Like – if it’s based on a person’s physiological responses, isn’t it possible that a response to a question like “did you murder your hamster” would register as a lie due to the increase in heart rate and blood pressure cause of anxiety associated with being accused of something?
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It’s not a lie detector, it’s a stress detector.
they start by questionning you on common things; non stressful questions. Is your name Joe, etc.
And while doing that, they check your physiological reactions (heart rate, sweating, breathing, etc).
Then they move on to ask you questions about the thing they want to check (ie: did you kill Bob?).
They do so with the assumption that if you are truthful, you won’t really be *more* stressed out. And that if you are lying, you will be *more* stressed out, and therefore have physiological reactions that are different than when you are honest.
But keep in mind this whole thing is also an interrogation: the polygraphist could try to get you to confess by suggesting or indirectly implying you failed the polygraph.
“Any reason the polygraph would show you are lying?”
Is a type of question that might throw off some lying people into thinking some kind of red light flashed on the machine. And then they will start talking and backtracking their story and boom: the story is broken.
It’s not rare for people leaving a polygraph to feel like the polygraphist think they are lying, to feel lile they failed the test. That’s part of the strategy to push a lying person to talk more, to overjustify to the point of contradicting themselve.
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