Human Hacking summary

Let’s say a friend asks your opinion on a personal matter. As you’re giving your honest assessment, he cuts you off and calls you insensitive. You’re stunned: you were just sharing your thoughts as requested. You conclude that your friend is overly sensitive. But could it simply be that your natural ways of communicating don't match up?

Here’s the key message: Master your own communication tendencies before assessing others. 

Imagine you get an email, with no greeting, from your boss that says: “Call me tomorrow at three.” For the next twenty-four hours, you worry frantically that you’re going to lose your job. But when you call your boss the next day as promised – half-asleep and full of angst – it turns out she just wants to discuss a minor issue in a presentation. 

Wouldn’t it have been kinder for her to mention her reason for wanting to meet from the outset? What’s missing from her end is a clear pretext, or an effective context that sets up a social interaction for success. It’s what the author calls “the art of the start.” 

Let’s face it: we’re all strapped for time. Whenever we encounter new people, we automatically consider how long an interaction will take and then judge whether it’s worth our while.

If you’re waiting in line for a coffee-to-go and the person behind you taps your shoulder, responding will probably seem like a low-risk endeavor – you can assume this interaction will only last until one of you has paid and gotten your drink, at the longest. Now, imagine you’re on your way to a meeting when someone stops you in the street. In this scenario, you’ll be more likely to avoid the interaction altogether. After all, you have places to be! 

As a security expert, the author was tasked with breaking into companies’ securities systems in order to identify vulnerabilities. On a mission to access a company’s executive offices, he noticed the receptionist in the lobby was playing a game on her computer. This presented him with an irresistible opportunity for social engineering.

The first thing the author did was warn her that he could see what was on her screen. The receptionist shut her game down, just at the moment her boss was walking past. Grateful, she mouthed “Thank you” to the author.

Let’s say you’re on a first date. If you want to find out whether your date wants kids, has a job, and shares your interests, one option is to just come out and ask. Your date may answer truthfully, or not. Meanwhile, you risk turning the encounter into an interrogation.

Now, what if you could get all the information you need without posing a single question, and still keep the conversation light and fun? By employing the simple tool of elicitation, you can get people to reveal almost anything. And you don’t even have to ask. 

When a friendly dog rolls onto its backside and exposes a soft underbelly for you to scratch, it indicates the pet trusts you. This cue is known as ventral display, referring to the belly of an animal or a human. 

Indeed, if a person tilts his hips and belly toward you, this can also indicate openness and comfort – a phenomenon that former FBI investigator Joe Navarro calls ventral fronting. Gaining an understanding of such physical cues equips you with a technique you can immediately employ to improve your social interactions.

Have you ever put a jacket on the bus seat next to you to avoid sharing the space with another passenger? Maybe you even put on headphones to dissuade people from asking you whether the seat is taken. Such scenarios don’t exemplify human hacking, but rather manipulation. 

Using ethical tactics of influence, you would engage in polite conversation with anyone who tried to sit next to you and try to motivate that person to sit elsewhere. But forcing others into making a decision based on false pretenses, and for selfish gain, strays into the territory of unfriendly or even devious manipulation.