Do most police departments give out Irrelevant and relevant tests?

Also When I'm answering the control questions do I answer,no, to all the questions?

Or when I am employing countermeasures does it matter weather or not I answer yes or no?

As I understand the object of police departments polygraph is mainly to see weather or not the applicant is truthful. So by employing countermeasures during control questions to make it appear as if you are lying on the controls. Wouldn't the fact that think think you are lying period get you a disqualification?

policeHopeful wrote on Sep 26^th, 2007 at 7:55pm:


No. The "Control Question Test" (CQT) is the most commonly used technique.

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You should provide the expected answer. While it is often "no," sometimes it's "yes." An example of a control question that should be answered "yes" is, "Are you a truly honest person?"

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Again, you should provide the expected answer to each control question.

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No. The key to passing the CQT is to exhibit larger reactions to the control questions than to the relevant questions. Review Chapters 3 & 4 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.

So George on the question "Are you truely an honest person?" would I use a countermeasure? Or just the relaxed natural breathing method?

If I do face a IR And R test so I use the countermeasures on the Irrelevant questions?

Well George, first I resent being called "a shameless liar". I am many things,---including temperamental, vulgar (sometimes), and even arrogant. But I am no liar.

Examiners around the country began dusting off the ole R&I 3 and 4 years ago after getting so tired of over-scrutinizing charts for countermeasures. I don't expect you to know this as YOU ARE NOT A POLYGRAPH EXAMINER. If you were a polygraph examiner, you would be underpaid, underfire, and under-appreciated.

Deceptions for the average examiner would include (but not necessarily be limited to) intentional oversimplification, confuscation, misrepresentation, misstatement, exaggeration, and known false statement.  Amongst the areas and activities that such deceptions will occur within a given polygraph exam and on a continual basis are the following:

(1)      A discussion of the autonomic nervous system, its anatomy and physiology, its role in the conduct of a polygraph examination, and the examiner’s background as it supports his pontifications regarding said subjects.  In general, an examiner has no or little educational background that would qualify him to lead such a discussion and his discussion contains the likely error that gross oversimplification often leads to.

(2)      The discussion, conduct of, and post-test explanations of the “stim” test, more recently referred to as an “acquaintance” test.

(3)      Examiner representations about the function of irrelevant questions in a control question test (CQT) polygraph exam.

(4)      Examiner representations about the function of control questions and their relationship to relevant questions in a CQT exam.

(5)      Examiner representations about any recognized validity of the CQT (or other exam formats) in a screening application and about what conclusions can reasonably be drawn from the exam at hand, i.e. the one principally of concern to the examinee.

(6)      A host of misrepresentations that are made as “themes” and spun to examinees during a post-test interrogation.

(7)      The notion that polygraphy merits consideration as a scientific discipline, forensic psychophysiology or other…

One important point about the various lie detection methods that we have only touched on in passing deserves explicit emphasis in this summing up. All of these techniques fundamentally depend on deception -- not just in one way and not just in little ways. The theory and assumptions of polygraphic interrogation require the examiner to successfully deceive each subject that he tests in several basic ways. First, he must persuade the subject that being untruthful or even unsure about his answers to the control questions may cause him to fail the test, although in fact the opposite of this is true. Second, when he administers the "stim" test in order to impress the subject with the accuracy of the technique, the examiner has two choices, both of them deceptive. He can use the original Reid "pick-a-card" method in which the deck is either stacked or marked so that the examiner can be sure to guess the right card. Alternatively, he can use the Raskin "pick-a-number" method in which he deceitfully explains that he is "determining what your polygraphic response looks like when you lie." The truth is, that individuals do not show characteristic physiological response patterns when they lie that they do not also show when telling the truth. Third, throughout his interactions with this subject, the examiner must convey an impression of virtual infallibility. The stim-test is just a component of this basic deception. The purpose is benign enough; if guilty subjects are convinced the polgyraph will reveal their guilt, then they are more likely to respond strongly to the relevant questions. If innocent subjects are similarly convinced, then they will tend not to respond so strongly. Moreover, because most examiners truly believe in their near-infallibility, because as we have seen they are the victims of their own deceptive art, they may convey this needed impression not only effectively but also without conscious guile. Nonetheless, the polygraph test, as we have seen, has an accuracy closer to chance than to infallibility; the innocent being tested by the police faces worse odds than in a game of Russian roulette. The fact that most polygraph examiners are not aware of these facts (indeed, they may be the last to know) is not an adequate excuse. Fourth, when the subject is interrogated after a polygraph test, he may be the victim of repeated deceptions. "This unbiased, scientific instrument is saying that you're not telling the truth about this, John!" "Why don't you tell me whatever it is that you feel guilty about, Mary, then maybe you will do better on the next test." "With this polygraph chart, George, no one is going to believe you now. The best thing you can do is to confess and make the best deal you can."

I will confess here that I do not personally object to certain harmless deceptions of criminal suspects that might lead to verifiable confessions and a quick and easy solution to a criminal investigation. But a procedure that claims to be a genuine test for truth that cannot hope to succeed even by its own theory and assumptions unless the subject is successfully deceived in certain standard ways is an invitation to abuse, abuse by examiners and especially by sophisticated criminals and spies. I submit that it is madness for courts or federal police and security agencies to rely on polygraph results for this reason alone. As we have seen, of course, there are many other reasons for this same diagnosis.