in that, and that's how you can more easily view somebody's what they're really thinking. It's sort of the same, along the same lines as the use of personal pronouns. Tell me about those, what those indicate about whether or not somebody is telling you maybe the truth about how they feel, for example. Sure, right. So when you've got a pronoun like I, me, my, there's a greater likelihood that the person believes in what is they're saying because they're looking to attach that linguistic eye. In much the same way we mentioned before that eye contact increases

intimacy, that linguistic eye, that personal eye, it is a greater stamp of integrity on what is the person saying. So, for example, I say, I like your shirt versus it's a nice shirt. I like your podcast versus it's a nice podcast. Now, I'm saying basically the same thing, but when I say I like it, I'm taking ownership of what it is I'm saying. When I say it's nice, again, there's reasons why people would take the eye out. Introverts are more likely to do that and so on. But in broad strokes, when we remove the eye, the me, the my from the equation, there's a greater likelihood that the person may not be as sincere as if they attach the eye to it. Is this because I want to, I want to be closer to things that are positive and further

away from things that I think are negative? Is it, is that simple? Yeah, no, that is the genesis of the psychology, and it unfolds in a myriad of ways. Let's say you've got two people walking out after first date, Jack and Jill, and Jill says to Jack, where do we park the car? Now, an innocent question, but there's a side of a series of subtext of affinity and of relationship there, because if she didn't like Jack, she would never use the word we. She would say, where did you park the car or your car? As soon as she begins to see themselves as a unit and uses the word we, that's very telling. Now, certainly, just because she asked Jack, where did you park the car? Doesn't mean she doesn't like them,

but the converse is, in fact, revealing. Once she uses that a word like we or us or our, it already indicates that she's begun to see themselves as a pair and identifies in that way. I remember trying to reverse engineer this when I was dating and being like, okay, I need to think of ways in which I can bond with this person quickly by using we and almost coming up with like little, I guess little tiny little conspiracies. Like one of them would be something where I would try to create a situation in which we were doing things together, but psychologically, even if we were just eating dinner, it would always be wee, we, we. And I, I don't know if it worked, but it certainly felt like it worked. I don't know what that means

in the context of dating. Probably means nothing. It's not really that empirical. But it certainly felt like something that would work. And I probably did get that from one of your books. And I tried to use my powers for good, but I don't know if I always succeeded. Yeah, as do I, by the way, increasingly so. But I will tell you there's a psychological basis for that. Unfortunately, con artist will use the word we and lets an hour because it does trigger that sense of weeness, togetherness, a bond that's artificially created. There's a great book called The Gift of Fear, Gavin De Becker. And he talks, yeah, and he talks about how people will go ahead and, you know, use these words to create an artificial affinity that doesn't

exist. But once again, in an unguarded conversation, the reason why it's affected is because when somebody does use that language, we can tell that there is a subtext of interest. Yeah, he was on the show, episode 329 and 330, and we did talk about that a little bit, especially the con artists and the people who try to push your boundaries. Yeah. They'll try to do the pairing thing that we just talked about, but they do it in a very forceful way. And I think one of the examples from the book was he had followed this woman up to her apartment

up the stairs and she had trouble with her grocery. And he was like, let me carry your groceries. Let me help you with her groceries. And she was like, no. And he's like, let's do this. I'll help you. We'll get your groceries. We've got a hungry cat to feed.

Something like that. It was just creepy extra boundary pushing. And then, of course, he forced himself into the apartment. and, you know, horrific things ensued from there out. But she knew, and that was, I think, one of the things that she had mentioned during the debrief or whatever you call it with the police, is she just said, and Gavin or whoever had figured out that this guy was just consistently forcing the issue of, we are doing something together. And she was like, I don't know you. You're a stranger who walked up the stairs behind me. And he kept trying to do this in a very, I guess,

clunky way, but that was part of his spiel. Yeah. And language is very telling. And one of the the giveaways of somebody who is emotionally unhealthy in a potentially dangerous way is somebody who pushes past the boundaries of acceptability and doesn't hear the word no in any form or fashion. You know, somebody who doesn't respect boundaries of social norms, that's an immediate red flag and not in your favor. There are people who don't have a good sense of boundaries, but there's sort of that people please a doormat mentality that will let people into their space in an unhealthy way. If they're not going to be dangerous to us, there will be a danger to themselves, unfortunately, at the extreme. But somebody who comes into our space after we've already drawn that

boundary line doesn't respect it, that's one of the hard giveaways of emotional unwellness and a potential for danger. So ladies and guys watch out for this, but I think a lot of this happens with, I think women are the common example here because, one, many are raised to be more, maybe not to have as strong boundaries and to be a little bit more people pleaser than a lot of guys are. That's not as true maybe now as it was 10 or 20 years ago, but it certainly can be a problematic. And I think also just from a physical danger perspective, it makes sense to pay attention to this kind of thing. Yeah, and if you ask people, you know, why they didn't say something. And he talks about this is that they didn't want to offend the person.

They didn't want to say something, you know, walk out of the elevator because they knew something was just not right. Their gut told them, but they ignored it because they couldn't sort of put a logic to it. And so they didn't want to feel foolish and make the other person feel uncomfortable. I encourage everyone. Risk somebody feeling uncomfortable if your gut tells you something is not right. The worst case is you will have offended somebody, you know, unintentionally. And if they are reasonably healthy, they will understand what's happened. And if they're not, then certainly you made the right choice anyway. Yeah, I remember in New York where people are on top of each other and I used to live there. I came home later at night from the gym. And I looked like crap. And it was cold. I had a

hooded sweatshirt on. My hood was up. And I wasn't paying a lot of attention. I probably looked kind of scary. And it was dark. I lived downtown in the financial district. And there was a woman from my building, and I walked in the building behind her, and she said, what do you want? And I was like, oh, I'm your neighbor. And she was like, get away from me. And I saw her the next day. And she didn't recognize me because I was dressed like a normal person. But I just remember thinking, wow, I'm really bummed that I scared my neighbor like that. I feel like such a jerk. You know, she must have been really, really scared to react like that. And that's, I think, an emotionally healthy response to that sort of thing. She was scared. I didn't take it personally because, I mean, what am I going to do?

I'm not a serial killer. She thought I was maybe. So who cares, right? Yeah, that's just what I was thinking is you had an emotionally healthy responsive. I feel bad for her. Yeah. Your focus was on her pain and having empathy for her. Now, like, what is she doing? Why does she think I? The person who would think that, unfortunately, would be the bad guy, right, who would be upset that she saw through him, even though it wasn't maybe his intention at that point, his insecurities and sensitivities are going to cause him to react in that way. But your response is perfectly healthy. You felt bad for her having put her in a situation. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, David Lieberman. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these folks for the show,

all the authors, thinkers, creators that you hear every single week, it's because of my network. And I hate that word. And networking is a dirty word. But I'm teaching you how to build your network for free in a non-gross way over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Now this is about improving your relationship building skills and having other people develop a relationship with you, frankly, that's all there is to it. And the course does all that again in a non-gross, non-cringe, down-to-earthway, nothing is supposed to be awkward or cheesy. It's just practical exercises that are going to make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, a better peer, and who doesn't want that here in 2023? Six minutes a day is all it takes.

and many of the guests on our show, subscribe and contribute to that course. Again, it's totally free. You'll be in smart company, Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Now, back to David Lieberman. I felt guilty for a long time, and I was like, oh, I hope she's not just being polite and seeing me around now and smiling. I just hope she didn't know that it was me because I felt really embarrassed having done that, because especially, you know, now as a married guy with kids, I'm like, come on, dumbass.

Take off your hood. make some small talk, even if you're a little cold. It's cold out there. I'm freezing. Going to the gym. It takes extra effort just to get my butt there and back these days. You know, just do something to make the other person feel comfortable because imagine her coming back with groceries at 10.30 p.m. or whatever time it was, in the winter, in the dark, in New York, with nobody else on the streets. That was my mindset at the time.

But you're right. When you read about the serial killer types, there's a lot of, like, weird narcissism involved. And I guess this is probably a different episode to just analyze these types of people. but I want to get a little bit back on track here. You write about high versus low performer answers, and I think the high performer answers usually include more personal pronouns. Is that because they're taking responsibility for things more personally? Yeah, that's right.

And also they're drawing on real experience. In other words, you know, if you ask, if I'm applying for a job and you ask me about my past, you know, sales performance, I would say, I did this. I make, you know, 50 calls a day. I follow up. But if I said, yeah, you know, if you asked me about, you know, what makes a high level performer, I would probably use, you know, language that would be more in the third party. Well, one should always follow up with the caller. You want to make sure that you make at least 50

calls a day. This is someone that's never done it because as soon as they say, I, again, they're taking ownership of it. Now, it doesn't mean that somebody won't, you know, use different pronouns in different situations. But by and large, when we say I, me, my, you can be sure that this person is coming from a place of either experience or authenticity. And if they look to sort of push it away, you know, this comes up in therapy a lot. When somebody's talking about maybe a trauma or something traumatic that's happened, if they're not really, really to accept it, they'll talk on the third person. You know, a child growing up like this, you know, any child would feel this way.

Rather than when I was growing up, this is what happened, right? That somebody's already sort of move past the trauma to some degree. As soon as they put it into a third party, you can tell there's a degree of discomfort. Of course, it doesn't mean they're lying, but it does mean that there's something, there's a reason why they're not taking ownership of what is they're saying. This topic always reminds me of that Seinfeld episode. You remember always, Jimmy doesn't like that. Jimmy doesn't.

Yeah. And she thinks she's going out with the other guy, but he's just a weird guy who talks about himself in the third person. In the gym, yeah. Yeah, in the gym, yeah, Jimmy would love that. In violent crime reporting, I may get this wrong, so correct me where I do, but the victim when talking about the offense and the offender in the scene, it's always he put me in the car, not we got into the car.

Is this the inverse of what we were just talking about, where they're distancing themselves from this, they're unpairing because they're not doing it together willingly? That's right. You know, this comes up a lot. When a person identifies themselves with somebody else, they use cooperative language, we, us, our. So if somebody is recounting a crime where they would take in and they were the victim, they're not going to be using language that connotes a bond or unity in much of the same way

that, you know, when I speak to couples, if there's a lot of we and us in our language, I know that, you know, there is something there other than you, me, I, there's no us, there's no our, there's no cooperative language. And the research shows that, you know, just the, whether or not a couple uses cooperative language is going to be indicative of how they work through conflicts and the status of the relationship. I became hyper aware of that when reading the book. And I was thinking, oh, man, do I say our car?

Because I share a car with my wife. Do I say our car? Because it really is our only car. So what am I saying that because I'm in a paired bond with my wife? Or is it because, you know, I don't even know. I'd start, of course, overthinking it. I would imagine one of the common side effects of reading a book like this is overthinking every damn thing that you do for the next two weeks.

Yeah, right. And then the good news is it's sort of like a second nature. It becomes a part of you. So while it may amp up the paranoia in the first couple of weeks, yeah, I understand. Afterwards, when you've got that sort of, you know, antenna up, and it puts you in a much more relaxed position because you can easily decide. miss threats and easily read the situation rather than, you know, sort of stumble through it and hope you're getting it right. Using language to put people or things in a specific order,

what can we tell by the order somebody puts a list of people or things? You'd mentioned this in the book, and I thought this was pretty interesting given that I always assume I put things in a random order or the order which I think of them is not necessarily relevant, but I guess maybe that's not true. Yeah, that's true. And I actually became aware of this as I've been seeing people for about two decades now. And, you know, when I ask them to recount different situations or talk about different things, what they prioritize, what they bring up first is very telling. Now, you know, if you have, you ask, I think the example I speak about in the book is, you know, you know, you ask a small child to describe your family. And if she walks through, you know,

mom and her sisters and her aunts and the goldfish and then eventually rambles on to dad, that's telling. Again, we don't want to call family services based on that one conversation. But it is something that's quite revealing. That does make some sense, I suppose, if it's really obvious, right? Here's this and here's the hamster and then there's Daddy and he's like on the far end of the paper. Okay, you don't probably need a PhD in psychology to dig into that one. Is it more nuanced when you're actually using this kind of thing in practice? Yeah, for sure, certainly.

And that's just it. The gradations are everything. And it also depends on whether or not, once again, we bring back guard and unguarded. If you're in a guarded situation where the person knows, certainly in negotiation, the rule of negotiation, you don't bring up what you want first. You've got to let it sit for a while. So we're speaking, you know, in terms of priorities and how people bring things up, you have to be cognizant of whether or not it is something that they're paying attention to or not, which is why it does make a very big difference as to whether these are guarded or unguarded scenarios.

Sometimes what people ignore or omit would be a big clue as well. You have a story in the book, about an art dealer evaluating paintings in your house? Tell us about that. Because I think this is probably something that happens to us every month and we just don't even notice. Yeah. Yeah, this is in those cases why it happened to me. I should have known better, but okay, let people learn from my foolishness. So I had somebody come to my house years and years ago, and it was my great aunt who left me a number of paintings, a lot of stuff, and it was paintings. I know nothing about art. So I had somebody come down, and he looked at each one. And, and, you know, and, was on the phone. I remember going back and forth. And one painting, it almost was like he made a

point to avoid it, which I found curious because each one he looked at. So it's either it was just, you know, a kid's drawing or, you know, something completely irrelevant, or it was something of value that he didn't want to spend time looking at lest I think that it was something valuable. And, you know, as a story goes, certainly it turned out that that was the only painting that was of value. The others weren't so valuable. He wouldn't single that. that one out. He offered me money for the entire lot and kept on upping and upping it. And it was obviously he couldn't be trusted. I just wanted to see exactly where he'd go. And he left and I called in somebody and, you know, this was smarter this time and paid a fee for the evaluation for the

appraisal. And it turns out that that painting was something like seven times we'd offer me for everything altogether. Oh, wow. So he was probably going to buy all of them, throw all of them out in a dumpster on the way back to his office and keep the one that was valuable. That's so interesting. When you recount the story like that, it seems so obvious that that was the wrong way for him to handle that. And I think like, oh, if I were doing this, I'd say, this was not valuable, and I'd point right at that, you know, but I don't know. I think I probably would, it's subconscious, right? This guy just goes, oh, I don't want to draw attention to that, so I'm going to ignore it. That's right. It just seems like we can't really avoid this kind of behavior.

And as human nature-based was his behavior, unfortunately, so was mine. I should know better. And I didn't. I mean, and I thought, I knew something was wrong. And, you know, if I want to look kindly back at my thinking, I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this. And he already come out. And I spent the afternoon. I was like, in retrospect, obviously, it was, you know, it was silly for me to even not recognize right away that something is quite a miss. Conversational spotlights. These are words used to magnify something in a sentence. And in interrogations, they often signal deception. Now, here's the list. Here's a partial list. and unfortunately, everyone's going to recognize something they use 100 times a day.

Honestly, frankly, basically, et cetera. How do you know if this is deception or they're magnifying something or they're just a nervous talker? Yeah. And they're overusing a word that everybody says a thousand times a week. Right. So that's okay. And a big proponent of filters and not putting things in the big baskets. You have to filter out false positives.

And certainly, you know, somebody who's nervous and they're speaking to somebody, that's going to go in the category of, you know, as we talk about in the book, like a flirty exchange and somebody who wants to keep the conversation going. They'll put in these conversational spotlights basically, honestly, to sort of draw more attention to what is the saying, try to extend the conversation. When a person is doing it in a situation where they're being interrogated or interviewed and deception is a possibility, they usually indicate deception rather than a strong interest in engaging with the person. That means that, look, if you're asking me whether I've done something, we're in a police

situation in the interrogation room, and I say, honestly, I have no idea who did it. Frankly, it could have been anybody. Basically, I have no idea how this crime would have even happened. That indicates deception, but if I'm talking about it with a bunch of friends, it just means it means nothing, or it could mean nothing? That's right. Again, but if the person is telling a story that is of dubious nature and you want to question the story, then those could very well be indication of deception.

And the nuance here is if you're just in a conversation, there's no agenda here. They say, honestly, they're just trying to be more interesting. They're trying to be more engaging. So it's something that tells us that they're interested in the conversation, whereas it will be the complete opposite if you're in a different scenario. I see. Yeah, because I find myself saying, honestly, you know what, I have no idea. And that's me telling a story that is truthful and totally normal.

Sure. But I'm usually not telling it to a police. officer who thinks that I did it. That's right. And if you are a police officer, you're going to listen to that word, honestly, because honestly, you can be sure whatever follows is going to be anything but honest. Interesting. Interesting. Status is something you discuss a lot in many of your books, but in Mind Reader, the status stuff always fascinated me, especially because when I was doing the dating stuff back in my 20s, especially, if you're not a guy in your 20s and 30s obsessed with status, then, you know, who are you? Bless you. But, you know, this, this is, this is. This

is like where we live for that decade, decade, and a half where we're dating, and we think about our status and other people's status and the people that were dating and their status and all this stuff seems to be quite subconscious. And I remember when I used to go out all the time and I used to work at nightclubs and things like that, depending on how early in my 20s we're talking about, I used to look at the status of the people working at the nightclub. So you don't necessarily know if the bartender is also the manager, if the promoter

is the bouncer or if it's the guy behind, you just don't necessarily know. So you could observe the way people are interacting. And one of the things that I used to look at, and I remember this, because when I saw it in the book, I knew right away, people of lower status, they don't usually give people of higher status any sort of command. But of course, sometimes you need to do that, and they will soften their language when they do that. Can you give us some examples of this and explain this, because I find this concept quite useful if you're trying to, if you're trying to convince people to do something or find maybe the influencer personality in a group of people, this can be really helpful.

Yeah, sure. There are a number of markers to look for with status, and one is just that. Certainly the lowest status person doesn't give commands to the person of higher status. You know, if you were in a classroom and a teacher, a student barked out an order at a teacher or a child to a parent, you'd be horrified. Oh, maybe not so much in today's age, but, you know, at least, you know, a generation ago, because higher status people will give orders, will give command. So when a lower status person has to give a command or ask a higher status person to do something, they're going to couch it in language

of either uncertainty or they'll put it into a question. They'll certainly be more polite. Rather than close the door, could you close the door? Can I trouble you close the door? Please close the door. You know, other than close the door, they're going to frame it in a way that's much less confrontational. Certainly a higher status person is going to be less focused on themselves, this is sometimes counterintuitive, the lower status person is much more eye-focused. So if you look at an exchange in James Pennybaker, it was brilliant in this area of pronouns and linguistics, talks about different exchanges with this. And basically is that, you know, when you have, whether it's an email or a conversation or a text, the lower status person

is much more eye-focused, whereas the higher-status person is much less likely to use the pronoun I or me, and they're focused on the situation because they don't need to be hyper-focused on themselves. They have that security, but the lowest-status person lacking that security is now going to be more focused on the eye. Interesting. Yeah, that requires a little bit of unpacking. I think people are, again, people might rewind that and listen to it again, and I think it'll be helpful. I know what you mean in this, especially because, I don't know, I spent a lot of time as a low-status person and now I'm a higher status person. What can I say? Let me give you an example.

So, for example, I say something like, I'm so sorry. That's different from forgive me, right? I'm so sorry is I am so sorry. I'm taking ownership. I'm apologizing. Forgive me is a command. I'm not even in the equation. So two people bump into each other. The one who says, I'm sorry is of going to be of lower status or at least going, if you've got assumed same status, meaning they don't know each other, is going to be the less secure person than the person who says, certainly a person who says watch a buster or the one that says, excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. sorry, I'm so sorry, that is a more insecure response than, forgive me, please forgive me. That person is literally issuing a command. And if you think about it, it's going to come from somebody who's going to have the higher ground. What's really interesting where this becomes, in my mind, quite fascinating is when you meet somebody who should be a really high status person, but they start using language like a low status person. And I'm trying to think of a way to tell the story without mentioning any names or giving anything away. But let's say I met somebody who is worth, they're in the three comma club, right? They're a billionaire. And they, you could just tell that they still

thought of themselves as, I don't know, whatever way they were raised is the youngest kid or maybe the kid who got bullied for being a little bit of a computer geek type of person. Their body language was small and submissive. And the language they used was small. A lot of eye focused, a lot of oops, I'm sorry, or preemptively moving out of the way when I needed to reach for something, even though they weren't actually in the way, a lot of the sort of low status behavior, and you realize, man, it's really hard to cover this stuff up. You can apparently earn a billion plus dollars and still have these patterns in the back of your mind. And it probably takes years of people treating you differently to unwire that if it ever happens at all. Right. At such an astute point,

I would say it's going to take years of you seeing yourself differently to unwire that. We're going to act consistently with our self-concept, how I see myself, which is why, you know, the world could see me one way, but if I don't own it, I'm going to act based on how I see me, not based on how you see me. I suppose trying to see yourself differently would require, well, one, possibly some therapy, probably a lot of it. And two, I think people would have to treat you differently for a really, really long time. But whether they do that, because they're going to respond to you as well, right?

They're going to respond to your body language and your vocal tonality and the language that you use. So even if you start off as high status, if you start acting low status, people might fall into that pattern, even though you're the billionaire in the room. That's a great point, and no doubt, we are going to respond to the image that people project and interact with them based on that, which is why you'd mentioned assault before. And unfortunately, a woman who's been a victim of assault is going to have a greatly likelihood of being assaulted again because, then would somebody else, statistically is because her body language, her entire countenance, her demeanor is one

of insecurity and vulnerability. And the predator recognizes that. and he hones in on that. And so, you know, we give ourselves away whether we want to or not. I was doing another show about people who are basically psychopathic predators. It was with Kevin Dutton. I don't know if you know him. You may. Wisdom of psychopaths. That's a book from like 2010, 2012. He was talking about how, I think it was Ted Bundy who said, I can tell by the way a woman walks if she's going to be a good victim or not, which is freaking terrifying. Because you're like, I want to see videos of people who walk like victims and just not do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, you can, by the way. There's a lot of research that shows

exactly what that style looks like, what that whole demeanor and countenance looks like. And unfortunately, these predators are so astute. They are really experts at human nature because that's how, to a large extent, they've been effective of what they're doing is because they're able to read people so well. That is, of course, terrifying because what you think is, how can I change the way that I walk and stand and talk? It's not easy to do that. I mean, that's a whole mindset shift because unless you're an award-winning act, even if you are an award-winning actor, what are you going to do to stay in character your entire life? I mean, that's going to be it's a tall order. It is. It is. But what's interesting is we mentioned embodied cognition before

that whole field. And basically what the research shows is that you're walking that way will, to some degree, impact on how you feel on your mindset. It can be thought-driven and it can also be sort of physiologically driven. And certainly one way to change our state, how we're feeling at a specific time is to change of physiology. It's one of the quickest ways to sort of snap ourselves into a different state. Oh, man. Of course, now you're sort of rolling the boulder up the hill, though, unless you change the way you actually see yourself, right? You can maybe say, okay, Jordan, stand up straight. You walk through that door and you put on a bright smile and you show everyone that you're confident and friendly and charismatic, but it doesn't really matter because

that's going to fade after a while if you're not really that person, right? True. And that's the distinction between states and traits. You can change state, right, but your trait, how you see yourself that consistent and during self-concept, that's not going to happen in the moment. That has to come from a mindset shift. Let's start wrenching this one. Narcissists seem like they operate almost in the opposite way. They make up for their deep-seated insecurity by using that absolute language, the command, given the commands. And you see these people when they do it in a clunky way because it's really obvious, right? It's a young, cocky guy who walks into a place and goes, all right,

here's what's going to happen. And everyone kind of looks at each other like, why does the new guy think he's in charge right now? What's going on here? Who is this idiot? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So right. So narcissists, contrary to popular belief, suffer with a perverse, deep sense of low self-esteem.

They don't like themselves, contrary to the image they project. And it's sort of like a see-sought. The more self-esteem, the more self-love a person generally has, the small of the ego. As self-esteem decreases, the ego now is going to engage to compensate for feelings of guilt and fearality and shame and so on. So the more egocentricity that exists, the more egocentric a person is vis-à-vis narcissism. What they're trying to do is project an image of what they're not and protect their soft inside. So things that they're going to do that give themselves away is one to speak in absolute language because they're trying to ground themselves.

A person is very anxious will always, you know, say things like always and never and 100%. We may think that they're confident, which is different from self-esteem, but they're trying to sort of ground themselves in their language to feel more secure because a person, if you think about it, who genuinely is confident, they're willing to use language that conveys a degree of, you know, wishy-washiness of being unsure. But if a person, for example, is just invested a million dollars in cryptocurrency, they're going to Google, Bitcoin will definitely go up. They're not going to Google what's the best investment right now. If I haven't invested my money, then I'll maybe type in what's the best investment. As I become more anxious, I'm going to

move in the world of absolutes to insulate myself from those feelings of insecurity. Let's talk about the difference then between self-esteem and confidence, because I do think this is confusing for a lot of people. I'm trying to think how I would explain this, but I mean, here you are right in front of me. Why don't we, why don't you do it? So you'll let me know how this goes. Self-esteem refers to the degree of self-love. The duet to which a person generally loves themselves feels worthy of love and connection of good things. Confidence is how effective a person is in a certain area or comfortable with a certain traitor characteristic. So, for example, I can consider myself to be a good tennis player, a good cellist, a good

looking, intelligent, whatever it is. I can have pockets of confidence. It doesn't mean I like myself. And two, I can have high self-esteem. I can generally have a sense of self-esteem, self-worth, but I consider myself to be a poor tennis player, poor cellist, or not smart, or whatever it is. So high self-esteem or self-esteem refers to, again, the degree to which I'd love myself, confidence is how effective I am in certain areas. So this comes in very, very handy when you want to gauge somebody's sort of emotional health as well as their mindset. Because if you take somebody with low self-esteem, let's take a hypothetical tennis player, low self-esteem and high confidence's ability to play tennis. He gets a bad tennis call. You know, the judge says something,

the ref says something. I don't even know. The line judge, whatever it is. And he's going to explode. because his entire image, who he is, his identity is wrapped up in his ability to play tennis. And you can sort of re-engineer this in different ways, whether high self-esteem, low self-esteem, confidence or not confidence, you're going to be able to predict the person's response. Are you going to be able to predict and reverse engineer it to see what their emotional health is? Because a person with higher self-esteem, if I walk into a room with somebody who's a better tennis player than me, I'm not going to throw a fit because I lost the game. but take somebody now who has very, very low self-esteem, but I've got confidence in these

certain pocket areas, my whole self-worth, my identity, my value as a human being, is wrapped up in these places because it's not really self-esteem, it's an afflated ego. So when that bubble gets burst, I become very upset. How that anger manifests, by the way, is going to depend on my personality, whether it's overt, whether it's passive, and so on. But make no mistake, it's high self-esteem and confidence they're different animals. Does that make sense? It does make sense. It almost sounds like confidence is more situational and self-esteem is a little bit more deeper and wide-reaching. The problem, the unfortunate situation here is I'm thinking, okay, I have a lot of confidence in my ability to, let's say, run a good podcast. But if somebody who I respect generally says like, oh, this show sucks and there's all these things you could do wrong, I'm definitely going to get mad. Does that mean I have low self-esteem or is there something else going on here? Well, look, it's a good question. Anytime we put a lot into something, right? In other words, it's just not a podcast, by the way. I would say maybe it's part of your identity. Would that be

fair to say? Oh, definitely. Absolutely. Right. So it is part and parcel who you are. So, you know, it's not so easy sort of to divorce yourself and say, okay, fine, you know, this is my podcast and this is who I am. Who you are, to some extent, is the podcast. So you have very sense of self is wrapped up in this. You're going to, by definition, be a little bit more. more raw to possible criticism because it is, for all intents of purposes, your identity. Shouldn't have named it the Jordan Harbinger Show. That was my first mistake. If I named it something else, might not have this problem. It does make sense, though. I suppose it's fair than that we can get upset when somebody knocks something that we've invested a lot into,

and it doesn't necessarily mean we have low self-esteem. That's, one, a huge relief, and two, makes a lot of sense. It was interesting to see, and I think this is a realization we all kind of come to in our 20s, that a big ego means you actually don't like yourself. Ego, you really fool people maybe up through high school. And then it's like, oh, wait a minute, this guy's an insecure knucklehead. The ego blocks perspective because the person who's using it or overusing it is focused inwardly to a fault. And I heard you talking about this. I think with Dax Shepard, I always worry about people who are trying to sell me a story that is inauthentic, or they're trying to sell me, basically the ego is, I'm talking to their ego and not their

authentic self, right? And not to get too sort of metaphysical here, but if somebody, let's say, they're acting really brave, they're a tough guy, nothing ever gets to them. I don't want to get in a car with that guy. Yeah. Because they're probably going to be an aggressive, dangerous driver because they think it's going to further the story of like, yeah, I'm in charge, I'm the alpha dude here. Nothing can hurt me. And I'm like, I don't really need you to find that out the hard way while I'm in the passenger seat. And, It makes people predictably dangerous in some ways, but also possibly unpredictable, which is also dangerous, because they will do anything to further that story.

And let's say you go out to dinner with that person and then they try and talk to a woman. And then she's like, hey, sorry, not interested. Now you've got a kettle that's just boiling over on your hands because the story's got a little hole punch in. He's got to plug that hole with literally anything. Yeah. And it could be dangerous. Those are the guys that start fights.

Yeah, 100%. He's got to double down, triple down because his whole sense of self-worth is wrapped up in this. And people make the mistake time and again of assuming that arrogance is strength, humility, you know, that's really what identifies a great leader in the special forces. I'll tell you this time and again that, you know, any leader that doesn't have humility is not going to last long because they have to be able to, you know, learn from their mistakes and acknowledge and recognize when they've made a mistake and to see maybe there's a better way of doing something. So a person who is egocentric and a narcissist in the extreme is completely about their

image, which is why they become so consumed with how their country. across, and if you call them out on a lie, it's going to be the beginning of the end. And as you said, they will fight over it because it's an existential threat. Their entire self is wrapped up in, as crazy as it sounds, that one story. You wrote in the book, arrogant people aren't fearless. They're just afraid of something bigger than the task at hand. I'm paraphrasing here. But they seem fearless, right, because they'll do anything.

They'll go and do it. But they're actually just afraid of being seen as whatever may be the opposite of that is. So it's not that they're super brave and they're going to rush into the firefight. It's that they're afraid of being seen as weak. So literally getting shot by ISIS is less scary than people around them knowing that they're actually terrified of a bunch of other things. That's right. That's right. You know, you take someone who grew up.

The father told them, you're a nobody, you're nothing. You're nobody nothing. And they go out and they become a salesperson. And, you know, by hook or by crook, they're selling everything in sight, knocking onto us fearlessly. You think this person is just as great, a lot of self-esteem, not necessarily. Now, again, they may very well our self-esteem in a different scenario. But here, the larger fear is not the rejection, the prospects saying no. It's that looming fear of being a failure, what they've been told.

And so if they don't become a billionaire in their eyes, then they're going to reinforce what their father said that all along their failure. They're very scared. They're just driven by a larger fear. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, David Lieberman. We'll be right back. Hey, if you like this episode of the show, please do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Take a moment and support our amazing sponsors.

I know sometimes those links give you trouble. Feel free to reach out to me if that ever happens. But all of them are all in one easy place. Jordanharbinger.com slash deals is where you can find them. And you can search for any sponsor using the search box on our website over at Jordanharbinger.com as well. Thanks so much for supporting those who support us. Now for the rest of my conversation with David Lieberman. I've got a friend who is very driven but overly money focused in a way that's a little bit gross.

I always tried to figure out why, because he's already loaded. And then I met his dad, and it all fell into place. We were going out to dinner, and I said, hey, I'm ready to go. And the dad said, well, I hope you have your own reservation. There's no room for you or something kind of rude. And I thought, like, this is how I'm meeting your dad for the first time. This is really very weird. Maybe he's in a bad mood.

Now, he's just always like that. And then when we went, turns out that somebody had made the reservation for the wrong restaurant. It was like a, you know, a different location of the same chain. And so we didn't have any reservation. You know, we'd made a reservation in Florida or something instead of California, whatever it was. And so I went on my phone and I used Yelp or Open Table or one of those things. And I booked a table at another place, got the private room and just redirected everyone there.

And I remember he came up later and said, that was pretty good. But he did not want to give me that win, man. He really, really, really, really didn't want to give me that win. And his son was looking at me while he did it. And he was actually kind of upset that I got even this crappy. level of approval from his dad. He was not happy that his dad patted me on the back and said, okay, well, you win this round. And I thought, what a weird way to grow up with a guy like this, massively overly competitive, just in a completely ridiculous way. And I thought, this is an

environment that breeds an unhealthy attachment to success and money, for sure. Yeah. Oh, that's so sad. That's so sad. Yeah. And the guy's doing so well. And he's married and he's going to have a kid. I mean, he's, by all accounts, a successful person. He doesn't have to be miserable, but he is. Yeah, no, but again, he doesn't see himself as a success because that program, that loop running in his head tells him that he's not. And no matter how much money he gets, he's always going to want more and we'll never unfortunately satisfy him if that's going to be his yardstick. Unfortunately, in his business, he has the option to be really helpful to people and he does that sometimes. But then he can always take it too far and upsell people on a bunch of stuff they don't need. And he always always takes that too. And I thought, man, your reputation would be so much better if you just had a better, nicer refund policy. You might make a million dollars less over the next five years, and you're just going to die with that amount of money anyway. So who cares?

And he always chooses the kind of dirtier option because I don't think he feels like he has a choice. And that's just it. Unfortunately, he's reinforcing the real message that he's not a good guy because he's doing the very thing that is doubling down on the idea that he's not being responsible, not being good. And if he were able to, you know, hold himself back and not sacrifice a dollar, he would feel better about himself, obviously. Yeah, it's such a crappy dichotomy. And of course, now that he's having a kid, I'm thinking, man, you got to, you have to break this chain. You can't do this to your kid. And I hope that he can make it through that. I don't even know

if he's aware of this pattern. I guess we'll see. I've heard you say that it takes more brain power to lie. I think I know what you mean by this, but let's talk about that. Because I think, well, one, we all run into liars. And they do a lot of damage. Sure. Well, look, I mean, it's, I don't think I came up with that. A number of people have, you know, said it. And we've found from our own experience, when you tell the truth, it's organic, it's authentic. You can repeat it. You can remember it. You can say it over time and again, when you lie, you've got to keep track of what it is that you're saying, which is why, you know, lies will often default to these patterns because they want to remember what they're saying. They obviously

can't give a lot of real details. So they'll end up. you know, sort of padding what it is that they're saying. They'll use a lot of self-referral statements, as I said previously, things like that to conserve the amount of energy it takes to keep that lie going. Clear denials are the best indicator that somebody didn't do something. This is from the book as well. If their denial is buried under two pages of qualifiers or they start talking about how they're not the type of person that would ever do anything like this and my reputation is sterling, then you've got a problem potentially. Can we get examples of denials that are genuine and others that are shady. I mean, I know I just kind of gave one, but I'm curious what's top of mind for you?

The top of mind is a text someone just sent me about former President Clinton when asked about his involvement with Epstein. And he had said, I think the evidence speaks for itself. Wow, really? That's not a no. That's not a how dare you. That's, I think, I mean, that is a lawyer talking, as you well know. So, you know, if you ask somebody, think about it like this. If I asked you, you know, Jordan, did you rob the bank? What would be your answer? No. Right. There you go. No. Now, if you're a bad guy who robs banks, and maybe you rob this bank, and if I ask you, did you rob the bank? And now, obviously, you robbed the bank, but you want to explain to me why you would never rob banks. You're a good guy. There's so many banks you walk by.

The point is, is that when a person's telling the truth, you're going to get a very quick denial, and then you might get a lot of other stuff. But the no, I didn't do it, is not going to be buried under two pages of, I'm not this kind of person. Why would you say that? You know, what have you heard? That's something that, you know, ask anyone, I would never do such things. You want to hear a no. You want to hear fast. You want to hear it up front. It's amazing to me that somebody who could rob a bank would just be bad about lying about robbing the bank, right? But you've already held somebody up at gunpoint to get money. Why are you then hung up on just telling somebody you didn't do it flat out?

That's just it because human nature, it hasn't changed in how many thousands of years. People are people. And at some level, this person feels a degree of guilt, doesn't want to lie. They know lying is wrong. They don't robbing a bank is wrong. But they've justified why they've got to rob the bank. And they're going to justify why they're going to lie about it as well. But we have a hard time.

And if you look at, you know, at an interviewer some people, you know, high profile who have been caught in crimes and what they say initially, it is so my good. Goodness gracious, things like, you know, the truth is going to come out. And, you know, this is a besmirch against my character. It is not. It is almost never. I didn't do this. You know, it's always, I'm looking forward for my day in court.

Well, that's not a no. That's true. That is kind of the mantra of the possibly guiltyism. Look, we're looking forward to our day in court. One, nobody's looking forward to their day in court. Innocent or not. I mean, even if just from having to pay your lawyer to be there kind of perspective, if nobody's looking forward to that invoice.

I think where this gets a little bit confusing for me is, you know, if I'm accused of something, I mean, my reputation is Sterling. I would probably say, look, I mean, why would I do that? I have no reason to do something. I have no reason to rob a bank. I already, I make money from this podcast. I have two kids. Like, I definitely would not rob a bank.

I would still probably say something like that, but I'd probably say no first. Is that really, you know, I'm not just going to say no and then leave it at that and hope you believe me. Yeah, for sure. Well, two things. First is, again, you're trying to imagine. robbing a bank. So you're thinking like what a bad guy would say and do, which is different because, yes, you're right. You would get that no out, but you wouldn't really feel the need

to defend why you didn't rob a bank. And it was the fact that you earn a living doesn't mean that you're not capable or have an interest in robbing a bank. That's not really a valid reason, right? That's true. You're projecting what they might say. And that is what they do say, by the way. It's like, you know, I have tremendous respect for women or, you know, I follow the law. Those aren't valid reasons. It's why you wouldn't do something wrong, which is why in their mind they may very well say those things, but an innocent person is looking for a free exchange of information. They're not looking to sell a story, right? You had mentioned before about somebody's trying to convince you something. A person who's innocent doesn't have to convince anyone that they

didn't do it. All I have to do is say the truth. That speaks for itself. Certainly there are times we're going to get defensive or we've been wrongly accused and so on. But somebody asked if we've done something wrong. We haven't done it. A simple no is going to suffice. The guilty person feels like they've got to now sell that story. That actually makes a lot of sense, right? Because they probably know or feel that other people don't believe them because they know that they're not telling the truth. That's right. Thus, the oversell. So people who bluff habitually probably overcompensate in that direction, right? So then if we want to uncover a bluff, what do we do? Notice how they're to appear in the moment? Is that where we start with that?

That's right. That's great. And the example I give in the book is in terms of the poker corners, which I don't know if you're a poker guy at all. Not really, but I know some stuff about it just because, you know, Andy Duke comes on the show and uses all these analogy. I've played poker before. Okay. So, you know, maybe if you played with some of those, you know, eight figure, or those high value friends of yours, you might, you know, enjoy it more. Yeah, I'm a terrible liar. See also, right, earlier in the show, I'm a terrible liar. So when I have a good hand, I'm always like, yeah, bam.

Oh, wait, I shouldn't have done that. Right. You know, and even when I try to overcompensate, or sorry, even when I try to compensate, I end up overcompensating. So I'm like, I have a really good hand. I'm going to sit up straight and then, oh, I shouldn't set up that straight. I should probably act really relaxed because I got this really good hand. I probably shouldn't just keep looking at my cards.

I just looked at them again. You know, that's me playing poker. It's pretty hopeless. Okay, so you and I should play someday. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just it is that, you know, somebody who is bluffing will overcompensate, whether in poker in the real world, an example I often give is like this. If you've got a really good

hand in poker, you're likely to sort of deliberate, think a little bit, put your chips in slowly look around to give the impression that you're not sure what to do. If you've got a poor hand, you're more inclined to put the money in very quickly to give the impression that you do have a good hand. Now, what happens is when people are bluffing in poker in the real world, they typically well overcompensate. And if you look for it's glaringly obvious. They try to think what would give the right impression, and they do that. And that's when you can catch him, much the same way that, again, a poker player, unless they're super sophisticated, if they're bluffing, they're going to put their money in very quickly because they want to give the impression that

they're confident. I see. And also the use of what you call oversell expressions, right? I'm 100% certain that I've never robbed a bank. That's right. And I guess innocent people to say no. Yeah, yeah. You see this in court all the time. 100% absolutely positively not guilty. Okay. Very good. You know what? A simple. I'm not guilty would have sufficed. So yeah, these oversell expressions point to, as we mentioned before, an insecurity. When it comes to threats, the less a person says and the less he tries to sell you on his stance, the more credibility we give the threat. I'll repeat that. This is from the book. When it comes to threats, the less a person says and the less he tries to sell you on his stance,

the more credibility we give the threat. That seems like it could be dangerous if the stakes are really high. And I'm thinking of Vladimir Putin with his nukes threats. He's threatening it a lot, so maybe we give that low credibility, but what happens if we're wrong? He nukes something. Oops, we probably should have taken him more seriously. So does that always hold? I guess is what I'm asking you. Sure. No, it doesn't. You know, statistically you've got the advantage of much the same way that 99.9% of bomb threats that are called in are just that. The threats that are not real. It doesn't mean that you have to, that you don't take them seriously. You need to. But the reason why the person is calling in the threat is because they want to create panic, they're not looking to hurt people,

you know, physically. If they were looking to hurt people physically, they wouldn't call on the bomb threat. I mean, that makes sense logically. But when somebody talks a lot and they're very threatening and whether it's a phone call and email and, you know, anyone in the public eyes, you know, been on that receiving end, it can be very scary. But the more, again, we'll print you with a broad brush here, the more a person is talking and telling you, there's a better chance that they're less likely to act on it. One thing I thought was really fascinating was that a lot can be ascertained by the details in a story, right? Vivid, they're relevant, they're coherent.

When somebody's telling the truth, the prelude to the story is often light on details. And deceitful people, their story will often contain a litany of irrelevant facts, especially at the beginning. And this is so insightful. And you can see this with teenagers all the time. Somebody who's being deceitful will, they want to mimic the level of detail that an honest person would convey by filling the story with irrelevant detail. What's going on here? That's right. That's right. And there's so much to unpack here. And if once, again, as you know, once you know what to look for,

it becomes so glaringly obvious. You know, a person who is lying about a story, a narrative, an alibi, whatever is obviously is not drawing on a real experience. But they know intuitively, as you all do, that you have to be details because details show that you are being honest. But since they don't have real details, they've got to put in superfluous details, details that may be truthful, but are so not relevant because they want to pack their story with densely with details that are truthful, because a real story in their mind needs details, and they want to make them truthful so they can remember them. So, for example, they'll be recounting a story about, you know, in the morning when they got up, and they'll say, you know, and I had breakfast.

And now, this is all the truthful part. At breakfast, I had two eggs, because, you know, you got to start your day of protein. If I don't start my day with protein, Jordan, I'm just, I'm just no good. And I like my guy. It's so unnecessary. The person is talking about a violent crime, the person, you know, I got attacked and it smelled like cheap cologne, that's fine. But when they add, you know, that stuff that you can get, you know, for $5 a bottle in the store, I remember my great grandpa, I used to wear that stuff, that old spice, so disgusting.

Well, how is that relevant? It's not, right? But if they're putting it into a dramatic story, a traumatic story, it is only because they're lying. They want to pack it dense with details. and so they're putting in things that are truthful, but are obviously so irrelevant. Is this because they want to have a detailed story, but they don't want the detail to circle around the thing that they did? So they're putting the detail on the outsides of the periphery

of that particular event. That's right, because the main event, what they want to say happened didn't happen. So there are no details. So you have to, on the spot, think of a lot of, there's a lot of layers and density in order to buttress something that you're saying that you're making up with details, you're going to make it detail rich in areas that were true, maybe the lead up or afterwards. And so, yeah, that's when you're going to end up with a lot of details. But because you're putting them in, they're just superfluous. They're not really relevant.

So superfluous, irrelevant details that have no place in the story, that's one of the giveaways of a deceptive story. This is a funny sort of cap to a story where somebody says, and that's all I know, and I can't tell you any more than that, really. those being red flags makes perfect sense. Because I suppose if I don't really know anything else, I just stop talking. We kind of mentioned this before. I just say, no, I didn't rob the bank.

So somebody who does know something else and is hiding it is going to say, they're going to go across that detail in their mind, realize they've done that, and then go, well, I just don't want to say that. So now I have to say something else to end my testimony or to end my tail here. And what's wild is it's seemingly always that same phrase of, that's pretty much all I could tell you, or that's pretty much all I could say. And it's like, why are you saying this? Ah, is because that's pretty much all they can tell you. They can't tell you anything more. But they do feel the need to say that. A truthful story ends. A deceptive story

will very often end after the main event. The person thinks, okay, I've sold you. I told you, you know, the gun went off. It wasn't me. Was that other guy? A real story is going to follow that trajectory afterwards, what I did, how I felt, what happened. But a person who's lying about a story, they're just happy to have gotten the story over with, to look to change the subject, and they don't realize that they now have to keep on talking to explain how things unfolded afterwards, because certainly there was no afterwards anyway. So you notice the made-up alibi or made-up story is truncated right after the main event. Yeah, that's really interesting, because they know the salience of that event, whereas if they're innocent, maybe they don't really know when things start and stop, because

they didn't have anything to do with the crime itself. That's right. And they're also going to be talking about not just right. They're going to go past that point because they don't really know, may know where that point is. Even if they do, they still have experiences that they're giving over. Speaking of being innocent or guilty, tell me about the alibi buster. If you have teenagers, you have to have this, or just kids at all. Or if you're in law enforcement, of course, but I think it almost comes in handier for parenting. Yeah, I love this technique. Basically, what it does is with somebody says, let's say, you know, they were at,

the movies with their friend. Now, a typical case where we think the person may or may not be lying, you know, we'd sort of say, yeah, you went to the movies, and they'll double down and say, yeah, I went to the movies. But what you want to do is you want to gather facts, and then you introduce a piece of evidence that's not true, but could be true, and you watch how your suspect handles it. So, for example, you'd say something like, what movie did you see? So, you know, Planet the Apes. Oh, the 830 showing on Main Street? Yeah. And now here's where you introduce the fact. Again, a made-up fact. I guess in today's language we can call the made-up facts.

That's perfectly fine. Say, oh, I heard there was a water main break and traffic was backed up for hours. It must have taken you a while to get out. Now they've got a problem. If they weren't there, they don't know how to respond. They may think you're trapping them. They may not. But they're going to do the one thing that everyone who is lying about a story does,

and that is hesitate. If, in fact, they were there, they'd be able to tell you in two seconds. No, what are you talking about? No break, no whatever. But if you say, oh, I heard the traffic was backed up, They're like, and now they're thinking, and now they're going to answer. Maybe you're trapping them, no, no, we was fine. We got out.

Or in which case, then you know they're lying. Let's say there wasn't a water main break. If they say, in fact, they confirm what you said, then you know that they're lying. And even if they don't, they're going to hesitate deciding how to answer. And that's how you typically will trip up a person who's making up an alibi. Just one sort of recap here. You give them what? The confirming questions?

You want to confirm the details. Okay. And then you sort of throw up a possible but not true fact, and you watch how they handle it. And it can be, you know, anything that will force them to think about whether or not this is true or not. And again, if they were there, they would know instantly that it wasn't true. But they're going to do one thing that everyone who's lying about a story does. And that's hesitate. Once again, I remind everyone listening or watching is that when I say they're going to do the one thing, I'm speaking definitively,

but we don't want to end the relationship because somebody failed this one marker. You know, you've got many others to rely on in, you know, these situations. I was going to ask about that because if somebody said, what movie do you go see? And I said, ah, Batman. And they said, oh, the 830 showing. And I said, yeah, something like that. I heard traffic was horrible on the way home. I might stop and go, was it? I don't know. It was on my phone. I wasn't even driving it. You know, I'm thinking myself, was it bad? I didn't really notice. And then so I may pause there and go, I don't know, it seemed fine to me. But there's still a pause. Yeah. I wasn't lying. I wasn't lying. I was just on Instagram.

True. I'm on another planet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wasn't paying attention. True, true, true. So you want to certainly pick a quote-unquote fact that is relevant to the person and something that paid attention to. You wouldn't say something like, I heard, you know, there was a parade.

So, you know, they sent some of the traffic down 3rd Street if the person's on Park Avenue, whatever it is. It has to be somewhat relevant. And again, yeah, you may very well could not have been paying attention. But if you said that to me, responded that same way, I would say, that's an honest response because you're not looking to sell me. In other words, you're not arguing with me. You're not saying there was no water main break.

I think you're trying to trap me. You're not saying that there is, in which case I know that you're lying. Rather you're saying, you know what, maybe I just don't know. That's okay. I'm almost okay with that as an answer. I can definitely see, and especially a lying teenager, be like, they're expecting the trap, right? So they're going to go, how do I answer this if it's a trap? Right.

That's what you're looking for a lot of times when it comes to this. Man, that's really, that's going to be useful. to a lot of people, especially people with kids, I think. I'm going to put a pin in that myself to use when my kids are older. I know we're running short on time. Something insightful I took from the book was when you explained that the less emotionally and mentally healthy someone is, the less comfortable they are with people who hold opposing viewpoints and don't share that person's same opinions. And here's an example. I go on Twitter the other day. That was my first mistake. A guest had shared the episode. And somebody replied and tagged me and said, oh, that show's always the

same. Every episode is the same. That guy is so boring, which is kind of funny because we have tons of different formats, tons of different guests, tons of different types of content on this show. So I think of all the criticism you can level about the Jordan Arbinger show. That's probably not a good one. But anyway, I said, hey, well, I'm sorry you don't listen anymore. Welcome back any time. But please remember to be kind to people this holiday season, because I thought it was a little bit of a crappy thing to say. And she replied, I am being kind. I don't know why you think I'm not. I'm just stating an objective fact that your show is stale. And this is not a young person. This is an older lady. She wasn't trolling other people online. It just made me think that perhaps

this person really cannot somehow understand that her opinion, which is very clearly an opinion, is not actually a fact. This is lost on her. It is lost on her that other people may not hold that same opinion. And you'd think that it would be a little obvious that one of the most popular podcasts in the world has people who think different things about it, including some people actually liking it, but this seemed to be completely lost on her. I wasn't sure what the hell was going on here until, of course, I read the book and I thought, aha, this person is giving off real, the kids don't talk to me anymore vibes. And it might be because she pulls this crap with everybody who disagrees with her on something. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, it's, look, yeah,

it's good to appreciate that 1% of the population at a minimum is really just, unfortunately, unwell. So that includes your fan base, you know, and I guess, you know, higher for some podcasters than others, and they're just not in touch with reality. Look, as I know you well appreciate, constructive criticism is one thing. And if they even get it right and don't like it, that's something else. But to say something that's so blatantly just not even the case is unsettling because there's no basis for it. And it's like, you know, they're telling the sky is purple and you have no common ground

here. And yeah, that is an indication of emotional unwellness is a person who takes their opinion and assumes it to be an objective fact, which is. We meet these people all the time is, you know, you got to try this apple pie. You don't like it. This is the best apple pie you've ever eaten. Anyone that doesn't like it should be hung. Okay.

Now, you're entitled to be enthusiastic about something, sometimes we all are, be passionate. But for the person who, their opinions get morphed into objective fact, that we're already drifting into the land of emotional unwellness. We see this with political extremists on both ends of the spectrum. They also seem to do this, deliberately or otherwise, right? They'll speak in absolutes, and they will, of course, tribalize to the point where, the other opinion holders seemingly in their mind literally shouldn't even be allowed to exist. And you see them twisting the language too where they're saying, well, if you believe this,

then you must believe all of these completely ridiculous things like you must be okay with people drinking kids' blood to stay young. It's like, what child trafficking or something? Like, where did you get that? I'm talking about people being able to mail their votes in or whatever it is, you know, in the political sphere. And they simply cannot understand how anybody would have a different opinion or viewpoint, which to me is terrifying, not just because of their own views, but because of the seeming inability to understand that others might think differently, that seems like a real hindrance to being able to just function in a modern society. That's right. And the trajectory has been, in the old days, you and I could have different

opinions. We could disagree. That's okay. Now it becomes, you're not just wrong, but you're bad. Meaning, if you have a different opinion perspective than me, you're not just wrong about your opinion, but I'm putting a moral stamp on it and saying you're a bad human being. being, that is what's going to become more problematic. Thank you so much, David. There's a lot in your writing. This was one book out of many, and we've got to have you back some time to discuss your other work as well. Thank you so much for your time and for coming on the show, man.

Really, really, really interesting stuff. You're an amazing talent, Jordan, much continued success and I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. You're a terrible liar, but I'll take the compliment. Thank you, David. Why did he scratch his nose and look down when he said that? Thanks so much. A pleasure.

Lots of good luck to you. Be well. Thank you. We've got a preview trailer of our interview with poker star Annie Duke on how we can learn to make better decisions by thinking in bets instead of trying so hard to be certain all the time. The quality of your life is determined by the sum of two things, the quality of your decisions and luck. When something bad happens to us, we act as a skill wasn't involved at all. We just sort of pawned off to the luck element. But when good things happen, we sort of ignore the luck element and we say that it was because of,

of our great skill. A self-driving Uber just hit until the pedestrian. But what I thought was really interesting was that the reaction was to suspend the testing and just to take the cars off the road, not just the Uber cars, but other self-driving vehicles. And what I didn't see were any comparisons to how self-driving vehicles did per thousand miles traveled versus the technology that we already have on the road,

which is cars that are driven by humans. We know that 6,000 pedestrians die per year by regular driven cars. Let's say that you're on the side of the road and you've got a flat tire. And of course, what everybody's thinking in that moment is, I have the worst life ever. Like, why do these things always happen to me? I'm so unlucky. I'm so miserable.

What's really interesting to me about it is, like, you could have gotten a promotion, like the biggest promotion of your life three days before. And you're not standing on the side of the road going, my life's great, because I just got the biggest promotion I could ever imagine. So imagine that you had this flat tire a year ago. And now I'm asking you today, a year later, how much do you think that that flat tire would have affected your overall happiness over the year? For more with any Duke, including some common mistakes we make when evaluating decisions,

check out episode 40 here on the Jordan Harbinger show. This book was so interesting, and he has a ton of books that are just full of amazing stuff. A lot of cool ideas and ways to decipher thinking. For example, a person who does not want their true feelings exposed will often smile. It's interesting. Smiles mask other emotions. Not all the time, of course. Genuine smiles light up the whole face.

The book talks about how to decipher between fake smiles, real smiles, and know when people are smiling to hide another emotion, such as when they may be angry about something or hiding another uncomfortable feeling. Also, asking someone for advice on a problem is a good way to gauge their reaction. Now, this isn't the Benjamin Franklin trick where you say, hey, this guy doesn't like me. I want to ask him for a favor, and then he develops an affinity. We've talked about that on the show before. This is more like, well, the example in the book is, there's a bus driver, he's drinking

on the job. You might ask him what he would do or what should be done about another driver that people suspect is drinking on the job. If they get really defensive, maybe they're guilty. If they'd say, hey, you know what, screw it, throw the book at them, I don't even care what you do, then maybe they're not. But we don't know. It's just a good sort of litmus test for how this person feels about something. And I remember learning about this so long ago from an ex-cop.

He told me that if you did something wrong and they say, what do you think should happen to somebody who runs red lights regularly? If that person runs red lights regularly, if they're talking to you, you might say, well, I don't know, everybody's got reasons. Maybe they were in a hurry and whether they're other cars. it's all based on the circumstance. That's measured, but also might mean that person is guilty of whatever that is. But if they say, I don't care, screw it, hang them, shoot them for all I care. People like that can get somebody killed. That's a different kind of answer. So people hedge in weird ways when they are guilty of behavior. Again, not a full-proof test, not something that can decide if someone's lying or guilty completely, but certainly an indicator in one direction. Another thing is when you're talking with somebody who's guilty, they want the conversation to end.

They do not want further exchange of information. On the other hand, innocent people often want a further exchange of information. They want to clear the air. They want to make sure that all the cards are on the table. They want everybody to know everything because they are innocent and they want to figure out how to prove that. There's also a lot of poker tells in the book as well. I guess he's really into poker. So he applies a lot of this stuff.

Just some really fun, interesting topics that are very, very practical. and this book is worth a read and a reread as are all his books as well, in my opinion. Again, big thanks to David Lieberman. Links to all things David Lieberman will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Transcripts are in the show notes. Videos are up on YouTube. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

Please consider supporting those who make this show possible. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. in, and I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems, software, tiny habits. That's our six-minute networking course. That course is free. It's the same stuff I use.

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