Ebook: Detecting Deception: A Bibliography of Counterdeception

Briefly, a resource some may find useful: Detecting Deception: A Bibliography of Counterdeception Across Time, Cultures and Disciplines by Barton Whaley (edited by Susan Stratton Aykroyd) for the Foreign Denial & Deception Committee of the National Intelligence Council. Less than three years old (March 2006), it is a 676 page (3.1mb) annotated bibliography with brief comments on each entry. It would be nice to have this resource in an electronic database.

The book’s purpose is three-fold:

1) To be the first standard guide to the literature on detection and intelligence analysis in general.
2) To point the reader to those specific writings most useful for analysis, research, development, teaching, or training.
3) To alert the reader to the main competing theories and methods used for analyzing mysteries, particularly where deception is present.

Whaley’s defines deception as

image…any attempt—by words or actions—intended to distort another person’s or group’s perception of reality. And to keep matters simple, a lie is any statement made with the intent to deceive. These definitions avoid confusion with mere misinformation, incomplete information, or the truth value of statements. But they do permit us to include the authorized lies and deceptions practiced with our knowledge and approval by stage actors, magicians, and poker players. Moreover, this definition gets around the worrisome problem of self-deception. Instead, for our present purpose, the target of a deception is not oneself but always another’s mind.

Definitely an interesting resource for the engaging in the struggle for minds and wills.