Not Your Normal Polygraph Exam

[BiggieG]

  I have passed three polygraphs of the tradition kind, that is with 'control' questions (Have you ever lied?), fake benchmark questions (Areyou sitting down?) and valid exam questions (Did you steal money from petty cash?).  However I was given a different type of exam and I failed. The exam used only three questions not related to the alleged offense. These questions were:1. Do you intend to answer all questions honestly? 2. Do you live in San Diego? and 3. Are you sitting down?. The remaining questions were related to the alleged offense. I  presume that the responses to the questions of interest will be compared to the responses of the obviously true questions like, Are you sitting down?. This makes it much harder to pass. No longer can one use exciting thoughts on questions presumed to be false, such as Have you ever lied? since no false questions are presented. If one tries to get an increased response on questions like Are you sitting down, it comes across like you are lying. I don't know what to do to pass the exam. Any hints?

[George W. Maschke]

If you have been accused of a crime (you mention questions about an "alleged offense"), then I think your best option is to refuse the polygraph. That said, the technique you described appears to be the "relevant/irrelevant test" in which the polygrapher looks for "consistent, specific, and significant" reactions to a particular relevant question. I cannot know what scoring criteria any local agency might be using for this completely invalid procedure, but I think the most important thing one can do to help avoid a false positive outcome is to do what one can to appear truthful and cooperative while avoiding behaviors that interrogators are trained to associate with deception. You'll find suggestions in this regard in the section on "behavioral countermeasures" in Chapter 4 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.