Polygraphs

[Revalos]

OK...so most of you probably won't be subjected to these things in your lines of work, but if there are any out there who will in the future or have in the past, do these things seem ridiculously archaic to anyone else or just me? I just had my first one today.

I mean...sweat sensors on your fingers, a movement sensor on your chair, plastic cords around your chest and a blood pressure monitor. Aren't there more scientific methods of detecting lies out there or are we still in the 1920s? The questions they use to see if they can detect you lying (things that you must answer in a lie to make their baseline) aren't realistically usable for lies IMHO. I was asked, have you ever cheated in school and then was told to think about a specific time I did and then tell him I had never cheated. I can't fucking remember a specific time...but I went with it.

[Celephais]

Any chance you'll tell us why you were given a polygraph?

And no... never taken one. But I do agree, it does seem very archaic, that is why I'm pretty sure they're not allowed to be used as evidence in court. In reality though it's not measuring lies, it's measuring your reaction to the question... really it's almost more of a "if you believe it works, it will" kind of thing.

[Khariz]

I've taken two polygraphs so far. I agree that they are a big archaic. The questions they ask to set the extremes are pretty retarded.

Never found them to be much of a concern though. Heard a funny story from the examiner though. He told me that they used to ask, as a "guaranteed 'no'" question if the person had ever had sex with an animal, until one day a guy said yes to the question. They were like "uh....".

Anyway....

[ELO]

I had to take one a few days ago myself. This was the third time I've taken one in the last year and a half. Two of those 3 times (including the most recent one) I popped on questions I didn't lie about and wasn't given further consideration on employment because of it. (Or, maybe it was because of the truth I had to tell in order not to pop on the other questions).

Anyway, on the first one, I popped when they asked if my name was Mason twice, and if I had committed any sex crimes once. (They ask the questions twice).

The more recent one I popped when they asked if I had stolen any money from my job that I hadn't already disclosed to the detective both times. I had already disclosed everything to the detective that I had stolen, yet I still popped. However, I didn't pop when he asked if I had been completely truthful with him that day.

Anyway, I'll probably be taking another one later on this year. Hopefully I'll have better luck this time.

[Revalos]

Any chance you'll tell us why you were given a polygraph? -Celephais

I have to get one every five years or so to keep my job.

Heard a funny story from the examiner though. He told me that they used to ask, as a "guaranteed 'no'" question if the person had ever had sex with an animal, until one day a guy said yes to the question. They were like "uh....". -Khariz

That is an actual question that is not a baseliner on at least one polygraph I know of, they really want to know if you have or have not for lifestyle reasons.

[Sean of the Thread]

They're used more of a witch hunt then anything to force/trick you to admit shit. I've taken two and whilst they both sucked they didn't have a clue if you keep your wits about you.

OH and reading up on the subject only made it worse for me..
May help to do some research on them but it really only made the entire test worse for me.

[TheEschaton]

I think that story might be more interesting than the story of the polygraph of the story.

[TheEschaton]

Oh, and the CIA asks you in dead seriousness if you've ever had sex with animals.

[Khariz]

Oh, and the CIA asks you in dead seriousness if you've ever had sex with animals.

Well they actually DID ask me that question during both polygraphs, even though he told me that they no longer used it as a baseline. I suppose that makes more sense to me now if they were asking it as a serious question.

[Warriorbird]

Given your job, Revalos, I don't think it is unreasonable. Given most people's? Less so.

[Drew2]

I saw in some movie that they can tell if you're lying by measuring the dialation of your pupils. IS THIS TRUE?

[AestheticDeath]

I heard if you clench your asshole it throws everything off!

Though I heard it in a movie...

[Khariz]

I heard if you clench your asshole it throws everything off!

Though I heard it in a movie...

My question is: Would you have used the word clench in that sentence if you had never played Gemstone?

[Stanley Burrell]

If I'm feeling pompous/bored enough, I'll check for pupillary contraction/expansion with an individual, assuming there isn't other stimuli present.

You can also shine a light in a corpse's eyeballs decently post-mortem and still get contraction, just not expansion.

I'm imagining that since I was actually taught how to self-induce panic attacks, I could probably just as easily give a complete series of false positives on just about everything polygraph-related.

[Tolwynn]

Polygraphs are pretty archaic - they're looking for deviations in a number of physical responses caused by stress. If you can control yourself to a degree, you can at the very least force a test to be thrown out pretty easily for inconclusive responses - though this admittedly may not be to your benefit, all the same.

With enough practice, I was eventually able to start slipping lies past, which was pretty interesting given the sort of folks they had testing.

[Revalos]

Given your job, Revalos, I don't think it is unreasonable. Given most people's? Less so. -Warriorbird

Enh...but then why don't they have some legitimate means of doing the same thing as opposed to voodoo like the polygraph? The tester even agreed that it was basically voodoo. Brain scans, random surveillance, hell, just hire a bunch of actors to try and dupe employees into doing something against policy and call them on it like Chris Hansen does on Dateline. All of those things would give a more reasonable results than analog sensing device readouts.

[Gan]

I've taken one and I hated every minute of it.

If you're overly nervous then it will throw everything off. I admitted to shooting Kennedy as part of a control and passed as not deceptive.

I heard dilantin works (rumor), I heard putting a tack in your shoe and lots of other nickel/dime techinques will help give false positives.

There are ways to defeat them if you're familiar with the techniques of the poly examiners and how the equipment works. And they arent 100% accurate/foolproof. Thats why I dont support nor endorse them.

[Blazing247]

A thorough background investigation will tell you more about a person than a polygraph could ever hope to.

[TheEschaton]

I admitted to shooting Kennedy as part of a control and passed as not deceptive.

OMFG GAN KILLED JFK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111111one11!!

[Numbers]

Thankfully polygraphs by employers are illegal in my state.

They're archaic, yes. Background checks are thorough enough these days that they're not really needed. Not to mention they're notoriously inaccurate.

[SpunGirl]

From what I understand, the validity of the results depends in large part on the skill of the person giving the test. I agree that they are archaic, and there's a reason they're not even admissible in court.

-K

[Drew]

They're highly inaccurate, it's an art not a science, except an art the Federal government bases employment off. Anyway, with some modicum of effort and skill you can beat a poly pretty easily.

[Tsa`ah]

They're highly inaccurate, it's an art not a science, except an art the Federal government bases employment off. Anyway, with some modicum of effort and skill you can beat a poly pretty easily.

Unless you're a pathological liar ... no.

[Celephais]

Funny you should post this... I went into the kitchen at work today and we had a big "Employeer polygraph rights" poster on the wall (among about 10 other big "take notice about your rights" type signs). So I asked my boss "Are we getting polygraphed now?" apparently our new HR lady just wanted the posters up. We've been a small company but we're starting to get a bit bigger, and my boss/owner isn't too happy about having to cut out the sexual harassment of the female employees.

He didn't even know what the poster said, he asked me if it meant he could polygraph us, or that he couldn't polygraph us. I told him he should get a polygraph machine just so we could mess around with it.

[Clove]

Just in case anyone here really needs to squeak by that animal sex question...

http://www.wikihow.com/Cheat-a-Polygraph-Test-%28Lie-Detector%29

[Clove]

According to the Wikipedia the National Academy of Sciences didn't have glowing reports to make on the accuracy of polygraphs:

"2003 National Academy of Sciences Report
The accuracy of the polygraph has been contested almost since the introduction of the device. In 2003, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a report entitled “The Polygraph and Lie Detection”. The NAS found that the majority of polygraph research was of low quality. It is interesting to note that, so far, no scientific study has been published that offers convincing evidence of the validity of the polygraph test. After culling through the numerous studies of the accuracy of polygraph detection the NAS identified 57 that had “sufficient scientific rigor”. These studies concluded that a polygraph test regarding a specific incident can discern the truth at “a level greater than chance, yet short of perfection”. The report also concluded that this level of accuracy was probably overstated and the levels of accuracy shown in these studies "are almost certainly higher than actual polygraph accuracy of specific-incident testing in the field.” [10]

When polygraphs are used as a screening tool (in national security matters and for law enforcement agencies for example) the level of accuracy drops to such a level that “Its accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies.” In fact, the NAS extrapolated that if the test were sensitive enough to detect 80% of spies (a level of accuracy which it did not assume), in a hypothetical polygraph screening of 10,000 employees including 10 spies, 8 spies and 1,598 non-spies would fail the test. Thus, roughly 99.6 percent of positives (those failing the test) would be false positives. The NAS concluded that the polygraph “…may have some utility” [11] but that there is "little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy."[12]

The NAS conclusions paralleled those of the earlier United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment report "Scientific Validity of Polygraph Testing: A Research Review and Evaluation”.[13]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph

Assuming polygraphs are inaccurate, it wouldn't be a big leap to presume that results could be faked by a skilled/trained test-taker.

[Khariz]

Well due to the fact that they don't let me answer "maybe" or "sort of" or "Well, that depends" on my polygraphs, I have been untruthful at one point or another every time I have taken one.

To my knowledge, they never had a clue. If they did, they didn't care enough to call me out on it, or to fail me.

[ElanthianSiren]

OK...so most of you probably won't be subjected to these things in your lines of work, but if there are any out there who will in the future or have in the past, do these things seem ridiculously archaic to anyone else or just me? I just had my first one today.

I mean...sweat sensors on your fingers, a movement sensor on your chair, plastic cords around your chest and a blood pressure monitor. Aren't there more scientific methods of detecting lies out there or are we still in the 1920s? The questions they use to see if they can detect you lying (things that you must answer in a lie to make their baseline) aren't realistically usable for lies IMHO. I was asked, have you ever cheated in school and then was told to think about a specific time I did and then tell him I had never cheated. I can't fucking remember a specific time...but I went with it.


I found a nifty PDF book online on how to tell if someone's lying to you or not by their conversational behavior, but I don't suppose that behavior would be admissable either?

I don't like polygraphs for at least one of the reasons that you mention. My blood pressre fluctuates like CRAZY (my diastol dropped 50 pts once in 15 minutes). Pretty sure just getting strapped in there like that, feeling like I couldn't get away, would be enough to send it into the stratosphere a few times then bring it down as I calmed then send it up again as I panic'd.

Scholastic tests were always fun for me BTW.

[Warriorbird]

It's probably as much for intimidation as anything else.