Customer Reviews

Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A complete revelation. Meyer presents the most comprehensive guide to the science of deception I have ever encountered. Untruths are an unfortunate reality of my career, whether harmless social posturing, or truly insidious acts of deceit, and this book breaks open the subject - not to mention the human psyche - at a truly remarkable level. In addition, the author distills lie-spotting techniques to their most practical, their least intrusive. I felt as though I had been given social and professional x-ray specs, but no one will know I am wearing them.

Overall, a totally fantastic read - I can't say enough about the accomplishment.

Most of the books I have bought share an annoying characteristic ... the authors have only a handful of ideas to present. In order to fill a book to make it look like we are buying something worthwhile, they create pages and pages of useless filler diatribe.

This book was a refreshing surprise. Every page has at least one interesting fact which most of us will find useful in our lives sometime in the future.

The book is well edited and presents its information in an easy to read format. Because of this well-laid arrangement, we are also able to easily assimilate the many facts into a bigger whole, making this a true gem.

I bought the book this week after hearing the writer speak at Barnes and Noble. Her talk was fascinating. She outlined research that she undertook with a team of researchers over four years, reviewing each study and making sure that only the data in the book which was confirmed by more than one study was included. The footnotes in the book are longer than some of the chapters!..some people might not like that, which is why Im saying its a little serious.... I like this book because it takes complicated findings and makes them entertaining. I was also fascinated to find out that the writer had mastered the facial expression reading coding system as well as emotion reading, through study with the folks that work with Paul Elman, the guy Lie to Me is based on. She described looking at 1/15th of a second of video and having to fill out a two page data sheet on every single muscle that contracted and every single combination of muscles that were engaged in the exact sequence and the exact intensity they were pulled up. Later, she showed me one of those coding sheets and I couldn't believe how complex the system is. Her book makes it so much simpler. She also took Ekman's work farther by training in interrogation and talked a lot about the difference between the findings on the ground, tha law enforcement officials rely on, vs the findings that social science rsearchers like Ekman and someone else, a woman called de Paulo have found. I didn't realize until I eardher speak, just how much more developed this field is, than one would think, watching Lie to Me, which she really likes and says you can learn from.

The genius of Liespotting is that it synthesizes a complicated and - til now - arcane field and makes it relevant and even compelling. Meyer writes with clarity and style, giving readers the tools to detect, understand and handle lying... making this an extremely valuable and useful book

This excellent book covers some of the same material that Paul Ekman's "Telling Lies" does, but LieSpotting is more accessable. Ekman's work is scholarly. Meyer's is more to the point. Written in a sort of field-guide fashion, this book adds the BASIC interviewing technique that is so useful. There are many ways of detecting where the lie is. This book shows you how to draw out the truth. The author walks you through several "what if" scenarios and gives you a real feel of how to use both the lie detection and interview techniques in the real world. Meyer then goes further and gives you a workable plan for shaking out deception within your organization or group and surrounding yourself with people you know you can trust.This book delivers. It is well worth the price.

I am so impressed Meyer collected all of the science behind deception and presented the techniques to bring it to light in a practical way. I own a small business and my relationship with my staff - as well as with reps I do business with - is absolutely essential to me, and I now have a new guide to negotiations and to creating a healthier work environment.

Unfortunately, I have often worried about the possibility of deception within my company, but I never really knew what to do about it without outright accusing people I see everyday. I have already begun to apply some of the techniques outlined by Meyer, and I have to say - they work! Not in out-ing people as liars in a humiliating way, but in clarifying where everyone stands on important issues.

And if anyone is a business owner like me, Meyer's negotiation tips are top-notch. A fantastic book. It will stay by my side.

One of the buylines of this book is that it will teach you techniques that will virtually make you a lie detecting machine. Unfortunately many of the techniques are difficult if not impossible to implement in a casual setting. For example, the author suggests asking very specific questions to analyze the suspect's answers. In an interrogation this might work, but in day-to-day personal and business dealings this will not fo over very well! Also the author gives examples of minute facial indicators (like a fake smile) that unless you tape the exchange will be impossible to detect. I would say about 30-40 percent of the methods she proposes can be put into practice. The remaining 60-70 percent are impossible to implement in a casual environment. Therefore I'm giving this book 3 stars for while the theory is fascinating and related in a entertaining and well written way, the techniques prove much less useful in practice and will not make you a better "lie detector".

This is an interesting look at a serious subject, but it is written in a way that moves along quickly and painlessly. Pertinent illustrations are included to help you understand the visual clues to detecting lies.

The focus of the book is on deception in the workplace, but most of the techniques can be applied elsewhere. I was glad to see that some of the techniques are also good for establishing rapport and moving conversation along. One that I want to remember is to say "What made you..." [do something] instead of "Why" [did you do it].

The book is not very long but it is full of useful information. It will be useful to actors and job applicants as well as persons in positions of authority.

I bought the book on the basis of the author's TED talk, which I loved. However, the book is a disappointment. The actual "liespotting" information is good, and very readable, but there's not enough of it. Then there is the filler that goes on and on. The filler material takes two forms: 1) topics that are only marginally related (for example, "Doing a deception audit at your corporation"...really? This is not of much interest in a book that presents itself as a how-to on discovering lies in personal interactions), and 2) stretching out the actual liespotting material with tiresome justifications telling you why it's a good thing to be able to spot lies. Telling me once is fine; telling me over and over is filler.

The photos were a good idea. I would have liked to see more of them, though, and more subtle ones, as well.

Whoever was editing this book must have been forcing the author to make it longer, rather than doing the better job of tightening it up and keeping the focus where it belongs. Good idea, good kernel of information, but poor execution.

Pam Meyer's Liespotting is a fascinating read, laying out a series of useful tips for detecting lies in both personal and professional spheres. As it turns out our everyday lives, both personal and at work, are full of lies. Some of these are white lies that grease our social wheels and do little harm, but evidently the incidence of serious, destructive lying is on the uptick. Many of the tips Ms. Meyer shares are simple and easy for anyone to learn. If you put a number of these techniques together you can bolster what your gut feelings may already be telling you. The book gives instructions for how you can go further and "investigate" a story to validate whether it's true or false.

Ms. Meyer also makes a compelling case for the importance of re-establishing trust in our business environment, and the devastating consequences to our culture and our economy when business leaders fail to uphold a standard of integrity. Interestingly, it's the companies with highest levels of trust that are the most profitable, and Ms. Meyer has a prescription for how businesses can maintain or reestablish cultures of integrity.