Betty

I have administered and passed polys.  During the pretest, you and your examiner will  discuss the exact wording of all questions and your responses.  Express your concerns about any gray areas at that time.

T.M. Cullen wrote on Apr 16^th, 2009 at 7:11pm:


Actually, Boop, the test is NOT biased against honest people. The more honest you are, the less likely that you've committed any of the serious issues on the exam, and the more likely you will react strongly to other questions on the test regarding less serious indescretions that you and almost anyone else have committed.

Hmmm. Well, I guess it's especially true in this case that worrying won't do any good! Hehe. It's a pre-employment test. I'm not taking it anytime soon. I was just doing a little research on federal agencies, where I hope to work someday, and I began to wonder about what the polygraph actually entails.

I don't have a criminal history, but I worry that I'll be disqualified because of some technicality like having tasted Absynth once in Amsterdam (completely disgusting, btw), which is legal in many European countries but I believe is illegal in the U.S. It's basically some nasty green drink that supposedly makes you hallucinate if you drink a lot. I personally couldn't get past three sips, it was so gross.

Anyway, I imagine that yelling at the polygrapher, outright refusing to comply, or crying hysterically is not going to help one get hired, regardless of the polygraph results. On the other hand, seeming too confident might be suspicious too.

If I have to walk in there all wide-eyed, pretending to be afraid of the machine, and stroke the polygrapher's ego a bit: "Your polygraph machine... it's so... BIG!" Well, I guess I can do that. And then I can try and remain calm during the actual test. If that works to my benefit, I don't see any moral dilemma there. 

I've been giving a lot of thought to these countermeasures. At first, the idea of them really bothered me. If you don't lie, why do you need to use them? But after reading about false positives and with knowing how strong my fight or flight response is, it might be wise to employ them. My reasoning is this: If I am completely honest in answering all of the questions and I don't hold anything back, then how is it wrong to purposefully control the way in which my body responds to questioning? If you have a strong fight or flight response, like myself, wouldn't you be foolish not to try and prevent your body from sending signals to the machine that might imply you are lying when you actually are not?

The only "bad" thing I can see about it is that it could be risky if the examiner suspected I was employing such techniques and then point-blank asked me, "Have you been using countermeasures?" to which I would answer honestly, "Yes". (Since I refuse to lie.) But if I confess to actually using them, God only knows what the examiner will do then. I might risk flunking the polygraph right then and there. 

So with all those things in mind, I don't really see using countermeasures as an inherently bad thing, but I can see why it could be risky. The question is, which risk is greater: the risk of being caught using them or the risk of having a false positive? 

Thank you, Mr. Maschke! OK, it is quite obvious to me now how honest people could invite trouble by simply trying to be honest. Thank you also to Pailryder, Mr. Cullen, and Liebaby. All of your comments have been helpful, as I really don't see this issue in black and white. 

But there's just one more thing that I'm not convinced of. I know that admitting to even having done marijuana once is inviting more questioning, but if that person did marijuana within the acceptable amount and no other drugs and seriously has nothing to hide and is absolutely confident about that, then isn't it possible that admitting to having done it those few times might actually help the person? I mean, what percentage of people have never tried marijuana? Like 40%? I imagine a great percentage have. I'm sure it's a relevant question, but it seems to harbor on the border of a control. 

The way I see it, I feel very confident that I am not going to give a false positive when it comes to drugs other than marijuana. I am much less confident about lying and saying I've never done mj, though. I dunno, this is a tough sell for me. Let them interrogate me. I'd rather be interrogated than lie. (Admittedly, I've never actually been interrogated, so it might be much more frightening than it sounds.)

Being paid to lie by an intelligence organization in the interest of national security?  Sure. Lying to get that job, though? I'd really rather not. Plus it could come back later to bite me in the "boop". Hmm, we'll see.

Tron wrote on Jul 5^th, 2009 at 11:13am:

What advice do you have for people who follow the counsel you posted above and yet still fail their polygraph?

My thinking was essentially identical to what you posted and I failed my first three polygraphs even though I was completely honest in all of them.