Lies and truths are mutually exclusive social concepts, the appearance of which was due to the need for collective communication of people.
At the dawn of the primitive communal system, when each member of the community had to perform certain useful work for the tribe, the "efficiency" of his activities was determined by three factors: skill and physical fitness, personal desire (level of motivation), and in extreme conditions - elements of courage (cowardice).
The conscientiousness of the activities of individual members of the tribe was determined by the leader. The elements of cowardice that led to the death of community members were punishable by death or expulsion from the tribe, which were ultimately the same thing. The cruelty of the punishment forced the offender to use all means for his defense, including lies. Probably, then the fundamental need arose to separate the lie from the truth. Thus, the need for a "lie detector" arose when collective activity became a reality, when the fate of one person began to depend on the good faith of another.
The problem of revealing a lie or detecting insincerity in human behavior has a rather long history, because at the heart of this test is the assertion that our bodily state is very closely and directly related to emotional experiences.
The impetus for the development of instrumental lie detection was the work of the Italian physiologist A. Mosso (1875). In his research, he showed that, depending on the magnitude of emotional stress, a number of physiological indicators also change.
He found that the blood pressure in the blood vessels of a person and the pulse rate change when the emotional state of the subject changes.
In 1885, the Italian psychiatrist C. Lombroso used the first device for detecting lies - a hydrosphygomometer, which recorded changes in blood pressure in a person. Seven years later, in 1902, with the help of instrumental methods, it was possible for the first time to prove in court that the accused was not involved in the crime.
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Cesare Lombroso - sociologist, founder of the school of criminal anthropology in Italy. Born in Verona on November 6, 1835 into a family of wealthy landowners.
In 1914, the Italian Benussi used a breath recorder to interrogate suspects in a crime. The frequency and depth of breathing recorded using a pneumograph device were used as information indicators. Later, using this device, they began to determine the duration of inhalation and exhalation, holding the breath during inhalation and exhalation.
At the same time, the American psychologist William Martson, who conducted research at the Institute of Psychology at Harvard University, began his research in the field of instrumental lie detection. The polygraph test carried out by him was first accepted in 1923 in an American court as evidence.
William Moulton Marston is a talented American scientist, lawyer, psychologist, developer of the principles of the "Lie Detector", the creator of the DISC classification (D-Dominance, I-Inducement, S - Submission, C-Compliance).
The first polygraph suitable for investigating crimes was created by John Larsen in 1921. This device recorded pulse, blood pressure and respiration on a moving paper tape. Despite its progressiveness, it was still far from modern polygraphs.
Leonard Keeler demonstrated the work of a device he designed, called a polygraph, or lie detector, the results of which were the first to serve as proof of the suspect's guilt.
The introduction of the channel of skin resistance by L. Keeler in 1926 significantly increased the accuracy of the forecast during polygraph examinations. He was also the first to introduce the "tremor" registration channel. L. Keeler's polygraph was used in the Chicago Laboratory of Crime Investigation, which he created. By 1935, he was examining about 2,000 criminal suspects. He was also the first to introduce 5-channel tremor registration.
If Lombroso is considered the creator of the first polygraph, then Keeler is the creator of the modern polygraph.
The first mention of the commercial use of the lie detector dates back to 1923. Berkeley Larson, an American polygraph examiner, interviewed 38 people for theft from a store, at the request of the owners of a chain of stores. After the interview, suspicions fell on one girl, who later confessed to stealing $ 500.
In 1932, Darrow improved this technique by increasing the information content of motor reactions. But this technique was not further developed. The polygraph created by L. Keeler began to confidently enter real life.
In 1938, the first case was described where a lie detector was used for the examination of goods in an advertisement for the blades of a Gillette razor. The emotional description of the procedure read: While hooked up to a lie detector, hundreds of men took part in a stunning study that unmasked libel and revealed the true truth about razor blades. These men shaved one cheek with a Gillette blade and the other with a substitute brand blade. And then graphs were drawn characterizing the emotional stress caused by various types of blades (Maston 1938).
At the end of the Second World War, in an American military camp in New Jersey, a polygraph was used to examine 274 German prisoners of war, of whom it was necessary to select candidates for leading police positions in the government of post-war Germany. A team of seven experienced polygraph operators, using the method of relevant - irrelevant questions, found out sympathy for the Nazi party, for the communists, the mood for sabotage and subversion, communication with the Gestapo, SD, SA, as well as involvement in the commission of serious crimes.
According to the results of the survey, 156 people (57%) turned out to be quite suitable for occupying police positions, 3% of cases were doubtful, and 110 people (57%) were assessed as undesirable. 24 members of the Nazi Party, two employees, were identified.
The success of the polygraph was the impetus for the creation of a department specializing in conducting polygraph checks in the US Central Intelligence Agency. A few years later, the US government decided to test all CIA employees with a polygraph at least once every 5 years. Subsequently, similar units were created in the Ministry of Defense. In the process of the formation of mass checks in the United States, the ideology of this direction has changed significantly. In 1985, mistakes made during polygraph checks received a great public response. This led to the adoption of the relevant law restricting the use of the polygraph in public institutions and its almost complete prohibition in the private sector. But the doubled increase in theft in the private sector,in 1988 forced the government to allow the use of the polygraph in private firms. Now the number of checks in the United States has exceeded 8 million a year.
In the USSR, psychologist Alexander Romanovich Luria (later academician of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences) improved the associative method, which was very popular in experimental psychology of those years, and, working in a special laboratory at the Moscow provincial prosecutor's office, applied the method to reveal hidden information in persons who committed serious crimes.
Alexander Luria in the 20s of the last century developed a technique that makes it possible to record the occurrence of emotional states in the dynamics of speech and motor processes of a person even in those cases when he tried to hide the emotional stress he was experiencing. Under the leadership of A. R. Luria at the Moscow Institute of Psychology. K. N. Kornilov, a laboratory for the study of affective reactions was organized, in which, starting in 1924, he, together with the then still great Russian psychologist of the 20th century, Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev (the first dean of the psychological faculty of Moscow State University), conducted a series of experimental work.
The subjects were read the plot of the crime, and then they were given the task to hide information about the crime committed. The subjects were presented with 70 words, of which 10 were critical, that is, directly related to the case. During the procedure, the subject had to respond with any word similar in meaning and at the same time press a button. It turned out that the subjects who did not know the plot of the crime spent about the same time on neutral and control stimuli, while the subjects who knew the plot spent much more time on control words.
Since 1927 A. R. Luria began to conduct similar experiments with suspected murderers.
In the 30s, all work on the use of a lie detector in the USSR was discontinued. The polygraph was declared a pseudoscientific experiment with the emotions of the person being interrogated. They resumed only in the 60s, and in the 70s they were closed again.
Only the special services continued to be interested in this topic, which analyzed in detail the experience of using the polygraph in the United States. They also created the first samples of the domestic computer polygraph in the mid-80s. In 1975, the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Yuri Andropov, signed an order on the organization in the structure of the state security bodies of a profile unit for conducting polygraph checks. The first heads of this division were Yuri Konstantinovich Azarov and Vladimir Konstantinovich Noskov. However, scientific and applied work on the problem of the polygraph, carried out in the 1970s - 1980s in the system of state security agencies, due to its closed nature did not receive any publicity in the USSR in the scientific and popular science press, but on the wide and open use of a polygraph was out of the question.
The first ink-writing polygraph in the USSR was created in the 60s by an employee of the Krasnodar Regional Psychoneurological Hospital, now Doctor of Biological Sciences, Academician V. A. Varlamov. In the period from 1968 to 1973 and from 1979 to 1996 - an employee of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1986 he also made the first computer lie detector "Barrier".
Radical changes in the use of polygraph test technology began only by the end of 1989, when a working group consisting of employees of the Central Office was created in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in order to study the prospects for introducing a polygraph in the activities of internal affairs bodies. In March 1990, in order to get acquainted with the positive experience of Polish colleagues in solving crimes using a polygraph, V. V. Gordienko and S. V. Ignatov. The group came to the conclusion about the advisability of using a polygraph in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and presented a report with recommendations to the leadership of the Ministry.
In the period 1990-1991. there is a convergence of the positions of the leadership of the KGB of the USSR and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR on the use of a polygraph in the activities of these departments. On the basis of the Research Institute of the KGB of the USSR, the training of a group of employees of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs began. However, as a result of the events of August 19-21, 1991, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the learning process was interrupted.
In the second half of the 30s, lie detectors created in the United States and the technology for their application began to be exported abroad for the first time.
In Poland, the polygraph appeared in 1936: it was acquired by the Warsaw Institute of Psychohygiene. And although researchers have shown interest in the use of the polygraph in investigative work (as evidenced by one of the publications that appeared in print in 1939), the outbreak of the war pushes the introduction of the polygraph in Poland by a quarter of a century.
In the early 1940s, the polygraph appeared in China, for which several specialists were trained in the United States in 1943. After the end of the civil war in China, polygraph specialists and the instruments themselves were exported to Taiwan.
Japan, in contrast to China, independently conducted research on the instrumental method of lie detection, begun in the 1920s: psychologists Akamatsu and Togawa studied the diagnostic possibilities of changes in the electrical properties of the skin (the so-called galvanic skin reflex), and these works were crowned with success. In 1937, Japanese scientists announced the creation of their lie detector - a psychogalvanometer. It is curious to note that, like the United States, the first use of a Japanese lie detector occurred in the late 1930s in an espionage investigation. During the Second World War, one of the companies began to mass-produce psychogalvanometers for the purpose of lie detection, with which (already in the post-war years) units of the Japanese police were equipped.
India first showed interest in polygraph testing in 1948 in the wake of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: a six-week US-trained Indian police officer used a polygraph to narrow down suspects of conspiracy. After several cases of use in the course of investigations, the use of the polygraph was suspended until the early 70s.
In 1993, the denial of the possibility of using the psychophysiological method of "lie detection" for law enforcement purposes in Russia, which had lasted for several decades, ended. The Ministry of Justice enacted the country's first legal act regulating the use of a polygraph in the Federal Security Service, and thus legalized the applied use of this method in Russia.
On December 28, 1994, an order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia was signed "On approval of instructions on the procedure for using a polygraph when interviewing citizens." Practically from that moment on, the domestic polygraph industry transformed into an open and dynamically developing high-tech industry.
In 1996, the introduction of the polygraph into the activities of the tax police began.
In 1998 - in the activities of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Defense.
In recent years, units of the military prosecutor's office have increasingly become users of the polygraph.
Polygraphic checks in private structures began around 1994.
Over the past 85 years, the polygraph has not changed much compared to its ancestor, created by Marston. "In fact, this machine is no better able to discern the truth than the priests of ancient Rome," says Alan Zelikoff, a physician and senior fellow at the Center for National Security and Arms Control at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. told about it
Even the first FBI director, John Edgar Hoover, knew that a polygraph was not good for detecting lies. He canceled this test.
In an article for The Skeptical Inquirer, Zelikoff writes that a polygraph operator is a kind of dummy actor or hypnotist who tries to appease (or intimidate) people into believing that the device can catch them at the slightest inconsistency."
The test subject is nervous about being strapped to the chair and is often suggestible due to the atmosphere surrounding this cheap trick. As a result, it becomes malleable material in the hands of the machine operator, who then begins extensive, intrusive and illegal interrogation,”Zelikoff writes.
The subject of inspection is told from time to time that the machine is "showing deception." Of course it is not. The person is constantly forced to clarify their answers, while he gives out more and more personal information. " At an arbitrary moment, the operator of the device interrupts the test, consults with the rolls of graph paper and makes a completely subjective decision as to whether the object's response was false.
“Every first-year medical student knows that the four parameters measured by the polygraph (blood pressure, pulse, sweating, and respiratory rate) are influenced by an uncountable variety of emotions: joy, hate, delight, sadness, anxiety, depression, etc. explains Zelikoff. But there is not a single chapter in any medical book that would link these parameters with the intention to deceive. Moreover, dozens of studies over the past 20 years in psychology departments and medical schools around the world have shown that the polygraph cannot determine when they are telling the truth and when they are lying."
Those who know the Wen Ho Lee case will probably remember that the FBI once tricked a Taiwanese nuclear physicist (accused of spying for the Chinese in Los Alamos) by claiming that polygraph tests showed he was lying. The police every now and then resort to this kind of tricks - fake the results of a forensic medical examination, and then stick it under the nose of a suspect and shout that the lie has been proven, and that it is better to immediately sign a confession.
The most comprehensive review of the polygraph was conducted in 1983 by the Bureau of Technology Evaluation, a congressional research arm. The conclusion was: "There is no known physiological reaction that would be inherent only to deception."
The report did note that the CIA and other security forces "believe the polygraph is a useful verification tool." However, the Bureau concluded that the available research results do not support the scientific validity of using a polygraph for this purpose.
The only praise for the polygraph was that it might be of some use in "specific criminal incidents." But later in the report it was mentioned that although in such cases a lie detector test detects deception better than randomness, the error rate can be quite significant.
"Regarding the supposedly revealing physiological responses, congressional research shows they can be hidden by movement, drugs, or other means to avoid detection of deception."
There are many creepy stories of federal employees who have been abused by the polygraph and its operators. Take, for example, Navy veteran Daniel M. King, who served 19 years and was suspected of transmitting classified information. King was imprisoned in a military prison in solitary confinement for 500 days, several times undergoing polygraph tests. Some of them lasted until 7 pm. The military judge dismissed all charges against him.
Several years ago, FBI agent Mark Malla underwent a routine lie-detector test. A printer who had only 80 hours of experience with the machine concluded that Malla had lied. (Zelikoff notes that even a hairdresser must complete at least 1,000 hours of training before getting permission to cut hair.)
His life soon turned into a Kafka-style story. He was stripped of his badge, his home was ransacked at midnight, his diary and business diary were confiscated and scrutinized, his neighbors, friends and relatives were interrogated, and his every exit from the house was controlled from helicopters. In the end, Mall's life was almost ruined, but no accusations were confirmed. The FBI finally apologized, and in 1988 Congress banned the use of the polygraph to investigate civil servants.
It is worth noting that the Walker brothers and Aldrick Ames easily deceived the polygraph. And Kim Philby soothed his excitement with a spoonful of Valium before the check.
One defense interrogator in California said that while the polygraph is not allowed in most courts, it is used by prosecutors all the time, mostly to make plea deals. “It's dangerous because the verdict of the polygraph is almost entirely up to the operator,” she says. "There are good printers, but many of those who work for district attorneys receive only minimal training."
The investigator described a recent case involving a defense witness in a murder case who was being tested on a polygraph under the supervision of a 20-year ex-FBI typographer. He was referred to the district attorney for a retest with an examiner, a relative newcomer to the device.
It should be clarified here that lawyers are not allowed to be in the room during the check, even if the testimony of their clients is being checked. Prosecutors are videotaping this process, and while polygraph results cannot be used in court, the video can serve as evidence.
In that case, the lawyer waited in the lobby until the witness left the room red as cancer. The attorney heard the district attorney's investigator threaten the witness, “Oh, you son of a bitch, I know you're lying. We will revoke your parole.” The district attorney's expert interpreted the evidence for one of his responses as "false."
Interesting facts about the polygraph
Fact 1
The polygraph is often called a lie detector, but this term is incorrect because it misleads the public. The polygraph does not read thoughts and does not detect lies, but only registers physiological activity and changes in its parameters. He does not reveal a lie, but only excitement, which with a certain degree of probability may indicate a lie. From physiological reactions, it is impossible to accurately establish the nature of the process that caused them (positive or negative emotion, lie, fear, pain, any associations, etc.). Currently, there is no other way to detect lies other than indirectly, because there is simply no 100% reliable pattern of physiological activity characteristic of lies.
Fact 2
One evening, eighteen-year-old Peter Reilly returned home to find his mother dead. He decided that she was killed and called the police. After talking with Reilly, the police suspected him of killing his own mother. Polygraph testing was scheduled. The police informed Peter about the failure of the test, thus indicating that he was guilty, even though he had no recollection of the incident. Examination of the copies of the interrogations showed that Reilly went through an amazing path of sychological transformation, from a complete denial of guilt to her confession and, finally, to a change in the initial testimony ("Well, everything really looks like I did this") and a complete written recognition. Two years later, an independent investigation determined that Reilly could not have committed the murder and that a confession, which even he began to believe,was actually false.
Fact 3
Subsequently, psychologists proved that the suspects themselves may begin to doubt their innocence, since they believe in the myth of the super-efficiency of the polygraph. Before starting testing, the polygraph operator convinces the suspect of the accuracy of the device and the impossibility of making a mistake. Moreover, after testing, the police usually inform the suspect that accurate results have been obtained.
Some suspects believe this. Sometimes innocent suspects deliberately make a false confession after being convicted on a polygraph test. One of the reasons is that they do not see an opportunity to convince the jury or the judge of their innocence and therefore decide to confess, in the hope of receiving a less severe punishment.
Fact 4
The feasibility of using a polygraph for personnel selection has not yet been proven. One of the reasons is that, when selecting, the employer is interested in general information about the candidate. For example, is he honest and has the applicant ever steal something.
The polygraph is not able to accurately answer this question, since with its help it is possible to ask only specific questions about specific events that occurred at a specific time. General questions can be asked in a sequence of security questions.
However, the more generalized the questions themselves, the more likely you will get wrong results. The polygraph test can provide information about the behavior of the test subject in the past (for example, the test can show whether the applicant cheated when filling out the questionnaire, whether he tried drugs in his youth, etc.), but for employers it is most often more important what the applicant's behavior will be in future, as well as his professional qualities. The polygraph cannot answer anything here, and this limits the reliability of its use for personnel selection.
Fact 5
The most scandalous case of using a polygraph in business occurred in 1987, during the investigation of a theft at the CBS television company. The company sought help from four New York polygraph testing firms to determine which employee had stolen an expensive camera. At the stage of preliminary preparation, the company manager informed in advance which of the employees he suspects of a crime. After a polygraph examination, it turned out that the polygraph specialists pointed out exactly these employees as the perpetrators of the theft, although they were innocent.
It was pure farce: in fact, the camera did not disappear, and all employees of the company were well aware of this. They were simply instructed to deny the theft (that is, to tell the truth). As a reward, the employees were promised $ 50 in salary, but only if the polygraph test was successfully passed. When polygraph testing specialists came to conduct tests (on different days), each of them was informed that a particular employee was suspicious of the company's manager. At the same time, each inspector was named a different person.
In the end, each of the four experts confidently “identified” the perpetrator, and in each case it was the employee who was identified as a suspect prior to testing. Polygraph examiners were not specifically tuned to such a result. It's just that they were unconsciously influenced by the preliminary information they received.
Fact 6
In addition to assumptions about the possible guilt of the subjects, other subjective factors, for example, sympathy or pity for the suspects, can affect the result of the polygraph test. The polygraph examiner will begin to unconsciously “play along” with the subject and it is possible that in these cases the result “considered guilty” will appear less likely. Conversely, if you dislike and disgust the polygraph operator for some reason, then the likelihood increases that you will be found guilty as a result of testing.
Fact 7
Can a lie detector be tricked? Yes it is possible. There are different types of polygraph trickery, such as tongue biting, leg tension (by pressing the thumbs on the floor), counting sheep, or counting backwards.
These actions will lead to physiological reactions that the polygraph will register. By doing so, subjects can artificially increase physiological responses in response to test questions and thereby increase the likelihood of passing the test. The result of counting sheep or counting in the opposite order (of course, not aloud, but silently) will be such that the subjects will not be able to comprehend the questions asked by the examiner or the listed alternatives, which will lead to an indefinite result of passing the test. test questions) may interfere with this technique, as the subjects are expected to answer “yes” to the excipients and “no” to other questions. This makes the subject think and comprehend the information, since the answer "no" to the filler can showthat questions are being ignored.
Fact 8
It is believed that psychopaths can more effectively deceive a lie detector than healthy people. The level of arousal in psychopaths and pathological liars does not increase when telling a lie, and therefore it is impossible to reveal a lie in them. In addition to the differences between psychopaths and healthy people, there were differences in polygraph testing between introverts and extroverts.
Fact 9
The most famous lie detector test was conducted by Floyd Fairy, nicknamed "The Flyer." He was wrongly convicted of murder after failing a polygraph test. Fairy's innocence was established only a few years later. During his unreasonable release in prison, he decided to take revenge on the offenders and became a polygraph testing expert. Floyd trained 27 inmates who voluntarily confessed to him how to pass the test of security questions. After a 20-minute session, 23 out of 27 prisoners successfully passed a polygraph test, which proved their innocence.
Fact 10
In a 1994 study, subjects learned to use either physical responses (biting the tongue or pressing their toes on the floor) or mental responses (counting backwards from seven) for 30 minutes. After this training session, they were tested on a polygraph. Mental and physical counteractions were equally effective, allowing approximately 50% of the subjects to cheat the polygraph. Moreover, the examiner (who was an experienced specialist) noticed the use of physical resistance only in 12% of cases, while none of the subjects who used mental resistance aroused the examiner's suspicion either by their behavior or physiological reactions. This data contradicts the advertising statements of polygraph examiners,that any attempt to use deception techniques will always be detected by them.
Fact 11
Spies and intelligence officers are trained to deceive the polygraph. A well-known example is Aldrich Ames, a CIA officer who sold secrets to the Soviet Union for many years and passed several polygraph tests over the years. Ames has been doing well in his espionage career for so long. and because its ability to deceive the polygraph dispelled any suspicions of CIA officials.
Ames' liaison from the KGB, Viktor Cherkashin, later told the British newspaper The Sunday Times how he helped Ames undergo polygraph tests. Cherkashin arranged lunch for Ames with a Russian diplomat. To Ames' surprise, Cherkashin himself was present at lunch. Ames became worried as the FBI knew Cherkashin and was watching him. However, Cherkashin came to lunch on purpose. He knew that the CIA often ran routine polygraph tests with its employees, and he knew that Ames would be asked the question, "Have you had any recent informal contact with the KGB?" As it was a standard question.
Since contacts between Ames and the KGB were classified, Ames would have had to cheat. After lunch, however, Ames didn't have to lie anymore, and he could safely say that he had been contacted.
Fact 12
In the UK, after a high-profile spy scandal, the government announced its intention to conduct pilot studies on the effectiveness of polygraph testing. A number of famous psychologists have formed a working group under the leadership of Professor T. Gale. The task of the group was to provide a report on the status of polygraph testing. The report of the British Psychological Society's working group on the use of the polygraph contained sensational results and shocked many. Psychologists have questioned almost all aspects of a polygraph, primarily the accuracy of the results.
Thus, testing procedures have not been standardized to the extent that can be considered satisfactory in terms of scientific psychometrics. Also, the researchers faced difficulties in verifying the testing methodology and practice by different specialists in the use of the polygraph. This means that the decision-making process is subjective, since it completely depends on the specialist who directly conducts the testing.
Moreover, it is not verifiable. It is difficult for other professionals to understand why a particular polygraph examiner came to this conclusion. Also, the commission decided that some aspects of polygraph testing, in particular, misleading the test subject during the test of control questions, contradict British law and moral norms, thereby making the test results inadmissible for consideration at the meetings of the British court. The UK government has abandoned plans to introduce polygraph testing.