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Identify Deception Online and In Real Life by Knowing What to Look For

Mark Bowden talks about how to identify deception and your own vulnerability.

So much of our communication these days is digital. And with text-based mediums like texting, email, social media, and online chats, we miss out on a lot of cues, like tone and facial expression. This can make it a lot harder for us to identify deception and spot liars and fraudsters. Knowing what signs to look for is important. But so is knowing what stories you’re more likely to fall for.


See Truth and Lies with Mark Bowden for a complete transcript of the Easy Prey podcast episode.

Mark Bowden is a world-renowned expert in human behavior and body language. His career started with a fascination with how people created movies and film that affected the audience. From there, he started wondering how other people affect us, why we think certain ways about others, and how we can change people’s minds. Now he helps people all of the world stand out, win trust, and gain credibility every time they communicate. Some of his clients are leaders of G7 countries. Mark is also a keynote speaker, bestselling author, and founder of the communication training company TRUTHPLANE.

Your Brain is Judging Everyone

Your brain makes quick judgments about everyone and everything around you, especially people. With people, your brain is trying to decide whether this person is a potential friend, a predator, or a potential sexual partner. It’s sizing up the risk or reward of that person. If the answer is “none of the above,” the result is indifference. Most people you meet, you’ll never remember. You’ve encountered thousands of people in your life, but if your brain doesn’t flag them as a potential risk or potential reward, you just don’t remember them.

How accurate are these snap decisions? Accurate enough that you’re still alive. Your brain often defaults to a negative assumption, because it’s safer to escape something that wasn’t a threat than stick around if it was a threat. That means your brain will often make a lot of negative assumptions about people that it doesn’t have to, because your instinct is to go for safety first, and accuracy later. These quick judgments often aren’t particularly accurate, but they’re good enough to keep you alive. You can adjust the accuracy later.

Your instinct wants to be safe today, accurate tomorrow. Those snap judgments that you make about people, they’re not particularly accurate.

Mark Bowden

Your brain makes best guesses all the time, and it does so to minimum specifications. If the minimum specifications to identify deception or danger or intent to harm are X, Y, and Z and someone is fulfilling those, you’re going to react to that. You don’t know for sure if they’re actually a risk. The minimum specifications are often low and not really accurate. But your brain isn’t looking for accurate. If it picks up signs that someone is a predator, you will start getting the urge to leave the situation.

Situational Cues for Judging Threats

Your brain also takes the environment of the situation into account when judging if someone is a threat to you. For example, if Mark has pulled out a giant knife and is moving threateningly towards someone else, your default reaction would probably be that this is dangerous and it’s time to leave.

But let’s say to get here and see Mark, you had to go to a movie studio and check in with studio security, and there are massive cameras pointing at Mark and the person he’s threatening. Your brain recognizes that this is out of the ordinary, not real life. So your brain doesn’t give you the same, “This is dangerous, let’s get out of here” message that you would get if Mark was pulling out this knife in a bar or on the sidewalk.

Body Language Signals Your Brain Notices

Body language is essential when it comes to figuring out if someone is a friend or a foe. When we sense a potential threat, our bodies react automatically. We get that rush of adrenaline, our heart starts racing, and our eyes instinctively dart toward the source of danger, even if we’re trying to focus on something else. This can make us look anxious or shifty.

If someone starts reacting like this but we can’t see the threat, we might identify it as deception. We might unconsciously start mirroring their defensive body language. This ramps up the tension and escalates the situation. Our brains are always trying to guess about risks based on past experiences. If you’re reacting to a threat but the other person can’t identify the threat, they might assume you are the threat.

Body language can be huge in helping you identify deception.

When you see a threat or think someone is a threat, you’ll instinctively protect vulnerable areas of your body, like your neck and the joints on your fingers and hands. You can think of it in terms of “open” and “closed.” Threatened or threatening body language is more “closed” and non-threatening, friendly body language is more “open.” Many people trying to deceive you know this and are intentionally more open. What you’re detecting and reacting to may not be true.

Often people will say, well, the body never lies. Yeah, it does, it’s brilliant.

Mark Bowden

In interactions, people tend to imitate body language. We escalate each other. A deceitful person will intentionally use open body language so you reflect that and it escalates trust and openness. Body language can lie. Open body language doesn’t mean someone’s not a threat – whether or not they have malicious intent towards you, your loved one, or your group does.

Testing the Pretense

When it comes to spotting fake friends or foes, it’s all about the layers of signals they send. Some people are really good at masking their true intentions, and we often don’t even notice. Those who excel at being dishonest usually have higher stakes—like making money or surviving—so they get better at it over time.

What we really want to figure out is whether they can keep up their act under pressure. If someone seems like a friend and there’s no risk involved, it’s easy for them to carry on as if everything’s fine. But if there’s something valuable at stake, we might want to test their reliability by putting them in a bit of a stressful situation.

One way to do this is by asking tricky questions that they haven’t prepared for. How they respond can be revealing: do they remain open and friendly, or do they start showing signs of being defensive or predatory? This stress test can help us see if their friendship is genuine or just a facade.

How to Identify Deception Without Body Language

When we communicate through text, we lose all of those body language signals that can help us identify deception in person. Language is about 200,000 years old, but being able to send text en masse and over long distances is super new. It’s a magical thing to write something down and transport it – you’re changing the reality of someone over there from here.

Text online and via messages can change our reality, which means we have to work harder to identify deception.

Mark had a situation like this not long ago. Someone was selling a piece of equipment online for half the price it should have gone for. He was interested, because it seemed clear the person didn’t know what they could get for it. Since he was only reading text, this person was changing his reality with just words. So he knew he needed to verify it a bit more. He asked for some photos. Through the photos, he figured out that the product was fake and wasn’t actually worth anything.

Mark’s 200,000-year-old smart brain could look at the scenario, ask for evidence, and compare that with evidence of what the real thing looks like. But the text spoke directly to his primitive brain that wanted to be smart and get something for less than normal. His primitive brain knew it should have cost X, but this listing was selling it for Y, so buying it confirms how brilliant he is to get a good deal. Visual proof is one way to get past that and do more critical thinking. It’s not a perfect way, but it’s a good start.

Critical Thinking is the Key to Identify Deception

Mark’s fourth book, Truth and Lies, is really a book on critical thinking disguised as a book on body language. Because critical thinking is the key skill that’s going to help you identify deception, spot problems, or anything else. Knowing critical thinking is way more important than understanding body language.

Understanding how to do critical thinking is way more important than understanding how to ready body language.

Mark Bowden

The first step to critical thinking is suspending judgment. In the previous scenario, Mark’s initial judgment was that he was smart and the other person was stupid. That may or may not be true – the important part is to put that judgment aside for just a moment and think.

The next step of critical thinking is to ask, “What else?” That’s what Mark did by asking for photos. What else can this person tell you? What else can you ask for to help you find answers? It doesn’t have to be a photo. Mark could have asked the other person to take the side panel off the machine and describe the circuitry. Even if the person said, “I’ve never looked inside it,” or “I’ve opened the panel but don’t understand what I’m looking at,” that would be more information. When you ask for more, an enemy tends to show more threat behaviors, while an honest person shows less.

Know What You’re Greedy For

When it comes to online threats, it can be hard to know if the person you’re talking to is genuine or a scammer. Many scammers are experts at deception, and it can be hard to identify the signs even if you know then.

Mark used to work with one of the UK’s most brilliant con men. He once told Mark that you can only con a greedy man, you just have to figure out what they’re greedy for. Sometimes it’s money, but sometimes it’s love, companionship, feeling smart, or a whole number of other things. Whatever it is, it’s your Achilles heel – the thing that if it’s offered to you, your critical thinking goes out the window.

What do you want [so badly] that if it’s offered to you, you’ll lose your frontal lobe and start saying to people, ‘No, this time, it’s true’?

Mark Bowden

Let’s take romance for an example. There’s nothing wrong with wanting romance for yourself, and you should be able to have that if you want. But you need to know that’s what you’re greedy for. But a good scammer will target you with that, and you’re more likely to overlook the red flags because you desperately want it to be true. When scammers show us something we want, we tend to suspend our critical thinking and that puts us at risk.

Listen to Others

When you know what it is you’re greedy for, that’s when it becomes time to listen to what your friends and family say. If you’re greedy for romance, your judgment around romantic partners is compromised. So if you have multiple friends and family tell you something seems weird, or if one of them is really adamant about it, it’s time to check it out.

That doesn’t mean you’re necessarily wrong! Your brain will balk at someone telling you this thing that is exactly what you want is secretly bad, and that’s okay. That’s why you have to set aside judgment first. Then you can ask “What else?” The questions might determine that the love of your life is really a scammer. But it might also confirm that they are the love of your life. It’s just important to know for sure.

One way to ask “what else?” when talking to someone online is to ask for information from different channels. You’re probably talking to this person through only one or two channels. Look for different channels, or ask for more information. Especially if you’re asking for something unexpected, it may take some time for a scammer to fabricate what you want. Be careful and confirm.

The World is Risky – Throw the Dice Anyway

It’s a risky world out there. You probably have lots of experience crossing the road, but that doesn’t mean you’re still not careful every time. You probably aren’t trembling and sweating with anxiety every time, but you still use caution. It’s hard to live your life if you can’t cross roads. The key here is getting the right level of caution.

There’s risk everywhere. There’s risk to me crossing the road, but I have to cross the road. What can I do to manage that risk?

Mark Bowden

Mark has seen people wary of dating because they can’t know if the person they’re talking to is the right one immediately. They’re overly anxious and too aware of the risks. If you walk up to the casino believing you’re so smart you’ll win the casino, there are people out there who can tell you’re greedy for that feeling and will exploit you. But if you walk into the casino understanding the risks, you’re less susceptible. If you don’t play, you can’t win, but if you don’t understand the risks you’ll lose again and again. It’s a risky world, but you have to throw the dice.

It’s a risky world, but if you don’t throw those dice, you will never know.

Mark Bowden

Go in knowing what you’re greedy for and where your judgment might be clouded. Know that it’s okay to want that, but that’s also what a con man will exploit. Don’t necessarily be on guard, but be aware and have that self-knowledge. Always ask for more, check for proof, and don’t be afraid to get input from your loved ones, especially in areas where you know you’re vulnerable. Be aware of the risks, but don’t let them keep you from playing.

Learn more about Mark Bowden at truthplane.com.

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