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psychology tips

Former Secret Service agent reveals a 'spy trick' for getting someone to do what you want

Isn't it wild to think that spies are actually real? Governments all over the world send secret agents to other countries to steal information or conduct missions. The key element that makes a spy, of course, is the secretive nature of their work. They go undercover, sometimes even wearing disguises, and carry out their missions without attracting attention. That means they're masters of psychology and social science rather than combat and weaponry.

In a revealing interview with Steven Bartlett on his “Diary of a CEO” podcast, former Secret Service Special Agent Evy Poumpouras shared how to get people to do what you want them to do. The key, according to Poumpouras, is to understand what motivates them. Once you know the psychological framework behind what makes them tick, you can persuade them to behave as you like.

Poumpouras is the co-host of Bravo TV’s “Spy Games” competition series and author of “Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, Live Fearlessly.” She served in the Secret Service’s Presidential Protective Division for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and protected George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

Poumpouras says that to get a “good read” on someone, it’s essential to listen.

Former U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Evy Poumpouras shares how to get someone to do what you want.

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Former U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Evy Poumpouras shares how to get someone to do what you want 👀 #podcast #podcastclips #stevenbartlett #diaryofaceo #specialagent #secretservice #security #evypoumpouras

"The biggest mistake people make is they talk a lot,” Poumpouras said in the video clip. “Steven, if I'm doing all the talking and you're doing all the listening, you're learning everything about me. You're learning about what I care about, my values, my belief systems, getting a good read on me and I'm learning nothing about you.”

The former Secret Service Agent says that you should listen to determine the subject's motivational mindset. Are they motivated by money, sex, admiration, status, freedom, relationships, or safety?

“Everybody's motivated by something different. But I have to hear you and pay attention to you to understand what that is. Everybody's purpose is different,” she continued. “If you give people enough space, they will reveal themselves to you.”

To be clear, Poumpouras isn't in the business of helping people trick others. Instead, she hopes the techniques she teaches will, "Increase your self-confidence, your self-worth, and your ability to trust and believe in yourself."

The commenters on TikTok loved the advice:

"People are so interested in themselves and want to talk about themselves... We give our power away by talking."

"Changed my life when I was told to stop filling the silence"

"As a parent, I needed this reminder too."

Yes, the parents came out in full force to support Poumpouras' tip. Perhaps no one, other than espionage experts, better understands the importance of learning how to get other people to do things without threats and violence. (OK, sometimes there are threats).

It’s also a wonderful tactic because your subject will have no idea they are part of a manipulation because they are the ones doing the talking. It’s nearly impossible to give yourself away when you’re sitting in silence.

Understanding what motivates people is essential when protecting the safety of the nation’s most important assets and dealing with shady, dangerous people. But it's not only useful for spies and double agents.


spies, secret service, cia, fbi, spy trick, psychology, psychology trick, interrogation, social psychology, motivation It's Jason Bourne! Giphy

This so-called "trick" can also benefit the layperson by giving us a framework to understand people better. Knowing what motivates someone is very important, whether you’re on a date, in a business deal, or in a leadership role at work. It’s also very important when raising children or training an animal.

The data agrees. Forbes writes about the experiments of Dan Ariely, who found that, "People are much more likely to go above and beyond for tasks that they're emotionally (rather than financially) invested in." So, if you want people to do things that benefit you, sure you can pay them or convince them that it's in their best interest, but you'll have far better luck if you appeal to their core principles and desires. To do that, you first have to listen and find out what they are.

Understanding your personal motivators is also essential for making the best choices in life.

It helps us determine which actions will be genuinely beneficial. It’s also a great way to ensure that we are involved with people, organizations, and activities for the right reasons.

In other words, digging into someone else's (and your own) core beliefs and motivation can be used for good! Not just protecting state secrets and preventing assassinations.

Productivity consultant Ashley Janssen says the key to understanding your motives is knowing your values.

"When you know what you value, you can identify how an activity or goal will support and foster those values," Janssen writes. "When you decide to try something, consider whether it’s what you think you should want to do or what someone else has said you should do. Those conditions are often not enough to sustain a behavior or activity. It’s hard to keep moving forward on something that you don’t really care about or are not invested in."

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

Education

Ivy League professor shares one word that makes people 30 percent more likely to be persuaded

This word helps turn actions into identities, which is the key to persuading others.

Jonah Berger explains how appealing to someone's identity makes them more likely to agree to a request.

Everybody wants to see themselves in a positive light. That’s the key to understanding Jonah Berger’s simple tactic that makes people 30% more likely to do what you ask. Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the bestselling author of “Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way.”

Berger explained the technique using a Stanford University study involving preschoolers. The researchers messed up a classroom and made two similar requests to groups of 5-year-olds to help clean up.

One group was asked, "Can you help clean?" The other was asked, “Can you be a helper and clean up?" The kids who were asked if they wanted to be a “helper” were 30% more likely to want to clean the classroom. The children weren’t interested in cleaning but wanted to be known as “helpers.”

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Berger calls the reframing of the question as turning actions into identities.

"It comes down to the difference between actions and identities. We all want to see ourselves as smart and competent and intelligent in a variety of different things,” Berger told Big Think. “But rather than describing someone as hardworking, describing them as a hard worker will make that trait seem more persistent and more likely to last. Rather than asking people to lead more, tell them, 'Can you be a leader?' Rather than asking them to innovate, can you ask them to 'Be an innovator'? By turning actions into identities, you can make people a lot more likely to engage in those desired actions.”

Berger says that learning to reframe requests to appeal to people’s identities will make you more persuasive.

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“Framing actions as opportunities to claim desired identities will make people more likely to do them,” Berger tells CNBC Make It. “If voting becomes an opportunity to show myself and others that I am a voter, I’m more likely to do it.”

This technique doesn’t just work because people want to see themselves in a positive light. It also works for the opposite. People also want to avoid seeing themselves being portrayed negatively.

“Cheating is bad, but being a cheater is worse. Losing is bad, being a loser is worse,” Berger says.

The same tactic can also be used to persuade ourselves to change our self-concept. Saying you like to cook is one thing, but calling yourself a chef is an identity. “I’m a runner. I’m a straight-A student. We tell little kids, ‘You don’t just read, you’re a reader,’” Berger says. “You do these things because that’s the identity you hold.”

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Berger’s work shows how important it is to hone our communication skills. By simply changing one word, we can get people to comply with our requests more effectively. But, as Berger says, words are magic and we have to use them skillfully. “We think individual words don’t really matter that much. That’s a mistake,” says Berger. “You could have excellent ideas, but excellent ideas aren’t necessarily going to get people to listen to you.”

This article originally appeared last year. It has since been updated.

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The longer I'm alive, it seems the more people's names that I have to remember. With two kids in school, sports, and other activities, I find myself trying to keep track of dozens of different friends, teammates, siblings, coaches, teachers, and of course, parents. It makes my brain hurt! Lately I've had half a mind to start a spreadsheet so I can start remembering Who's Who.

In order for that to work, I've got to find a way to stop people's names leaving my head immediately after I'm introduced. I know I'm not the only one who does this. It's like people say their name and it just zips right into one ear and out the other! And for that, I went looking for tips when I stumbled upon a good one from a unique sort of expert.

Derren Brown is one of the most famous mentalists in the world, so he knows a thing or two about people. Mentalists are a special breed of magician that focus on tricks and illusions of the mind.

They do things like hynopsis, mind-reading, and impossible predictions. There's trickery, involved, of course; but mentalists are also masters at reading people and have to employ advanced memory techniques to keep track of information they learn during their shows.

In an interview with Big Think, Brown revealed some of his favorite memory hacks; including his 'party trick' to never forget a person's name.

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The secret is to create a link between the part of your brain that stores information like names, and the visual part of your brain that is more easily accessed.

"You find a link between the person's name and something about their appearance, what they're wearing, their face, their hair, something," Brown says. "You find a link with something that they're wearing so if they're called Mike and they've got big black hair you think, 'Oh that's like a microphone' so I can imagine like a big microphone walking around or if they've got a stripy T-shirt on you imagine a microphone with those stripes going around it.

"And it's the same process later on in the evening you see them, you look at the stripes and you go, 'Oh that's Mike. Oh yeah that's Mike. The hair, why am I thinking the hair is like a big microphone? Oh yes, of course, they're called Mike.'"

Microphone Mike! Any sort of alliteration based on a physical characteristic will work. Stripey Steve, Tall Tim, Green Gene. The more interesting and unique, the better you'll remember.

There is one catch with the technique: You have to actually listen and pay attention when someone tells you their name!

"So, you do have to listen that's the first thing when they say the name," Brown says. "Normally the very moment where someone is giving you their name you're just caught up in a whole lot of social anxiety anyways you don't even hear it, so you have to listen."

Using someone's name when you talk to them has tons of benefits. It conveys respect, friendliness, and intimacy. When you're on the receiving end and someone you've just met uses your name, it just feels good! It feels like it matters to them that they met you.

"And then at the end [of the party] you get to go around and say goodbye to everybody by name and everyone thinks you're very charming and clever," Brown quips.

Listen to the entire, fascinating interview here.

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Brown's name-remembering technique is tangential to an ancient philosophy called the "Method of loci".

The method involves attaching things to be remembered (numbers, tasks, facts) to specific places that are easy to visualize in your head. Imagine taking a brain-walk down the street you live on and all the objects or places you might see there. The mailbox, the gnarled tree, the rusty fire hydrant. This memory method asks you to visually associate one thing you want to remember with each item or location. The more strange and visual the image you can create, the better! Brown uses the example of trying to shove a sparkling-clean shirt into his mailbox, reminding him to do his drycleaning.

When you need to recall the item, you just take a little walk in your head down the street.

(Did you know that there's a World Championship of Memory? Most of the best competitors use a version of this technique.)

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The name hack isn't so dissimilar. You're attaching an intangible, abstract thing (a name) to a specific visual image you can see in your head and even in the real world. But that's just one way of getting better at remembering names! There are all kinds of tips, hacks, and methods you can try.

Some people swear by repeating the name immediately after hearing it. "Hi, my name is Jake." "Hi, Jake, nice to meet you!" (Just don't say someone's name too frequently or you risk coming off a bit slimy.)

Others use a technique similar to Brown's loci idea, but instead of a visual, you lean on things that are already deeply engrained in your memory, like rhymes or free-association. or even celebrities. Mary - had a little lamb. Jake - the Snake. Daisy - flowers. Tom - Cruise.

Another trick (that I've definitely used before) if you do forget someone's name? Introduce them to someone you know! "Hey, this is my wife, Sarah." The person was almost always introduce themselves using their own name, and then you get a second chance at remembering it.

A lot of the best advice really comes down to being intentional about remembering when you're introduced to a new person. Whatever mental gymnastics you choose to do with the name, the mere fact that you're thinking about it with such focus immediately after is a big part of why these 'tricks' help names stick.

It feels really good when someone cares enough to remember your name, so it's definitely worth putting in a little effort of trying to instill that feeling in others.

This article originally appeared in February

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Every once in a while, when chatting with strangers at bars or working the room at a party, we'll run into an interesting person with a unique talent. They may be able to do a Rubiks Cube in just a few seconds, lick their elbow, or show off their double-jointed thumb. Silly icebreakers are an amazing tool to have in your back pocket when schmoozing with people you don't know well — especially if you're not naturally great at small talk — so I'm always fascinated when I come across a new one.

Sometimes, you'll meet someone who asks what your birthday is and then can immediately tell you what day of the week you were born. Judging by viral X posts and never-ending Reddit threads on the topic, people never cease to be astounded by this skill.

With holiday parties galore and New Years celebrations just around the corner, you too can learn this trick and wow your friends and family! You just need to be able to remember 14 numbers, and do a little bit of mental arithmetic.

Here's how to know exactly what day of the week any given date falls on.

calendar on computer Photo by Waldemar on Unsplash

There are a lot of different methods for this popular trick, but here's the basic approach according to Farmer's Almanac. Figures the farmers would have figured this one out first!

Let's say we want to know what day Christmas 2025 will be. We'll use December 25, 2025 as an example.

1. Take the last two digits of the year (2025 = 25)

2. Divide by four, discard any remainder, and add it to the original two digits (25/4 = 6, 6+25=31)

3. Add the day of the month (31+25=56)

4. Add the Month Key Number — this is where a little memorization comes in. Each month of the year has a corresponding value for the formula, with January and February having alternate values if it's a leap year. Don't panic, it's only 14 numbers to remember!


January = 1 (0 if leap)July = 0
February = 4 (3 if leap)August = 3
March = 4September = 6
April = 0
October = 1
May = 2November = 4
June = 5December = 6

So for December, we'll add 6 (56+6=62)

5. Modify your sum for the century. If you're looking for a date from 2000-2099, subtract 1 from your total here. Dates from 1900-1999 don't require any modification. 1800s get +2 and 1753-1799 gets +4. Weirdly, this trick doesn't work for dates before 1753.

Don't forget this step! For our example, 2025 gets a minus one. (62-1=61)

(When it comes to any dates in the year 3000... I wouldn't worry about it.)

6. Divide by 7 and determine the remainder. The remainder is your day of the week, with 0 being Saturday, 1 being Sunday, 2 being Monday and so on.

61/7 = 8 with a remainder of 5. 5 is Thursday, so our formula tells us that Christmas 2025 will fall on a Thursday.

Let's check the calendar for 2025 and see how we did:

Google Calendar

We nailed it! Christmas in 2025 will be on a Thursday, and it only took 6 steps to figure it out!

The shortform formula for reference is:

Day of the Week = The remainder of (2 year digits+(2 year digits/4)+Month Key+Day+Century Modifier) / 7

Admittedly, this will take a little practice to do in your head (especially after a glass or two of champagne.) But it will be worth the effort if you can master it.

People who can rattle these dates off without a second thought have probably put a lot of time into memorizing and practicing, or they just have exceptional brains.

There are only 14 possible calendars: one for a year beginning on each day of the week, and alternate versions for leap years. So with enough reps, you can definitely start to get the hang of this and get a feel for how the different calendars lay themselves out.

This is an especially cool trick and a good icebreaker because it comes with the added bonus of allowing you to get to know other people. You can ask about birthdays, anniversaries, or other special days in their lives and wow them with your mental math, afterward finding yourself in a great and genuine conversation.

That's the secret behind a good party trick, and why we all love them so much. Sure, some people do them for the attention, but the real ones learn little tricks and games to better connect with people in social situations. A surprising talent or skill is so much better at breaking down walls of polite but stiff conversation and getting you right to genuine, deeper interactions.

As an introvert, when I was younger I gravitated toward magic tricks and card tricks. Some of my favorites to this day are the dumb, easy ones that almost anyone can learn! Because at their core, they're just a fun way to break the ice and laugh with new people.

Give the day of the week trick a try at your next gathering and you'll soon find yourself in all kinds of fascinating discussions about great dates in history, what the future will be like, and important moments in people's lives. Plus, people will think you're a genius, which isn't a terrible side effect.