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Essay on the polygraph test
Essay on the polygraph test
Essay on the polygraph test
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A lie detector test is commonly called a polygraph. They are used to record a subject's natural reaction, such as an increase in heart rate, to questions. The polygraph tracks and records these factors using multiple smaller devices. It has been built and developed since 1878 (Côté, Michel, Sergeant). The polygraph has its advantages and disadvantages, some people even claim it can be tricked. The United States uses them, but scientist are still uncertain of their accuracy. Many other countries do not use them out of concern for accuracy. In recent years, their use has decreased due to the uncertainty. Polygraphs have always been, and might always be, controversial.
As stated before, Polygraphs aren't used as frequently as one would think.
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They tend to question, "If I had to take a lie detector test, could I lie my way through it?" Whether you can trick a Polygraph or not is also controversial, but tends to lean more toward not being true. A lot of experts insist it is highly unlikely that a person would be able to trick a Polygraph because you simply cannot control things such as heart rate and breathing (Robinson, Bryan). It has also been said that you cannot trick a Polygraph because the questions are re-worded and repeated. This way, if you do lie, you have to remember your lie and repeat it while still keeping your heart rate and breathing under control (Palmer, Alun). This tactic, like may questioning tactics, originates from regular interrogations where the subject is asked the same question multiple times. It's harder to remember a lie than the truth. One expert says, "I don't want to say it's impossible, I believe it can be done in a highly controlled environment where the subject has been instructed to lie and has nothing to lose." (Robinson, Bryan). This is also a hard thing to test, because if anyone has ever lied their way through a Polygraph, we wouldn't even know unless it was a controlled experimental environment. These types of experiments would be hard to conduct, and therefore have not been done. This is a problem because part of the reason issues with Polygraphs still exist is because they are hard to
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
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
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 ...
False confessions are receiving more public attention now that people are speaking out about having to serve jail time for a crime they did not commit. 2015 was a year to remember for false confessions starting in January when a man was released after serving 21 years in prison. The protocols that interrogators are trained to follow are dangerous because they allow investigators to have complete influence on innocent people to make false confessions.
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
Author Allison Kornet in her article (1997) “The Truth about Lying: Has Lying Gotten a Bad Rap” states that deception or lying has become a part of everyone’s life. A person lies or deceives as often as he brushes his teeth or combs his hair. Many psychologists have neglected or ignored the concept of deception or lying and its effects on everyone’s life. Kornet explains that in the previous two to three decades, the psychologists started noticing or analyzing the effects of a person’s deception on others or why a person lies so many times in his day-to-day life. The person might learn lying from childhood
People face ethical dilemmas every day. But it is perhaps, most prevalent in the law enforcement profession. Law enforcement officers face ethical dilemmas constantly. Some of the ethical issues that police face each day are: racial profiling, officer discretion, police officer loyalty, police officer abuse, and interrogatory deception. This paper will discuss the purpose of interrogatory deception, ways in which it is used, some of the current debates over the practice, and a landmark ruling in the Miranda case of 1966 which attempted to cease the use of intimidation and coercion practices of the police.
In Laurence Armand French Ph.D. and Thomas J. Young Ph.D.’s article The False Memory Syndrome: Clinical/Legal Issues for the Prosecution talks about memory recall being an unreliable form of evidence in the Criminal Justice System. French and Young state that hypnosis and lie detector tests are a misconception because “the cognitive interpretations of the emotional/autonomic aspects of the central nervous (CNS) and peripheral nervous systems are not true indicators of reality,” (p. 38).
Psychological research and application have established that it is not only people with learning disability or major mental illness that are susceptible to make false confessions. In order for a confession to be false, a person must either confess to a crime that he or she is completely innocent of or overstate his or her involvement in the crime. False confessions can be either voluntary or coerced. Although it is methodologically difficult to establish the frequency of false confessions, anecdotal evidence such as self-reports and case studies indicate that reported cases are only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. It appears that young people are particularly vulnerable and often make false confessions in order to protect others. Standardized psychological tests have been devised in order to assess personality factors such as suggestibility and compliance that render some people more vulnerable than others. The reason people make false confessions is typically due to a combination of factors such as psychological vulnerabilities, nature of the custodial confinement and the police interviewing tactics. Notorious cases of false confessions which have lead to the wrongful convictions of innocent people subsequently spending years in prison represent some of the worst cases of miscarriage of justice in Britain. One such cases, that of Engin Raghip of the so-called ‘Tottenham three’ will be discussed in the context of admissibility of psychological evidence in order to demonstrate how the judiciary has increasingly come to accept the psychological notion that most people, under certain circumstances, are susceptible to making false confessions.
Heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductivity are monitored during the lie detector test, those responses can be controlled. Steve Elias writes, “Some people are so divorced from morality or a guilty conscience that they may test honest – because they are really good
Their actions can be deceiving. They manipulate people and situations, they coerce citizens, and are dishonest. They are encouraged and rewarded for their practices. Police officers often lie to suspects about witnesses and evidence. They are deceitful when attempting to learn about criminal activity. Most of these actions are sanctioned, legal, and expected. Although, police officers are allowed to be dishonest in certain circumstances, they are also required to be trustworthy, honest, and maintain the highest level of integrity. To perform their job effectively, police officers lie. They use deception, manipulation, and coercion to obtain information. Police officers often tell those suspected of committing crimes that they have physical evidence implicating the suspect when there is no such evidence. They tell suspects that they have witnesses who have identified or implicated the suspect, knowing full well the witness does not exist. Officers will tell suspects that a polygraph has shown that the suspect was lying when the officer knows that the polygraph did not indicate deception, or was inconclusive. Police officers will conceal their identity, and even deny that they are police officers while attempting to obtain evidence. Some of these practices are justifiable, others may create ethical concerns and some are beyond the law or ethical policing. Police officers abuse their power when they engage in
They may end up feeling uneasy, but the American Psychological Association (APA) and the British Psychological Society (BPS) both have strict regulations on how a subject can be deceived. Both associations state that deception can only be used if there is no other way of affectively obtaining the results, and if there is no drastic physical impairment, or no mental abuse. They also require that the participant can withdraw from the experiment whenever they want, and the researcher must inform the subject about the purpose, value of the experiment. There is a fine line that the researcher must walk when using deception. They must make sure that they subject will be fine after the experiment, or its considered an act of injustice. Another reason people don’t approve of deception is the possibility of corruption. If researchers start using deception all the time, people will start to lose their trust in them. If people start to lose trust in researchers, the number of participants can decrease substantially. This argument is not very convincing. The risk of the participant being substantially harmed is very low. Experimenters are not motivated by getting an unfair advantage. Their purpose is solely to collect data, so that they can draw conclusions. The likelihood deception gives psychology a bad reputation is very low if the
The article starts off with the hypothetical case of a man stealing a blue diamond, which he claims to have never seen before, yet brain signals indicate he has. It is then asked if this can be used in court. In traditional lie detector tests, physiological responses to lying are analyzed, such as heart rate, blood pressure, pupil dilation, and sweat,
A question everyone in today’s society thinks about is; how to spot a liar. As a part of a recent class on interviewing, taken at Lethbridge College, we were given that exact task. First we watched the video “How to Spot a Liar”. Presented by Pamela Meyer. This video gave us a foundation as to the techniques to use in spotting an individual who is being deceitful. The next step was to watch two interviews, which dealt with an individual from both genders regarding the circumstances of separate sexual assault accusations. With the knowledge and techniques we have acquired by doing so, this has given us the ability to analyze, interpret, and critique individuals based on their verbal and non-verbal communication.
If you're like most people you think that there is no way to cheat a lie detector test, but you like most people would be wrong. There are many ways to cheat a lie detector test. There are also reasons why you can cheat a lie detector test. First off it’s not really called a lie detector test it’s called a polygraphs. A polygraphs is a test that people take that tells how much stress your body has it can’t actually tell if you’re lying (howstuffworks). For polygraphs the first questions they ask are questions like have you ever lied or have you ever broken the law. Most people will answer no to these questions to come across as honest. They ask those questions because most people have lieds before and you also probably broken a law like jaywalking. They need you to lie the first couple of questions so they can see how your body's stress level will change. They get you to lie for the first question so they can compare it to the other answers to see if you are lying. If you’re wondering why do they need polygraphs then you’re in luck cause you’re about to find out.