DETECTING DECEPTION 219(3) Expect initial nervousness. Initial nervousness in an interview
or serious conversation is normal, particularly when circum-
stances surrounding the meeting are stressful. For example, a
father asking his son about his homework assignment will not
be as stressful as asking the boy why he was expelled from
school for disruptive behavior.
(4) Get the person with whom you’re interacting to relax first. As an
interview, important meeting, or significant discussion progresses,
eventually those involved should calm down and become more
comfortable. In fact, a good interviewer will make sure this hap-
pens by taking time to let the person become more relaxed before
asking questions or exploring topics that might be stressful.
(5) Establish a baseline. Once a person’s pacifying behaviors have
decreased and stabilized to normal (for that person), the inter-
viewer can use that pacifying level as a baseline for assessing
future behavior.
(6) Look for increased use of pacifiers. As the interview or conver-
sation continues, you should be observant of pacifying behav-
iors and/or an increase (spike) in their frequency, particularly
when they occur in response to a specific question or piece of
information. Such an increase is a clue that something about
the question or information has troubled the person pacifying,
and that topic likely deserves further attention and focus. It is
important to identify correctly the specific stimulus (whether a
question, information, or event) that caused the pacifying re-
sponse; otherwise you might draw the wrong conclusions or
move the discussion in the wrong direction. For example, if
during an employment interview the candidate starts to venti-
late his shirt collar (a pacifier) when asked a certain question
about his former position, that specific inquiry has caused suf-
ficient stress that his brain is requiring pacification. This indi-
cates the issue needs to be pursued further. The behavior does
not necessarily mean that deception is involved, but simply that
the topic is causing the interviewee stress.