Part three, the three most effective interrogation methods to gain a confession, phase two, silver
bullet.
If you haven't yet gotten your confession but you believe that you're close.
Use the following silver bullet to help nudge your subject right over the finish line, employ ego defenses
and up the ante.
No one wants to think of themselves as a bad person.
So by accommodating the ego, we make it easier for the person to confess by excusing their behavior
and thus reducing the associated guilt or shame.
The three main ways to do this is through justification, minimization and projection.
For example, justification might sound like this.
You were in an impossible situation and you did what any father would do or most people would call you
a hero.
Minimization would sound something like this.
I can understand that maybe you didn't plan on this happening.
You know, you need to tell me that you didn't do this intentionally or you couldn't let him talk to
you like that.
So you had to go ahead and hit him.
But it's not like you killed the guy or anything.
Finally, projection would sound something like this.
You know, guys like that, they get what they've got coming or it's a billion dollar company and they
treated you like garbage or.
I understand why you would have done that, you were probably just treated unfairly or something was
lacking.
What can I do to help make sure that this never happens to you again?
Once you reduce the guilt or shame, you need to intensify the pressure to confess right now.
Now, Plummers know that the best time to negotiate a price is when the basement is flooded.
Now, obviously, the motivation for the homeowner to act is going to be highest when the problem is
most intense and when my pilots go on strike right before the holidays, the peak day of travel.
Now, the name of the game here is leverage deadlines, produce results, for example, in your own
life, how fast do you think you would get your taxes in if there was no deadline or if there was a
deadline but there was no penalty attached to it?
How fast do you think a project would be done at work if your boss told you that?
You know what?
When you get to it, you get to it.
No worries.
As long as you get to it before you retired, we're fine right now.
Would you ever get around to using those coupons if they had no expiration date?
We have deadlines with penalties attached in almost every area of our lives.
Because deadlines with penalties force action, therefore, you can dramatically increase your leverage
by conveying that the opportunity to speak is now and that he'll never be in such a good position again
right now is when he has the greatest control of the situation.
But once a conversation is over and you get what you need from someone else or you discover more evidence
of his wrongdoing.
All bets are off, then he's going to be unable to help himself and he'll lose control of the situation,
see if the guilty party thinks that he can always come clean, that he's going to do a wait and see
approach before tipping his hand and give you any more information.
But more precisely, human beings have a fundamental need to feel in control.
So you want to link his coming clean now with a greater sense of safety and security for himself.
It sounds something like this.
We need to clear the air about this.
After I leave this room.
I'm not going to be able to help you.
There are always two sides to a story, and right now you can help yourself by explaining your side.