How Accurate are Lie Detectors (aka Polygraph Tests)?
To determine whether a person is saying the truth or a lie was a goal of mankind for centuries. The methods of Lie Detectors aka Polygraph Test use physiological activity of the individual’s sympathetic nervous system to detect deception by measuring changes of a sympathetic nervous system response.
In ancient China rice was used as a “Lie Detector” where a suspect had to fill his/her mouth with a dry rice and listen to a prosecutor. The purpose of this method was to detect deception, as an anxious person doesn’t salivate, therefore if the suspects didn’t salivate and the rice was dry at the end of the speech the person was found guilty.
I have always questioned the accuracy of the Lie Detectors. Are they really work or it is more of a pseudoscience. Why are Lie Detectors accurate, but not foolproof? How accurate are Lie Detectors (aka Polygraph Tests)?
I will examine the hypothesis that Lie detectors aka Polygraph tests would be the most accurate if verbal and nonverbal deceptive behavior were taken as indications of deception and the lies and truths are classified correctly.
Polygraph “many writings” is referred to a lie detector and it’s the most common method used to detect deception.
However, Lie Detector aka Polygraph Test has many advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages could be a failure of the polygraph examiner properly establish a psychological set and preparation of the examinee to respond to specific questions which
Increase the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system that could lead to deceptive response and examiner’s misinterpretation of data on the polygraph graphs. Another great example when a polygraph examiner or observe...
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...ntain. For example: when deceiver forgets what she/he said at one point and contradicts him/herself on another occasion, or a polygraphist can play a “deceiver” by convincing an examinee in “seeing” a lie on the polygraph’s graph. The last might sound unethical, but it can help to reveal important information such as truth and confession. However, the issue with this approach to unfounded accusatory questions could be stressful for examinee and lead to a false positive.
Although the idea of a polygraph testing is comforting, the practical advice would still remain skeptical for the end results of the lie detector aka polygraph test. .
Advocates of Lie-detector aka Polygraph tests predict that a technological advances will improve accuracy of Lie detectors aka Polygraph tests and the results of the tests will be admissible in the courts as evidence.
If I was a police officer who was taking part in an interrogation I would create a lie to see if the person was the one
It tells us how often we lie or tend to lie under different situations and scenarios by taking real world examples. Kornet explained and analyze the result of various studies by Bella DePaulo, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and her colleagues. As lying and deception becomes an integral part of every individual, it is important to know its impact and its results on our life. We are lying about one or the other thing at almost every moment of our life. It can be at workplace, in a relationship, or even friendship. Kornet concludes this article by saying, “The ubiquity of lying is clearly a problem, but would we want to will away all of our lies? Let’s be honest.” I completely agrees with the author as we have to take a step against lying and deception and to be honest in our lives. Kornet’s article provides really good studies and after analyzing those studies one can think of his/her lying habit and how often he lies in a day. I myself tried and thinking about how many times in a day I lie, and found that I lie a number of times in a day. This article is really interesting and I encourage everyone to read this article. After reading this article, you will come to know the actual truth about lying and its
In “The Interview” by Douglas Starr, He talks about the different techniques they use when interrogating suspects to determine whether the suspect is lying. One technique they use is called the Reid Technique and that is when
In society, some people are looked at as liars or “bullshitters,” as stated in the article, “Is Lying Bad for Us?” Honesty is not always the best policy, and in certain situations, liars are best not to tell the truth when protecting the innocent, or protecting oneself. Because of this, lying should be looked at as a standard in society and something that people recognize in every day life.
Feature, Heather HatfieldWebMD. "10 Ways to Catch a Liar." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 06 Jan. 2014.
After reviewing the article “Inside Interrogation: The Lie, The Bluff, and False Confessions”, it became very evident the huge problem with interrogations and false confessions in the criminal justice system is with false confession. Jennifer T. Perillo and Saul M. Kassin crafted three distinct experiments to try and better understand false confessions and how trues the actual numbers in real life are. What Perillo and Kassin were trying to prove is that “the bluff technique should elicit confessions from perpetrators but not from innocents” (Perillo, Kassin 2010). What is called the “Bluff Technique” is an interrogation technique that uses a sort of threat or hint that there is certain proof that a person will think is more of a promise for
One of the last types of ways investigators are coached to detect deception is in the behavioral attitudes of a person being interviewed such as being unconcerned or over anxious (Kassin, 2005). The success rate of looking for these cues are very successful in telling if an individual is being deceitful and has surpassed any laboratory tests conducted on the subject. The laboratory test however did reveal some interesting facts. The research showed that people who had training and experience did not score better than the control group who received no training. In fact all individuals scored at the chance level with the people who had training scored just above chance or at the chance level. To check if special training in the detection of deception was more accurate a study ...
That, like unreliable narrators, individuals often ‘lie’ to themselves in order to cover up the actual
(8) has suggested that the inhibition hypothesis is related to what is currently known about cognitive processes. Mainly, the limited cognitive resources the brain possesses can only be divided between so many tasks; as cognitive demand increases past a particular point [i.e. through high emotional intensity/complex lie] emotional leakage will occur while the individual attempts to be deceptive (8). It is this concept of emotional leakage, precipitated from the inhibition hypothesis, that has been of great interest to researchers as it offers a glimpse into the inner affective state of the subject (8). The applied applications of the concept have been particularly useful in fields concerned with deception detection - especially in regards to high stakes lies (8).
Richard Gunderman asks the question, "Isn 't there something inherently wrong with lying, and “in his article” Is Lying Bad for Us?" Similarly, Stephanie Ericsson states, "Sure I lie, but it doesn 't hurt anything. Or does it?" in her essay, "The Ways We Lie.” Both Gunderman and Ericsson hold strong opinions in regards to lying and they appeal to their audience by incorporating personal experiences as well as references to answer the questions that so many long to confirm.
“A good liar uses the truth.” This is a technique used by notorious imposters Frederic Bourdin, and Frank Abagnale. Although Bourdin posed as a child for a second chance at adolescence, Abagnale posed as an adult to gain financial means and respect. Bourdin and Abagnale’s success in deception can be primarily attributed to their careful observation of their surroundings, as well as their ability to detect the emotions of those around them.
Lying is simply an act of not telling the truth, and this definition of lying will be used in future sections of this paper. There are three groups of lies t...
Lying is an issue that has been debated on for a long time. Some people believe that lying is sometimes ok in certain circumstances. Some people believe lying is always acceptable. In contrast, some believe lying is always bad. Keeping all other’s opinions in mind, I believe that lying is a deficient way of solving problems and is a bad thing. I claim that only certain situations allow the usage of lies and that otherwise, lying is bad. Dishonesty is bad because it makes it harder to serve justice, harms the liar individually, and messes up records. Furthermore, it should only be said to protect someone from grave danger.
Although alterations have been made to protect the validity an minimize the error of the polygraph, the results are still dependant of the subjects physiological response. Although research has shown that these alterations do in fact minimize the inaccuracy of the results, no matter what changes are made, there is still a minimal possibility that one can wittingly breach the barriers.
A polygraph test can record a person's breathing rate, pulse, blood pressure, perspiration and other significant physiological changes that suggest a person is lying, but it should not be used as evidence in a court of law because it does not provide reliable proof of a person's physical reaction to the stress of lying.