Evaluating polygraphy from a psychophysiological perspective: a specific-effects analysis

Abstract

It is suggested that purportedly scientific positions and technologies are actually spiritualistic or superstitious to the extent that specific effects are not identified and evaluated. This claim is then examined with respect to polygraphy, which appears to have particularly strong spiritualistic tendencies. This technology's putative basis is the science of psychophysiology, which is the study of psychological processes by means of unobtrusive physiological measures that reflect functions over which there is relatively little voluntary control. The underlying rationale of polygraphy is that information about these functions provided to the examiner has a specific, beneficial effect of improving the detection of deception. Before considering the validity of the polygraph in these specific-effect terms, the paper notes some serious societal problems involved in the use of the polygraph, problems that suggest that polygraphy is appropriately characterized as a serious "social disease". As to its scientific status, the technique suffers from at least three significant and possibly insurmountable problems: 1) the records are not read "blind"; 2) the method of scoring is subjective, compared to the standards of scientific psychophysiology; and 3) the so-called "control" question method does not involve control in the standard, accepted, scientific sense of that term. However, much of the rest of psychology is also criticised as teleological and spiritualistic, and it is suggested that the polygraph is merely a dramatic illustration of the spiritualist approach that permeates the thought of most researchers in, and practitioners of, the science of psychology.