Lie detector test

Post Reply New Topic

This is totally random, but I am wondering if anyone else out there has happened to have taken one before, and what was the outcome.

When I was younger, I came very close to becoming a Police officer, as I have found, many others on the spectrum have an affinity for Justice, or rules. One of the last steps was passing a lie-detector test, which I thought would be no problem, because I really did not have anything to hide, and I am a very honest person. However, something I do know, is that even if I am not breaking rules, having my integrity questioned does cause a considerable amount of anxiety for me. My result was inconclusive, and they could not tell whether I was being honest, presumably because of my anxiety for the situation.

Anyone else have a similar situation?

Doesn't surprise me that a polygraph test didn't work. All they really do is measure stress, which doesn't correlate very well with the act of telling a lie. I don't understand why so many US states have faith in lie detectors. Here in the UK, the law doesn't use the polygraph.

I often feel nervous when I deny an accusation, if I can't prove I'm telling the truth. Especially if my inquisitor doesn't seem about to believe me. I had a number of cynical teachers who would assume I was lying, and my mother often used to tell me that she was "up to my tricks," even when there weren't any tricks, so I tend to feel that authority figures won't give me the benefit of the doubt, hence the nervousness. Problem is, although we don't have the polygraph, authority figures often try to make a subjective judgement about the honesty of a suspect based on body language etc. Arousing their suspicions is never a good idea.

I've got better at appearing calm in such situations, but it's still an issue sometimes, and it doesn't help that I know that as an Aspie I'm likely to mess up the body language and look as guilty as sin.

Exactly. I have never taken a polygraph test, but I'm sure I'd fail it due to my anxiety going haywire the moment I'm tested.


That's the same for me too, and it can make me twitch and stutter and give the **** Nts all the signs they're looking for.
Eye contact is hard under the best of circumstances, when I'm nervous I can't at all.

I think lie-detector tests have their basis

But they are not authoritative, by any means.

The reason that the ouijagraph polygraph machine is still in use by law-enforcement is that a skilled bully operator can intimidate convince a test subject into making a false quick confession that will cheat shorten the judicial process and add another victim victory to the prosecutor's win-loss record.

Ouijagraph! Brilliant.

This technology has been definitively proven to be unreliable. That people should continue to pretend otherwise is further evidence of the widespread irrational need to have unwarranted faith in things. Very odd.

I took a LD test when I was 22yo. (just for fun.) and they could never get the thing to work on me no matter how hard they tried.

http://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph.aspx

Truly, there's another seeker born every minute. Some of them are convinced this demonstrably unreliable equipment will help.

At best, it's an example of the Streetlight Effect

I have never had one done and I also have anxiety so I am sure it wouldn't work on me either.

Yet many major organizations swear by them, just like those BS 'behavioural interviews' that are still the rage in Canada despite little evidence they work, especially since skilled liars can easilty evade both and anxiety riddled AS men and women frequently give false positives.

I was always taught that big organizations always behave rationally and scientifically. Um, what planet do they live on?

Well said! I think this nails it.



Well, now, I think it's hardly fair to compare behavioral interviews to polygraph tests! Yes, both of them can be cheated. However, the entire point of the polygraph tests is to detect deception, so if it can be deceived it's pointless. This is not the point of the behavioral interview. Its point is to enable the interviewer to make the best possible prediction of how you'll behave in the future and the best predictor of that is how you behaved in the past. It does not assume the interviewee is intent on cheating. Obviously it's far from perfect, but I don't know that it's as useless as the polygraph.

There are no lie detectors, there are only machines made to spot deception. This is the reverse logic of lie detection. The machines were invented, and abandoned ages ago by serious agencies.

A trained interviewer can get a much more precise detection rate of lies than this box and the pseudoscience it comes with.

I'd never even heard the term behavioral interview. I wish I didn't look it up.

If they interview aspies they need to know that though, or our body language might give them a false positive. They look for a lot of things at least some of us do by default.

Being informed that a person have autism or some other condition, it would be still be possible for an interviewer to identify someone who isn't telling the truth. Unlike what people think, and the name of this forum - we are still human beings and we react much the same as everyone else.

The interviewer looks for anomalies given a baseline, the baseline is created by talking to the person and asking him/her some standard questions. This baseline will be different from person to person and the interviewer is trained to identify certain traits/quirks a person may have. When a person starts deviating from this highly personal normal behaviour, it is presumed that the person is not telling the truth. There is also physical manifestations like blushresponse (which is physical, not psychological) and increased pulse that you can measure with a IR-camera.

Police do this all the time and its almost a science, a way better science than a machine hooked up to a bunch of sensors that can be fooled with some training, drugs like betablockers or people with psychopathy who show little reaction to lying.

Even N.T's have been known to struggle.

Lie detector tests measure anxiety, because lying causes changed in heartrate and anxiety.

But the uncomfortableness of the whole situation itself is what causes the anxieties, not the fact that they are being honest or not.

Is there a shred of evidence to show that the Myers Briggs or enneagram or any similar scheme has any basis in reality? I think not.

As Todd Essig noted in Forbes, "The MBTI is pretty much nonsense, sciencey snake oil. As is well-established by research, it has no more reliability and validity than a good Tarot card reading."

Pretty much exactly like polygraphs, horoscopes and ouija boards.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddessig/2 ... iggs-mbti/

Of course, if they are not relying on that sort of rubbish, there are other reasons to suspect that such interviews can be gamed:
http://www.theladders.com/career-advice ... -interview