The Polygraph Test by Tina Erwin

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       What is truth? How is it defined? Can you test for truth mechanically? Can there actually be a truth machine, something that measures whether or not we are truthful when we answer a question?

       Is the truth all relative, based on context? Could you be telling the truth as much as you know it and then the polygraph machine still indicate that you are lying?

       Perhaps that is the issue with the polygraph test. This is the test that law enforcement gives people to determine if the accused person is lying. But it wouldn’t have to be someone accused of any crime, polygraph tests are routinely given as a determiner of employment in law enforcement.

       Polygraph is an interesting word. Poly, from the Latin, meaning many and graph meaning that whatever you find is being projected as data feed on a visual graph is the term given to the truth machine. However, can any machine ever determine what the truth is for any person? We are increasingly living in a “one size fits all” world. This is a world of critical sameness where a ‘norm’ is that same ‘norm’ for every single person. We’re human, we’re each unique: no mechanism can ever take that from us. It’s what makes us such fascinating creatures.

       Which brings us to an alarming statistic: 60% of people who take a polygraph test, fail it.

       We require all law enforcement candidates except, ironically Congress (who is charged with upholding the Constitution of the United States) and TSA of course to take a polygraph test and pass it, but if 60% are going to fail it, does that mean that 60% of the population is lying?

       Polygraph tests are forbidden in court, because of an odd anomaly: a truthful person can fail it and a deceitful person can pass it. This has been proven over and over. Why? Because a pathological liar has no conscience and one truth or lie is no different from another. This type of liar has no feeling about the lie. However a truthful person can be telling the truth and yet there is a part of him or her that worries that they haven’t either fully understood the question and may be answering it wrongly or there is something in their past that may be haunting them that they are not aware of at that moment. This will then be reflected on the machine as a huge spike indicating that the person is having an emotional reaction to the question.

       An emotional reaction is all that the machine registers. It cannot be inside of the person’s mind. Can you tell the truth and yet not have it be the truth? Let’s look at this example:  If someone asks if you have ever stolen something. How do you answer that question?

       You are an honest person, so you say no but the machine registers a negative reaction. Now you are flooded with guilt. What could be the reason you failed that question? Perhaps it is how your subconscious interprets the question, something to which you have no conscious control.

·      If you have ever ‘stolen’ a kiss, is that stealing?

·      If you shoplifted something as a teenager, but you made restitution, is that stealing?

·      When someone eats grapes in a grocery store and never pays for them, is that stealing?

·      If you put coins in the parking meter for a stranger, are you stealing revenue the city might have received from the ticket or are you helping a hapless, hurried out-of-change person?

·      What if your parent accused you of stealing something as a child even though you were wrongly accused. What if that parent labeled you a thief and that cruel emotional sticker stuck with you?

·      What if you had a relationship with someone but never married the person and he or she accused you of robbing them of the ‘best years of their life?’ Is that stealing?

·      What if someone accuses you of ‘stealing their time?’

       How will any of these situations be reflected on a emotionless machine as a human being wrestles with the whole ‘emotional truth for them’ concept? If the person is extremely honest, then their struggle to be completely honest as he or she sifts back through time, emotion and experience will be, ironically, honestly reflected as a conflict on a machine. Perhaps this is why polygraph tests are never admissible in court, because when you tell the truth of a situation to the best of your ability, you do not have to reveal the emotional struggle you endure in the process.

       Polygraphs will never be completely accurate, because we all have theme and variation in our lives. The truth that lives within us is obviously relative to who we are, the experiences we have endured and the way we each see ourselves. Therefore, no machine can ever accurately measure the human mind much less the human heart or conscience.