What I Learned About Human Psychology From the CIA

To be clear, I wasn’t in the CIA but I watched a show on Netflix about spies and became obsessed with this topic: I listened to podcasts, and read interviews and articles with former CIA spies. In the World of CIA, understanding and leveraging human psychology is everything. This was initially a 3 part series but I will turn it into a comprehensive long read for HackerNoon. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Content Overview

• Part 1 - Perception vs Perspective
  • How to Understand Someone’s Frame of Reference
  • Core Motivators
  • How to Develop Perspective
• Part 2 - How to Make Friends like the CIA
  • How Spies Befriend the Target
  • The Real Self
  • Real Self and Resources
  • How to Earn Trust
• Part 3 - How to Be a Great Conversationalist
  • Questions
  • Tips for Becoming a Better Listener
• Summary

Part 1 - Perception vs Perspective

“What all people feel becomes their point of view of what reality is. If you can learn to manipulate the way people feel, you can make them feel any way you want them to feel.” - Andrew Bustamante

The CIAfound that 98% of people are trapped in their own PERCEPTION. So the 2% that live in PERSPECTIVE can manipulate everybody else's perception (politicians, entrepreneurs, spies).

Humans are like fish in the water. We have our frame of reference but rarely see it. We think that how we perceive the world is how it operates. Perception is about us and how we interpret the world around us. But it’s limited by the 5 senses and tied to our biases. Your perception is predictable to anyone who knows you well enough. It’s our default position because it doesn’t take any effort.

On the other hand, perspective gives you the ability to perceive yourself and others from the outside in, meaning you can view the world as it is not as your perception tells you it is - to think outside the box. But it has to be trained.

Another Downside of Being Stuck in Perception

Living in your own movie - perception - makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. We had to be self-centered to make sure we survived. Our brain is still stuck in the days of savannah and survival, so it only cares about the Self. But this way of seeing creates judgment.

When we do something ‘wrong’, we find ways to explain it. We know what our reasoning is because we have access to our thought process. But when we evaluate others’ behavior, we don’t have access to their reasoning, only the result, so we tend to be much harsher if their outcome is not what we deem correct. It’s a vicious cycle. We’re trapped in our own perception and when we see the world/others operate in a way that doesn’t match our perception, we believe it’s wrong.

An ability to see how the world works outside of our perception + what someone else’s perception is = perspective. I’d call this adulthood.

How to Understand Someone’s Frame of Reference

Childhood, sociocultural context, and familial relationships are what shape our perception. By the age of 25, we’re fully set in our worldview.

The CIA distinguished 3 developmental stages of the brain:

1. Birth to 7 y.o. - we’re sponges, nothing is true or untrue so we get predisposed to believe a lot of things.
2. Between 7-13, we start to differentiate true vs untrue but it’s affected by the unconscious beliefs we learned in the 1st stage.
3. Ages 13-25 - we develop the ability to evaluate and reject certain pieces of information.

So when the CIA agent wants to ‘befriend’ a target, they look at the first 25 years of their life.

You could apply this to your life too - where/how/with whom did you spend every stage of your cognitive development and what ideas has that created for you? Neuroplasticity is still a thing after 25, but the worldview has been set. The only way to change the worldview is if you give permission for contrary info to challenge you.

Core Motivators

Another thing the CIA evaluates is core motivation. You find out about the target’s core motivation based on their childhood stages.

There are only 4 main core motivators in every decision human beings make:

• Rewards (money, accolades, social status, non-selfish reasons, etc.)
• Ideology (wanting to see the world working in the ‘right’ (their own) way)
• Coercion (the individual is not acting on their free will but is being forced by the outside forces)
• Ego (don’t think this one needs explanation)

Before the rise of psychology in the late 19th century, human behavior was explained by moral and religious beliefs. They’re usually black-and-white, good vs evil worldviews.

But this still persists today. Even though research has demonstrated the complexity of an individual’s motivations and behavior, we still evaluate others through the black-and-white lens. Human behavior - just like the world - is infinitely complex. Everyone has their unique experience, childhood, beliefs, and conscious and unconscious biases that manifest in their behavior and choices. This comes back to perception. The inability to consider the other’s complexity and worldview keeps one stuck.

How to Develop Perspective

Stop thinking about yourself.

We all live in our own heads - we’re the star of our own movies and the center of every story. This is true about yourself and the person you’re trying to understand.

Consider what life it’s like through this other person’s pov:

• What does their day look like?
• What do they do for a living and why?
• What are their social interactions like?
• What do they eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
• What podcasts, articles, and books do they like to read?

When you take some time to reflect from a different perspective, you gain an informational advantage that turns into a tangible, unfair advantage. You understand them, what they care about, and their decision-making process. This can be used in business, leadership, and relationships.

• Instead of thinking about what it’s like being married to your spouse, consider what it’s like being married to you.
• What is it like being your friend/neighbor/coworker?
• When you see someone you disagree with, consider what life experience that person has had to arrive at this conclusion.

It’s human instinct to think of yourself first. Anyone who can anticipate the other person's needs (aka has perspective) will be well-liked.

Part 2 - How to Make Friends Like the CIA

How on Earth do you convince a total stranger to trust you? That becomes even harder when you’re an undercover spy, targeting foreign government officials who expect to be targeted due to the nature of their job.

*CIA enters the chat*

How spies befriend the target

The process usually takes months but it boils down to:

• Understanding the person’s background (more on that here)

• Stripping the person’s resources to get to the real Self

• Earning trust

  
  

If you think about it, that’s how we forge friendships anyway, but the CIA distilled that process so I was curious to see how the mechanism works exactly.

The Real Self

Separately from the CIA stuff, I recently learned the Japanese proverb about the 3 faces. The first face people show to the world, the second one people show to friends and family, and the third one we never show to anyone yet it’s the truest reflection of who we truly are.

It seems like the CIA took this idea on and created their own version they call three lives. Nobody is who they appear to be, everyone has 3 lives:

• public life (how we want to appear to others),
• private life (what your closest confidants know about you like your wife knows your feet smell),
• secret life (often, you don’t share with anyone, thoughts that live in a dark part of your psyche you’re afraid to tell to others for fear of rejection/judgment).

For a spy, the objective is to get into someone’s private life otherwise you can never get into their secret life (that’s where the intel is). Once you’re in private life - become one of the few people to know their secret life. That makes the person trust you the most.

I found a lot of parallels to coaching writing this. People disclose the most insecure, shameful, and dark things about themselves (aka the real Self) hoping you can help them. The more the person shares with you, the more they trust you.

Also, that’s how social media works. People we follow reveal their private lives and create the idea that we’re in their private and secret lives, making us feel closer and trust them and ultimately BUY from them. Everything is orchestrated perfectly.

Real Self and Resources

Think about when you approach a new person - you don’t think that’s what they’re actually like, do you? When we approach someone, we always deal with someone’s public life persona.

Although the CIA uses the Myers-Briggs personality test as an indicator of what the person is like, they also have a core personality theory.

In our public life, we present ourselves as one personality type but in our secret life, we are a bit (or quite) different.

Time, energy, and money are the only resources we humans have.

When you meet someone you need to understand what their resources are like. For example, people are more energetic and focused in the morning than in the evening. Or someone with an average income and a family of 5 will most likely have their financial resources drained. Interestingly, the more resources are depleted, the closer you are to someone’s real personality.

What are you like when you’re tired, scared, anxious, and frustrated? As Morgan Housel puts it: “You only know someone well if you can correctly predict how they will react in stressful situations.” That’s what the CIA thinks as well - when they want to get to know someone and gain trust, they spend time with the person when their resources are drained.

This relates to friendships too. What’s the difference between an acquaintance and a friend? An acquaintance is someone whose private/secret life I’m not a part of. With friends it’s different - I know what they’re like when they’re stripped from resources and I love them anyway.

How to Earn Trust

People don’t trust you when you talk more, they trust you when you talk less. When we hear other people talk about themselves, we unconsciously start comparing and start feeling bad about our lives.

Most people talk to share something about themselves, so when someone asks us questions and shows interest, we feel special. We like and start trusting the person. Experiment with this: when you meet someone new, create space for them to share. Don’t interrupt, tell them how you’ve experienced something similar or that you get it. Ask questions, be genuinely interested and stay quiet. People will tell you the most amazing things.

I stumbled upon this accidentally a while ago and it works like magic. People LOVE talking about themselves. Upon leaving, the very last person I knew for a week, told me that I now know about them as much as their best friend they’ve had since childhood.

Part 3 - How to Be a Great Conversationalist

Salesmen, CEOs, coaches, therapists, doctors, politicians, managers, spies… They all (should have) mastered the power of asking and listening. Anyone in a high-responsibility position must be good at asking the right kinds of questions and listening for more than responding.

But it’s a skill set anyone can train.

Questions

Questions are always being asked by the person in control of the conversation.

• Questioning is a powerful tool for taking over the conversation and planting suggestions with another person.
• When you ask questions, you steer the thought process of the person who’s answering those questions.
• When you’re asking questions, you leave the human brain on the other side in a position where it’s forced to answer the question.

Two types of questions

• Close-ended questions - simple questions with a yes or no response.
• Open-ended questions don’t have a simple answer. In the spy world, they hold all the power. It allows you to see into the other person’s inner world: beliefs, desires, thinking, values, and intentions.

When you ask an open-ended question, it also allows you to ask close-ended questions in a way that has them landing on the conclusions you want them to land on. This is something taught in sales training. They’ll ask:

“What do you look for in a new car? What would you like to have? What type of safety features are important for your family?”

The person answers those questions and then the salesperson gets them to buy a specific car: “You said you wanted safety belts in the backseat to keep your children safe, right?” And then that’s a closing question, so then the person says, “Yes.”

Now they’re being led, they’re being persuaded to a conclusion that the salesperson is looking for.  Asking the questions gives you an informational advantage. Also, the more someone engages with your questions, the more they feel like they can trust you.

Tips for Becoming a Better Listener

Listening resembles a muscle. It requires training, persistence, effort, and intention to become a good listener. It requires a trained mind that can focus and tune out the irrelevant noise. Some of the best practices:

• Give 100% of your attention and keep eye contact. You can’t listen and be on your phone at the same time even if you think otherwise.
• Do not interrupt until the speaker indicates they’re done. This is harder than it sounds. We tend to jump in to share our thoughts.
• Suspend judgment. We have a voice making comments/judgments/predictions when someone’s talking. It’s fine, push it aside and refocus on the conversation.
• Do not offer solutions unless explicitly asked. A quality listener helps the speaker come up with the solutions themselves.
• Ask more questions. You can help the speaker come to their own solution by asking the right questions. “Is there anything else?” exposes novel information.
• Reflect. Was there something you missed or ignored in the conversation?

To Summarize

In the World of espionage, having more information than your enemy gives you power. To leverage that power, the spies have to work with human beings to get their goals met, they have to master human psychology. Although we like to think that we’re complicated, there are levers that the CIA have figured out that they use to give them the advantage. If it’s good enough for the CIA to use, there’s something here to learn for us too. Understanding how to take another’s point of view, how to motivate them (and let’s be honest, sometimes manipulate them into giving you what you want), how to lead the conversation and more are skills we can apply in both business and personal lives.