A lie detection test is a test conducted to determine the honesty and loyalty of a person. The result it provides depends on various factors such as variations in heart beat, pulse rate, breathing patterns, blood pressure etc. It is useful in many cases such as to investigate crime, check partner’s loyalty, determine whether the candidate who is applying in your company satisfies the needs of the organization or not, and many more.
What is a Polygraph?
Polygraph, commonly known as a lie detector, is a machine that helps in determining whether a person is lying or not. It works on the principle that a person always gets nervous while telling a lie. It’s pretty obvious that we speak truth more confidently and efficiently than while lying. We often fumble, get nervous and think before lying to someone. The clashes in our mind often results in some physiological changes in our body such as increased heart beats, sweat, alterations in blood pressure and many more. It basically differentiates between the normal corporeal behavior of the suspect and his behavior while answering questions. While speaking the truth we often speak with a flow and that doesn’t result in any difference, but while telling a lie the battles inside our mind often result in several changes that are recorded within the machine. The machine then evaluates them and provides the results to the examiner. After all the questions, the examiner analyzes the result and gets a conclusion out of them. This conclusion at last is only responsible to figure out whether the suspect is honest or not.
These tests should only be performed by professionals and skilled examiners. The experience, knowledge and skills of the examiner contribute to the accuracy of the result, to a great extent. Although the best examiner promises highly accurate results, there are many consequences that an examiner may face while executing this test. Some of them are:
1. Sometime innocent individuals aren’t able to deal with the interrogation and become nervous that time; this unfortunately labels them as deceptive.
2. Before the test begins, there is a general conversation between the examiner and the subject, sometimes this conversation may get awkward and eventually affect the test results.
3. People who are guilty sometimes may ditch examiners by their calm behavior and controlled emotions.
4. A lie detection test may take 2 to 3 hours for evaluation or may be more than that.
5. Nothing gives you 100% accuracy; the same rule applies to the lie detection test as well.
6. The lie detector test is quite intrusive as it gets sensors attached to various body parts of the subject as on chest and fingers that may make him nervous and anxious.
7. Criminals may come with something new to deal such tests and the principles they work on is obvious and revealed to everyone. It is not that difficult to fool such machines by simple tactics or deny their results as they have been proved wrong many times before.
In spite of such contradictions, people still prefer to choose lie detection tests to reveal the truth. This is mainly because it doesn’t involve any kind of violence in it. Before the method was adopted there were many methods in place to get the truth out of the suspect, but they were either inaccurate or violent.
Torturing people was the most common method used before these lie detection tests became viral. Torturing anyhow didn’t get much popularity because of the main drawback that it harmed innocent people as well, at times. After its failure, there was a need for an invention that does the same work but without harming anyone, at least before they are sentenced guilty. The first original version of modern polygraph was created in 1895 by Cesare Lombroso. It mainly relied on the variations in blood pressure during interrogation. After that many inventions were made and finally we are with the machine that tests various aspects and ensures accurate results. The lie detector test doesn’t harm anyone and is conducted calmly under the supervision of experts. Though the verdict of the court doesn’t completely depend upon these tests as they may be proved wrong, these tests carry an important place in evidences that influence the court’s verdict to a great extent.