When your fight-or-flight mechanism activates it causes your skin to release moisture.  This moisture contains salt, and any solution of water which contains sodium and chlorine atoms conducts electricity very well.

The clips attached to your fingers make a complete circuit.  When your fingers sweat it decreases the resistance to the current and increases the amount which can be channeled.  

If you're asking why your flight or fight mechanism causes you to sweat, that I'm not sure of.  Maybe it's a way of releasing the internal heat which builds up as a result of increased tension needed to escape predators.  

nopolycop wrote on Oct 26^th, 2007 at 12:41am:


I agree with this.

Actually, GSR is the easiest of the physiological characteristics measured by the polygraph for an amateur to play around with.  Any common ohmmeter will do, connected to blade electrical connectors on the other ends of the probe leads and held to fingers using velcro straps from the hardware store.

So it's pretty easy to see for yourself what can trigger changes in GSR (pretty much anything that makes you sweat or stop sweating).

Quote:


That's cute. Just pull something out of the ole' backside---like a rabbit out of the hat '04. Your statement is completely not backed up anywhere, and I am guessing that like good jazz music, you're wingin it. Even a confirmed lousy examiner like Drew Richardson knows that the Pneumos are the least reliable---a point backed up in the literature.

Quote:


The game you refer was a cool device which was ultimately a "bio-feedback" device. The player views the changes, is encouraged to alter affects to the plus or minus amplitute without regard to onset, response time/ duration, and natural rebound---global form if you will. A polygraph is not a bio-feedback device---in that the examinee is blinded from the real-time data, and said data must meet strict criteria in order to not warrant "intentional countermeasure activity". I am shocked at your ill-concieved comparison. You are comparing apples with orange lamboghinis.

Quote:


Why? We don't know for sure, but it may be as simple as  - because it was the easiest. Most lilely the same reason he limited his mathematical formulae to multiplication rule methods when the binomial equation is mathematically superior for estimating the significance of categorical events given a specified level of chance (it's just more involved to calculate - esp in the days before all these fancy 'puters). 

Now ponder this, a careful, calm-headed, and studious reading of the physiology and psychology underlying the GKT and CQT methods would reveal there may not be such great differences in the foundational constructs.

r

EJohnson wrote on Oct 26^th, 2007 at 5:54pm:


Nevertheless, the GSR can be manipulated at will. Either by physical CM's (refer Honts 1983) or in cases when the subject has a fair working knowledge of the polygraph, by bio-feedback as you have described.

Glad to see that you also acknowledge the inherent fallibility of the pneumograph.

The apple is starting to look more like an Italian sportscar now.

EJohnson wrote on Oct 29^th, 2007 at 11:29am:


EJ - I cant say that I actually know what your post is meant to illustrate, besides the thinly disguised invective - ( I thought we had all moved on from there. )

Anyway, up to this point there was no discussion iro effecting CM's being regarded as a noble feat.
I would hazard a guess that the innocent would feel relief as opposed to any other emotion.

And being mindful that either the FBI or CIA coined the phrase, "We have to get a hundred in the front door to get one out the back door" , one could expect many innocent (of anything serious ) subjects
to feel great relief at scoring an Incon - maybe triumph even, if they managed a NDI.