This is a very cool post (or I like it very much).
Camouflage is always known to be the army's uniform. So I wondered why it works. Well here is a post on how it work and of course why it works.
First of all there are 2 types of camouflage.
1. Disruptive camouflage
2. Mimetic camouflage
I am going to talk about each one of these types in detail.
Camouflage has been there since the earth has been created. But it has became a topic of interest in the 18th century Darwin studied camouflage in animals. After that camouflage was used in WWI and of course WWII.
I told you that there are 2 types of camouflage disruptive camouflage and mimetic camouflage.
Disruptive Camouflage is all about ""breaking up outline"". This method is used mostly. It works by changing the outline of an object to tell a persons brain he is not looking at what is really there. One simple type of disruptive camouflage in the animal world is counter-shading, which defeats a predator's ability to identify prey by its shape. In counter-shading, the upper parts of an animal are dark and its lower parts are light. This reverses the normal distribution of light on objects, which are usually lit from above. The predator's eye is drawn to the lighter areas and, since the brain interprets the contrast between light and dark as a natural boundary, it is discouraged from 'putting together' the two areas and perceiving a single object. Another type of Disruptive Camouflage is "boundary disruption". This is what army uniforms and zebras have in common. This type makes it harder for the brain to see the object as a separate piece from the background. When a herd of zebras stand close together it is a lot harder for even us humans who have colour vision to separate the group of zebras into individuals animals.
Ok this is a bit too complicated to understand. So let me go back to how human perceive the environment. Since Camouflage has everything to do with vision we must first understand how vision works. There are 2 types of vision "focal vision" and "ambient vision"
Ambient vision is also know as peripheral vision. Ambient vision functions as the main system to retain orientation in a 3D space and it depends on preconscious visual input. This means you can walk and read a book while walking strait and without bumping into stuff. If you've ever been startled by a movement seen 'out of the corner of your eye', then you've experienced this aspect of human visual perception. Ambient vision doesn't work by colour, but by movement and contrast. The khaki uniforms of the army lower the contrast between the soldier and the background. This counter the ambient vision system.
This is very cool so far, but if you look at the soldier with the khaki uniform at plain sight you will see him clearly whatever the background. This is because colour plays a major role in focal vision. One thing your brain is always looking for, when analysing visual information, is continuity. For example, you tend to recognise something as a single object if it has a single, continuous colour; so, a person is much more likely to 'stand out' from their background and be recognised as a human being if they are wearing a single, solid colour than they are if they are wearing a variety of colours.
Ok lets get back to Disruptive Camouflage. Disruptive Camouflage works by implementing a lot of different colours and patterns. So this type of camouflage is trying to fool the focal vision system. Disruptive Camouflage also fools the ambient vision a bit. To do this the army make their uniforms different colour shades depending on the environment. So if the colour are the same as the environmental colours it fools the ambient vision too.
This is a good example of Disruptive Camouflage - go to this link
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p112/GregLuvDogs/Camo.jpg
Mimetic camouflage
This is a very very simple type of camouflage and yet very very difficult to implement. This works by making yourself look like another object. No fooling the vision systems here. The camouflaged object simply looks like something else that belong there so you don't notice it. The word mimetic is a Greek word for "imitator". ""Blend with the environment"" this is the golden rule here. There is a good example- go to this link
http://www.snipercountry.com/photogallery/Puci_Cecchino_02.jpg
There is a sniper in the middle next to the tree. He look exactly like the plants and leave on the tree. This type of camouflage is also the most effective but takes time to set-up and are completely environmentally dependant.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Sunburn/Suntan
There are many types of burns like: heat, radiation, chemical, electrical, light and friction. Now sunburn is a radiation burn that comes mostly from the sun's rays. The ray that cause the burn is ultraviolet light ray. I know it sounds like a light burn the this is classified as a radiation burn. Sunburn is a result from overexposure to ultraviolet rays.
The sun gives of the whole light spectrum. So there is Gamma rays and ultraviolet rays and infra-red rays and lots more. Now most of the sun's ultraviolet light is stopped by ozone in earth's upper atmosphere. but never the less some ultraviolet light gets thru.
Ultraviolet light affects any kind of living tissue; such as skin in this case. The symptoms of sunburn is: You are tired, can be dizzy, skin gets red, skin also gets hot to touch. This is the extreme case. I am not talking about a suntan now. I will come to that later.
The reason one gets burned by the overexposure of ultraviolet light is that light gives direct DNA damage. Yep that right. The light damage the DNA of the skin-cell as soon as the light hits the cell. Now without DNA or with a damaged DNA the cells start to die. Type 1 cell-death is ongoing here. This means the dead cells are replaced as soon as possible. This process hurts and creates that heat which is one of the symptoms.
BUT wait. There are 2 types of UV light. Type A and Type B.
It is mainly type B that cause the sunburn. This light is 280 nm to 320 nm in wavelength. It is also Type B that is blocked by the ozone layer. Type A on the other hand is not blocked by the ozone layer. And it is this Type of UV light that is responsible for most the tanning process.
The reason your skin becomes brown or darker when exposed to the UV light is: There are something called melanin in everyone's skin. Melanin protects your skin from sunburn. UV type A does not affect melanin production in the skin but rather starts the release of existing melanin in the skin. It is the melanin that give the brown colour.
Just let me say one more thing about UV type B. It is not bad at all when you receive it in small amounts. UV type B produces the Vitamin D in your skin, it also stimulates the production of new melanin. When you pun on sunscreen it blocks out type B UV.
Now I hope U understand how tanning and burning works.
""Be careful, where proper clothing when working or playing in direct sunlight.This is the best defence against sunburn ""
The sun gives of the whole light spectrum. So there is Gamma rays and ultraviolet rays and infra-red rays and lots more. Now most of the sun's ultraviolet light is stopped by ozone in earth's upper atmosphere. but never the less some ultraviolet light gets thru.
Ultraviolet light affects any kind of living tissue; such as skin in this case. The symptoms of sunburn is: You are tired, can be dizzy, skin gets red, skin also gets hot to touch. This is the extreme case. I am not talking about a suntan now. I will come to that later.
The reason one gets burned by the overexposure of ultraviolet light is that light gives direct DNA damage. Yep that right. The light damage the DNA of the skin-cell as soon as the light hits the cell. Now without DNA or with a damaged DNA the cells start to die. Type 1 cell-death is ongoing here. This means the dead cells are replaced as soon as possible. This process hurts and creates that heat which is one of the symptoms.
BUT wait. There are 2 types of UV light. Type A and Type B.
It is mainly type B that cause the sunburn. This light is 280 nm to 320 nm in wavelength. It is also Type B that is blocked by the ozone layer. Type A on the other hand is not blocked by the ozone layer. And it is this Type of UV light that is responsible for most the tanning process.
The reason your skin becomes brown or darker when exposed to the UV light is: There are something called melanin in everyone's skin. Melanin protects your skin from sunburn. UV type A does not affect melanin production in the skin but rather starts the release of existing melanin in the skin. It is the melanin that give the brown colour.
Just let me say one more thing about UV type B. It is not bad at all when you receive it in small amounts. UV type B produces the Vitamin D in your skin, it also stimulates the production of new melanin. When you pun on sunscreen it blocks out type B UV.
Now I hope U understand how tanning and burning works.
""Be careful, where proper clothing when working or playing in direct sunlight.This is the best defence against sunburn ""
Polygraph
The polygraph is a just what the name says. "Poly" meaning "many" and "Graph" we all know what a graph is. A polygraph is a simple machine with many graphs. These graphs monitor what is called physiological indices which are: blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity (sweat).
I must first state that this is not a device designed to detect deception, but it is only used for that. It is in fact no different than the normal blood pressure monitor. The only difference is that it can monitor a couple things simultaneously. Another name for this device is psychophysiological detection of deception (PDD) I am going to call it a PDD (shorter to type than polygraph).
The person controlling the PDD is called a "Polygrapher". He is trained in the skill of understanding how humans react to questions. There are a few ways to use a PDD. I am going to talk about the most common way; the CQT (Control Question Test). But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s go back a bit.
Let’s say that you are being interrogated, while hooked up to a PDD. There are 3 main phases a Polygrapher goes through in the full test.
1. Pre-test.
2. In test.
3. After-test (I am not sure about the last part but it does exist)
Ok, let’s start. In the pre-test, there is no actual lie detection going on. In fact, this phase is all about mind games. Let me give you an example... Very few people know what the exact capabilities of a PDD are, and how it works. But in this phase the Polygrapher basically lies to you about its capabilities. He does this to get your mind into the state of knowing "I can't fool him", and by knowing that, you give much more reaction to his in-test questions. Let’s see how this pre-test is done.
The Polygrapher shows you a deck of cards it just looks like a normal deck. He shuffles the deck and tells you to take off the top card. You see that it is a 2 of spades. But he doesn’t know that. So he proceeds to ask you the following questions, you answer NO to all of them
Is it a face card? (No)
Is it a number card? (No)
Then he says: "It is clearly a number card"
Is the number, one? (No)
Is the number, two? (No)
Is the number, three? (No)
Is the number, four? (No)
Is the number, five? (No)
Is the number, six? (No)
Is the number, seven? (No)
Is the number, eight? (No)
Is the number, nine? (No)
Then he says: "It is clearly a two"
Now he asks:
Is it Diamonds? (No)
Is it Spades? (No)
Is it Hearts? (No)
Is it Clubs? (No)
Then he says: "You picked a two of Spades"
You know he is right, but what you don't know is that the deck was fixed. All of the cards are two of spades. It was a Svengali deck (used in card tricks to make all the cards look the same.)
Now you "think" that he is good, and that he easily found out when you were lying. Your body will now stress more if you tell a lie.
Now we move on to the in-test phase.
There are 2 types of questions asked here.
1. Control
2. Relevant
He asks the control questions to establish a base line. As I said in the post about body language: There must always be a base line to work from.
The control questions are known to be true, like:
Is your name Hanno Lambrechts? (Yes)
Are you currently 16? (Yes)
In what school are you? (Home Schooling)
If the Polygrapher ask me this, and those were my answers, he would see my base line of telling the truth. While he knows my base line, he proceeds to ask me relevant questions:
Did you kill William Anderson? (No)
Do you know who did? (No)
Do you sometimes spy on your cat? (Skip that, it’s dumb)
Then the Polygrapher look for deviations in your baseline to determine which answers was a lie.
Now, let’s have a look at the after test.
The Polygrapher says that he got all he needs. But he keeps monitoring. Now that you are relaxed, he looks for a rapid change in the base line to see if you tried to counter. And to counter the polygraph is easier than you think.
Maybe I will do another post on how to counter the PDD. But I hope that you now know how it works.
For interest sake, a good person to look into is: Aldrich Ames. He was a spy from the KGB who was inside the CIA. The KGB trained him to counter the polygraph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames
I must first state that this is not a device designed to detect deception, but it is only used for that. It is in fact no different than the normal blood pressure monitor. The only difference is that it can monitor a couple things simultaneously. Another name for this device is psychophysiological detection of deception (PDD) I am going to call it a PDD (shorter to type than polygraph).
The person controlling the PDD is called a "Polygrapher". He is trained in the skill of understanding how humans react to questions. There are a few ways to use a PDD. I am going to talk about the most common way; the CQT (Control Question Test). But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s go back a bit.
Let’s say that you are being interrogated, while hooked up to a PDD. There are 3 main phases a Polygrapher goes through in the full test.
1. Pre-test.
2. In test.
3. After-test (I am not sure about the last part but it does exist)
Ok, let’s start. In the pre-test, there is no actual lie detection going on. In fact, this phase is all about mind games. Let me give you an example... Very few people know what the exact capabilities of a PDD are, and how it works. But in this phase the Polygrapher basically lies to you about its capabilities. He does this to get your mind into the state of knowing "I can't fool him", and by knowing that, you give much more reaction to his in-test questions. Let’s see how this pre-test is done.
The Polygrapher shows you a deck of cards it just looks like a normal deck. He shuffles the deck and tells you to take off the top card. You see that it is a 2 of spades. But he doesn’t know that. So he proceeds to ask you the following questions, you answer NO to all of them
Is it a face card? (No)
Is it a number card? (No)
Then he says: "It is clearly a number card"
Is the number, one? (No)
Is the number, two? (No)
Is the number, three? (No)
Is the number, four? (No)
Is the number, five? (No)
Is the number, six? (No)
Is the number, seven? (No)
Is the number, eight? (No)
Is the number, nine? (No)
Then he says: "It is clearly a two"
Now he asks:
Is it Diamonds? (No)
Is it Spades? (No)
Is it Hearts? (No)
Is it Clubs? (No)
Then he says: "You picked a two of Spades"
You know he is right, but what you don't know is that the deck was fixed. All of the cards are two of spades. It was a Svengali deck (used in card tricks to make all the cards look the same.)
Now you "think" that he is good, and that he easily found out when you were lying. Your body will now stress more if you tell a lie.
Now we move on to the in-test phase.
There are 2 types of questions asked here.
1. Control
2. Relevant
He asks the control questions to establish a base line. As I said in the post about body language: There must always be a base line to work from.
The control questions are known to be true, like:
Is your name Hanno Lambrechts? (Yes)
Are you currently 16? (Yes)
In what school are you? (Home Schooling)
If the Polygrapher ask me this, and those were my answers, he would see my base line of telling the truth. While he knows my base line, he proceeds to ask me relevant questions:
Did you kill William Anderson? (No)
Do you know who did? (No)
Do you sometimes spy on your cat? (Skip that, it’s dumb)
Then the Polygrapher look for deviations in your baseline to determine which answers was a lie.
Now, let’s have a look at the after test.
The Polygrapher says that he got all he needs. But he keeps monitoring. Now that you are relaxed, he looks for a rapid change in the base line to see if you tried to counter. And to counter the polygraph is easier than you think.
Maybe I will do another post on how to counter the PDD. But I hope that you now know how it works.
For interest sake, a good person to look into is: Aldrich Ames. He was a spy from the KGB who was inside the CIA. The KGB trained him to counter the polygraph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames
Deception Detection III
Please read the previous 2 post in the series before reading this one.
This post will cover Deception Detection in Body Language.
Body language is a very complex subject. There are also many different definitions in the field.
In fact, there are so many views on some of the gestures, that it can easily be compared to asking a crowd of 200 people what they think the best movie is. You will get a lot of answers! I will give some of the different views, and say why I like some, more than others.
Let’s start the post…
In case you suspect someone of lying, pay attention to the following:
1. The first we will discuss is something that is often said relating to eye-contact.
“The person will make little or no eye contact. A person who is lying to you will do
everything to avoid making eye contact.”
Although this is said often, there are two views on this statement.
Dr David J Lieberman thinks this is true, because he means that the eyes are the windows to the soul. He means that if a liar is being stared at, he might feel that he is the centre of attention, and being a liar, he has no firm foundation to stand on. If someone challenges him at that point, he doesn’t have the truth and knows that his lie got him in this predicament. This results in a desperate attempt to draw the attention away from himself by avoiding eye-contact.
Dr Paul Ekman thinks the opposite. He thinks that the liar’s brain will tell him that he is going to act different by not looking at people when talking to them or listening while they talk, and that this is a dead giveaway. So he thinks that when people lie, they will rather look you directly in the eye.
Out of personal experience I found both of these views to be correct at different times. There is something called “Neuro Linguistic Programming” that offers a very interesting theory as to what role the eyes play in deception. Ekman’s ideas are largely based on Neuro Linguistic Programming research. And, so far, all my tests have confirmed the theory to be correct, but the details of Neuro Linguistic Programming are way beyond the scope of this post.
The next thing to look for:
2.
Physical expression will be limited, with few arm and hand movements. What arm and hand
movements are present will seem stiff, and mechanical. Hands, arm and legs pull in toward
the body; the individual takes up less space.
This is also an interesting subject, but the basic reason why people are stiff when they lie is:
Any shaking, or uncontrolled movement of body parts, are a universal sign of nervousness. Why would you be nervous when you are telling the truth?
3.
His hand(s) may go up to his face or throat, especially to the mouth. But contact with his
body is limited to these areas. He is also unlikely to touch his chest with an open hand
gesture. He may also touch the nose or scratch behind the ear.
Ok there is a lot to say about this statement. First of all I have read books about this statement and why it is true. The main reason people take their hand to their face when a lie is being told is:
As I have already said nobody wants to lie, so the brain commands the hand to go up to the mouth to stop the words from coming out. It sounds stupid, right? But this is actually more accurate than you might think. Have you ever seen a child telling a lie. How do you know that he or she is lying? I can tell you that the chances are good that your brain has recognized the behaviour of a lie being told, and the hand-to-face gesture is the most common one of these. Still not convinced? Have you ever found yourself putting one of your fingers on your lip when someone was talking about something you are not sure about? I do that a lot (I wonder why). Anyway, putting a finger on one’s lip is also a hand-to-face gesture. But in this gesture is called a “manipulator”. It is a signal for your conscious mind not to speak too fast.
I hope you understand. And again, remember: NEVER JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS. If you see any of these signs, it DOES NOT necessarily mean that a person is lying. The chances are just increased if you see two or even three of these things.
I think this is enough for now.
This was the last post in this Deception detection series.
This post will cover Deception Detection in Body Language.
Body language is a very complex subject. There are also many different definitions in the field.
In fact, there are so many views on some of the gestures, that it can easily be compared to asking a crowd of 200 people what they think the best movie is. You will get a lot of answers! I will give some of the different views, and say why I like some, more than others.
Let’s start the post…
In case you suspect someone of lying, pay attention to the following:
1. The first we will discuss is something that is often said relating to eye-contact.
“The person will make little or no eye contact. A person who is lying to you will do
everything to avoid making eye contact.”
Although this is said often, there are two views on this statement.
Dr David J Lieberman thinks this is true, because he means that the eyes are the windows to the soul. He means that if a liar is being stared at, he might feel that he is the centre of attention, and being a liar, he has no firm foundation to stand on. If someone challenges him at that point, he doesn’t have the truth and knows that his lie got him in this predicament. This results in a desperate attempt to draw the attention away from himself by avoiding eye-contact.
Dr Paul Ekman thinks the opposite. He thinks that the liar’s brain will tell him that he is going to act different by not looking at people when talking to them or listening while they talk, and that this is a dead giveaway. So he thinks that when people lie, they will rather look you directly in the eye.
Out of personal experience I found both of these views to be correct at different times. There is something called “Neuro Linguistic Programming” that offers a very interesting theory as to what role the eyes play in deception. Ekman’s ideas are largely based on Neuro Linguistic Programming research. And, so far, all my tests have confirmed the theory to be correct, but the details of Neuro Linguistic Programming are way beyond the scope of this post.
The next thing to look for:
2.
Physical expression will be limited, with few arm and hand movements. What arm and hand
movements are present will seem stiff, and mechanical. Hands, arm and legs pull in toward
the body; the individual takes up less space.
This is also an interesting subject, but the basic reason why people are stiff when they lie is:
Any shaking, or uncontrolled movement of body parts, are a universal sign of nervousness. Why would you be nervous when you are telling the truth?
3.
His hand(s) may go up to his face or throat, especially to the mouth. But contact with his
body is limited to these areas. He is also unlikely to touch his chest with an open hand
gesture. He may also touch the nose or scratch behind the ear.
Ok there is a lot to say about this statement. First of all I have read books about this statement and why it is true. The main reason people take their hand to their face when a lie is being told is:
As I have already said nobody wants to lie, so the brain commands the hand to go up to the mouth to stop the words from coming out. It sounds stupid, right? But this is actually more accurate than you might think. Have you ever seen a child telling a lie. How do you know that he or she is lying? I can tell you that the chances are good that your brain has recognized the behaviour of a lie being told, and the hand-to-face gesture is the most common one of these. Still not convinced? Have you ever found yourself putting one of your fingers on your lip when someone was talking about something you are not sure about? I do that a lot (I wonder why). Anyway, putting a finger on one’s lip is also a hand-to-face gesture. But in this gesture is called a “manipulator”. It is a signal for your conscious mind not to speak too fast.
I hope you understand. And again, remember: NEVER JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS. If you see any of these signs, it DOES NOT necessarily mean that a person is lying. The chances are just increased if you see two or even three of these things.
I think this is enough for now.
This was the last post in this Deception detection series.
Deception Detection II
You must read the first post before you read this one. I am not going to go over the material from the last post, I will only be building on it.
Ok so where should I start?? I think I will cover detection methods by this order:
1. Text
2. Verbal
3. Visual
1. Text, let me show you how it’s done.
So, there has been a lot of research going into detection deception in witness statements from crime scenes and interview answers. I am talking about a paper full of witness stories. This method would be used when there are no real people in front of you, only their statements written down on paper by the person who conducted the interview. This will not work with social text messages and normal conversation. But it will work in interrogations, fact gathering conversations as such.
This method is called “statement analysis”
Mark McClish developed this method of analyzing text from interrogations. To show you how this works we are going to play a little game.
Ok, let’s play. We are going to try to solve a crime with only 166 words of the “victim”
(remember this is advanced analysis and is not supposed to be used on social emails. I’m just showing you what can be done)
Read the following:
Let me brief you first: A police officer and his wife went for a walk in the park in the evening hours. According to the officer, while they were at the park they were robbed by two men. The robbers shot both of them and fled the scene. The officer appeared on local television telling a reporter what happened. It became a big news story.
Since his wife was basically executed and he received a less than serious wound, the police were suspicious of his story. Take a look at his story as he described what happened that night. See if you can detect any deception?
"Decide to go for a walk. Got out there. Um stood for a few moments and a received a page from home. Something was going on at home. Let's go back and make a phone call and see what's going on. Got approached by a gentleman asking for money. When I addressed him I was struck in the rear, knocked to the ground. Struggled with him. There was a shot that went off. Struggled with him and there was another shot that went off. That was the shot that hit me. Got my gun out of the car. Tried to fire at them. Turned back called for her and just looked and she wasn't there. I, I, I had no idea she had been shot at that point. I got rid of my gun. I stepped over the top of her you know shook her a little bit. Tried to figure out you know, you know 'Patty, Patty talk to me.' She didn't respond to me."
What did you notice????
(I can see this guy is not thinking clearly.)
So I am going to show you what can be deduced and why.
Look at the sentence "Decide to go for a walk. Got out there." There is something missing in there, do you know what it is? If you said PRONOUNS you are 100% correct. Who went for a walk? The dog? It turns out that this is something universal to look for in deception detection. Usually a liar will leave out pronouns like: We, Me, I, and Us. This gets us back to “Nobody wants to lie”… What is happening here is that the subject (the officer) does not want to make the statement his own. He does that by Leaving out the pronoun “I”.
So we’ve got the officer on one charge. But remember rule #1: “Never Jump to Conclusions”
Now look at that same sentence again. "Decide to go for a walk. Got out there."
The Subject was asked what happened that night. So that means his statement was supposed to be in the past tense. The word “Decide” is present tense. This can be an indicator that it’s not coming from memory. If your witness’ statement is not coming from memory it must mean that he is creating the story in real time in his mind. This is another sign of deception.
Now you see what kind of information one can get out of one simple sentence.
I am not going to cover all of sentences, but I will point out the things to look for.
Look at the following sentence:
……………….
“Um stood for a few moments and a received a page from home.
Again we have the missing pronoun "I." He does not state, "I stood for a few moments" or "I received a page from home." In giving his statement, the officer used the word "um" to take a brief pause. This may also indicate that his story is not coming from memory. He has to pause to think about what to say.
But again he might be in shock, and forgot what to say when he rethinks the event.
…………………
"Got approached by a gentleman asking for money. When I addressed him I was struck in the rear, knocked to the ground. Struggled with him. There was a shot that went off. Struggled with him and there was another shot that went off. That was the shot that hit me."
Again the pronoun "I" is missing. "Who was approached? Who struggled with him? We do not take anything for granted.
The use of the word "gentleman" is a very polite term to use for someone who supposedly killed your wife. We would expect him to refer to the attacker as a "man" or perhaps even use harsh language to describe him.
The word "asking" is soft tone language. Again he is being polite in describing the attacker. Robbers do not ask for money. They "demand" it which is using stronger language. However, it may be that the robber used a ruse, and did ask the officer for money while his partner sneaked up behind him.
We also see that he used passive language when he talked about the gun being fired. When people use passive language, they are concealing someone's identity. He tells us that the gun "went off." Guns do not discharge by themselves. Someone has to pull the trigger. If he pulled the trigger and shot his wife, he is not going to tell us that. Telling us that a robber shot him would be a lie. Since people do not want to lie, he uses passive language which is the truth; Shots were fired. However, he neglects to tell us who fired the shots.
He repeats the phrase "struggled with him." He may have done this to give himself more time to think about what to say next. Again, this is an indication that his story is not coming from memory.
……………………….
Pages and pages of analysis can be done on these 166 words.
OK cool huh? These are some of the little things you can look for in a normal, day to day conversation:
A liar will use your words to make his point. When asked, “Did you cheat on me?” The liar will
answer, “No, I didn't cheat on you.”
In addition, when a suspect uses a contraction – “It
wasn't me” instead of “It was not me” – statistically, there is a 60% chance he is truthful.
He may stonewall, giving an impression that his mind is made up. This is often an attempt to
limit your challenges to his position.
If someone says right up front that he positively won’t
budge, it means one thing: He knows he can be swayed. He needs to tell you this so you
won’t try, because he knows he’ll cave in. The confident person will use phrases like “I’m
sorry, this is pretty much the best we can do.”
He depersonalizes his answer by offering his belief on the subject instead of answering
directly. A liar offers abstract assurances as evidence of his innocence in a specific instance.
Example: “Did you ever cheat on me?” and you hear, “You know I’m against that sort of
thing. I think it morally reprehensible.”
He will keep adding more information until he’s sure that he has sold you on his story. The
guilty are uncomfortable with silence. He speaks to fill the gap left by the silence.
He may imply an answer but never state it directly.
REMEMBER NEVER JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS !!!!!
Out of interest sake, it was found that this decorated officer went to a park with his wife and shot her at point blank range. He then shot himself in such a way that he would survive and made up the story about being robbed.
The next post will cover Body language.
Ok so where should I start?? I think I will cover detection methods by this order:
1. Text
2. Verbal
3. Visual
1. Text, let me show you how it’s done.
So, there has been a lot of research going into detection deception in witness statements from crime scenes and interview answers. I am talking about a paper full of witness stories. This method would be used when there are no real people in front of you, only their statements written down on paper by the person who conducted the interview. This will not work with social text messages and normal conversation. But it will work in interrogations, fact gathering conversations as such.
This method is called “statement analysis”
Mark McClish developed this method of analyzing text from interrogations. To show you how this works we are going to play a little game.
Ok, let’s play. We are going to try to solve a crime with only 166 words of the “victim”
(remember this is advanced analysis and is not supposed to be used on social emails. I’m just showing you what can be done)
Read the following:
Let me brief you first: A police officer and his wife went for a walk in the park in the evening hours. According to the officer, while they were at the park they were robbed by two men. The robbers shot both of them and fled the scene. The officer appeared on local television telling a reporter what happened. It became a big news story.
Since his wife was basically executed and he received a less than serious wound, the police were suspicious of his story. Take a look at his story as he described what happened that night. See if you can detect any deception?
"Decide to go for a walk. Got out there. Um stood for a few moments and a received a page from home. Something was going on at home. Let's go back and make a phone call and see what's going on. Got approached by a gentleman asking for money. When I addressed him I was struck in the rear, knocked to the ground. Struggled with him. There was a shot that went off. Struggled with him and there was another shot that went off. That was the shot that hit me. Got my gun out of the car. Tried to fire at them. Turned back called for her and just looked and she wasn't there. I, I, I had no idea she had been shot at that point. I got rid of my gun. I stepped over the top of her you know shook her a little bit. Tried to figure out you know, you know 'Patty, Patty talk to me.' She didn't respond to me."
What did you notice????
(I can see this guy is not thinking clearly.)
So I am going to show you what can be deduced and why.
Look at the sentence "Decide to go for a walk. Got out there." There is something missing in there, do you know what it is? If you said PRONOUNS you are 100% correct. Who went for a walk? The dog? It turns out that this is something universal to look for in deception detection. Usually a liar will leave out pronouns like: We, Me, I, and Us. This gets us back to “Nobody wants to lie”… What is happening here is that the subject (the officer) does not want to make the statement his own. He does that by Leaving out the pronoun “I”.
So we’ve got the officer on one charge. But remember rule #1: “Never Jump to Conclusions”
Now look at that same sentence again. "Decide to go for a walk. Got out there."
The Subject was asked what happened that night. So that means his statement was supposed to be in the past tense. The word “Decide” is present tense. This can be an indicator that it’s not coming from memory. If your witness’ statement is not coming from memory it must mean that he is creating the story in real time in his mind. This is another sign of deception.
Now you see what kind of information one can get out of one simple sentence.
I am not going to cover all of sentences, but I will point out the things to look for.
Look at the following sentence:
……………….
“Um stood for a few moments and a received a page from home.
Again we have the missing pronoun "I." He does not state, "I stood for a few moments" or "I received a page from home." In giving his statement, the officer used the word "um" to take a brief pause. This may also indicate that his story is not coming from memory. He has to pause to think about what to say.
But again he might be in shock, and forgot what to say when he rethinks the event.
…………………
"Got approached by a gentleman asking for money. When I addressed him I was struck in the rear, knocked to the ground. Struggled with him. There was a shot that went off. Struggled with him and there was another shot that went off. That was the shot that hit me."
Again the pronoun "I" is missing. "Who was approached? Who struggled with him? We do not take anything for granted.
The use of the word "gentleman" is a very polite term to use for someone who supposedly killed your wife. We would expect him to refer to the attacker as a "man" or perhaps even use harsh language to describe him.
The word "asking" is soft tone language. Again he is being polite in describing the attacker. Robbers do not ask for money. They "demand" it which is using stronger language. However, it may be that the robber used a ruse, and did ask the officer for money while his partner sneaked up behind him.
We also see that he used passive language when he talked about the gun being fired. When people use passive language, they are concealing someone's identity. He tells us that the gun "went off." Guns do not discharge by themselves. Someone has to pull the trigger. If he pulled the trigger and shot his wife, he is not going to tell us that. Telling us that a robber shot him would be a lie. Since people do not want to lie, he uses passive language which is the truth; Shots were fired. However, he neglects to tell us who fired the shots.
He repeats the phrase "struggled with him." He may have done this to give himself more time to think about what to say next. Again, this is an indication that his story is not coming from memory.
……………………….
Pages and pages of analysis can be done on these 166 words.
OK cool huh? These are some of the little things you can look for in a normal, day to day conversation:
A liar will use your words to make his point. When asked, “Did you cheat on me?” The liar will
answer, “No, I didn't cheat on you.”
In addition, when a suspect uses a contraction – “It
wasn't me” instead of “It was not me” – statistically, there is a 60% chance he is truthful.
He may stonewall, giving an impression that his mind is made up. This is often an attempt to
limit your challenges to his position.
If someone says right up front that he positively won’t
budge, it means one thing: He knows he can be swayed. He needs to tell you this so you
won’t try, because he knows he’ll cave in. The confident person will use phrases like “I’m
sorry, this is pretty much the best we can do.”
He depersonalizes his answer by offering his belief on the subject instead of answering
directly. A liar offers abstract assurances as evidence of his innocence in a specific instance.
Example: “Did you ever cheat on me?” and you hear, “You know I’m against that sort of
thing. I think it morally reprehensible.”
He will keep adding more information until he’s sure that he has sold you on his story. The
guilty are uncomfortable with silence. He speaks to fill the gap left by the silence.
He may imply an answer but never state it directly.
REMEMBER NEVER JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS !!!!!
Out of interest sake, it was found that this decorated officer went to a park with his wife and shot her at point blank range. He then shot himself in such a way that he would survive and made up the story about being robbed.
The next post will cover Body language.
Deception Detection I
I have been studying Body language and Deception Detection (Are you lying?) for about 2 years now.
I thought I would share some tips on Detecting lies.
Ok, so let’s get started...
Basically, deception detection is the art of knowing when the truth is not spoken, or detecting any way of un-truthful communication. The world we live in is full of ways to communicate, like: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace, Mxit, Whatsapp, Viber, SMS, Skype, Email, Meetings, Parties, etc etc etc
Communication is all around us and there are 3 main categories of communication.
1. Text (actual letters and language, like what you are reading now.)
{
2. Verbal (This is mainly tone of voice, and accent)
3. Visual (This is body language, Lip reading, etc)
}
Numbers 2 and 3 together are actually categories of body language (non-text), but I will split them for this post.
If you are asking someone a question, like: "What is your name?" (Assuming that the person is standing in front of you) only 7% of the total amount of information conveyed, is contained in the actual words "what is your name".
The other 93% of communication is the tone of voice and body posture etc. Have you ever wondered why some people misunderstand your text messages? Well, now you know. That's why calling them is a better option for sharing important information.
Anyway, for a lie to be successful there must be a person telling the lie and someone believing the lie. There are a lot of reasons why people lie. By far the most common reason is to make oneself look better (or not worse). It is human nature to protect the "image" you are revealing to other people. Sadly, a lot of people lie to protect that "image".
Let me just say something about this "image". It does not refer to physical appearance, like a big nose or skew eyes. It has to do with what people think of you. Do they like your personality and your reputation and things as such.
It is very easy to lie. Nobody has to teach you how to lie. You are born with the ability to lie. But here is something you did not know: Nobody wants to lie. This might be a strange thing to think about. People actually feel bad when they lie. This means that they know the truth, because why would someone feel bad if the victim of his lie does not suspect him of lying? Most of the things people say throughout the day is truth. The human brain recognizes a pattern of behavior when the truth is spoken. As soon as a lie is told, the brain picks up on this and your body acts differently than the pattern that it is used to. The skill of deception detection is to analyze different patterns of behavior, and to detect deviations from these patterns, when it is suspected that a lie is being told.
I will be giving some hints as to what to look for to identify universal behavior. But first, a few rules.
1. Notice: I used the word "universal" in the sentence above, which means means: It does not apply to every person you come in contact with.
So it's important to NEVER JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS!!!
2. As I said, your brain has a pattern of reaction and speech in truthful conditions. But this is different for each person. So, you first have to establish something called a baseline. This is the "Normal" way a person behaves.
Wait!!!! This post is getting way too long. The next post will be full of fun ways to find out if someone is lying. There are more than 37 ways to ensure that you get the truth out of your "victim".
I thought I would share some tips on Detecting lies.
Ok, so let’s get started...
Basically, deception detection is the art of knowing when the truth is not spoken, or detecting any way of un-truthful communication. The world we live in is full of ways to communicate, like: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace, Mxit, Whatsapp, Viber, SMS, Skype, Email, Meetings, Parties, etc etc etc
Communication is all around us and there are 3 main categories of communication.
1. Text (actual letters and language, like what you are reading now.)
{
2. Verbal (This is mainly tone of voice, and accent)
3. Visual (This is body language, Lip reading, etc)
}
Numbers 2 and 3 together are actually categories of body language (non-text), but I will split them for this post.
If you are asking someone a question, like: "What is your name?" (Assuming that the person is standing in front of you) only 7% of the total amount of information conveyed, is contained in the actual words "what is your name".
The other 93% of communication is the tone of voice and body posture etc. Have you ever wondered why some people misunderstand your text messages? Well, now you know. That's why calling them is a better option for sharing important information.
Anyway, for a lie to be successful there must be a person telling the lie and someone believing the lie. There are a lot of reasons why people lie. By far the most common reason is to make oneself look better (or not worse). It is human nature to protect the "image" you are revealing to other people. Sadly, a lot of people lie to protect that "image".
Let me just say something about this "image". It does not refer to physical appearance, like a big nose or skew eyes. It has to do with what people think of you. Do they like your personality and your reputation and things as such.
It is very easy to lie. Nobody has to teach you how to lie. You are born with the ability to lie. But here is something you did not know: Nobody wants to lie. This might be a strange thing to think about. People actually feel bad when they lie. This means that they know the truth, because why would someone feel bad if the victim of his lie does not suspect him of lying? Most of the things people say throughout the day is truth. The human brain recognizes a pattern of behavior when the truth is spoken. As soon as a lie is told, the brain picks up on this and your body acts differently than the pattern that it is used to. The skill of deception detection is to analyze different patterns of behavior, and to detect deviations from these patterns, when it is suspected that a lie is being told.
I will be giving some hints as to what to look for to identify universal behavior. But first, a few rules.
1. Notice: I used the word "universal" in the sentence above, which means means: It does not apply to every person you come in contact with.
So it's important to NEVER JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS!!!
2. As I said, your brain has a pattern of reaction and speech in truthful conditions. But this is different for each person. So, you first have to establish something called a baseline. This is the "Normal" way a person behaves.
Wait!!!! This post is getting way too long. The next post will be full of fun ways to find out if someone is lying. There are more than 37 ways to ensure that you get the truth out of your "victim".
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