SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

How reliable are polygraphs in your experience?

I used a polygrapher when I was a criminal defense attorney. I took about a dozen clients to see him and sat in those sessions. In my opinion, the success in getting to the truth was all in the proficiency of the polygraph operator. It is just as much art as it is science. My guy spent a lot of time interviewing the person to be tested. He’d explain how the various indicators worked and he told them about his 20 years experience with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and his 15 years in private practice. Finally, when he had them pretty worried about the futility of fooling the machine, he’d tell them that so far there was no charge and he’d give them back the cash pre-payment, but once he placed the first attachment on my client’s body, it was going to cost $500 no matter the result. All but 3 of my clients then confessed. The other 3 took the exam and 2 failed. The client who passed got their charges dismissed because the cops and the DA had faith in my polygraph guy. For what it’s worth, I could tell they were failing just by watching those needles jump. People who are not discomfited telling a lie have the best chance of fooling a poly. In other words, sociopaths and those who medicate to dull their brains could beat a poly. Don’t let anyone tell you that they are so nervous that they could register a false untruthful result. The more afraid of being found out a person is, the easier it is to tell if they are being truthful. All the operator does is turn down the gain on the machine. They are looking for changes in pulse, sweat, blood pressure and respiration. If those measurements are already elevated, no problem. They look for changes. As I said, even I, an untrained observer, could easily see the large changes the needles registered when the subject lied. Just to be sure, the polygrapher asked the same question 4 times during the exam. Each time the needles went skyward.

My advice: ask about other customers and talk to them. If a big corporation relies on the poly operator to make HR decisions, or if a DA will drop charges based on this operator’s results (this was my situation), or if they retired under good circumstances from the FBI, DoD, CIA, NSA, then they are likely to be good. Or, you could ask your lawyer to find someone trusted in your community. Poly’s generally are not admissible in court, but they are routinely used in business and government to make hiring and promotion decisions.

Depends whom you ask.
Some research puts the accuracy as low as 70%. Some as high as 95%. I think some leading law enforcement agencies put it at about 85-90%, but never use it as a sole tool to prove guilt or innocence. There is a lot of theory on why they work and why they aren’t more reliable, and I think they will always leave a certain percentage that is wrong.
Why aren’t they admissible in court? Well... they are... but only civil cases and definitely not all jurisdictions. They are allowed if both sides agree to it. For criminal court the dispute in accuracy will always make them doubtful. If a prosecutor demands the defendant take one, that would indicate a weak case for the prosecution. If the defendant offers to take one the prosecution would fear that the defendant is trained to pass or simply a sociopath who can easily pass. It’s a no-win situation: The prosecution has a stack of solid evidence, but then the defendant passes a poly. Or the prosecution has no evidence but the defendant refuses a poly – indicating guilt...

Can they be faked? The lowest reliability scores are in controlled test groups where the people being questioned have little to lose. Take a 1000 sample of college kids and ask them to say "no" when asked if they have ever smoked pot. Let’s say 700 are lying. If they know that there is no consequence – they won’t fail or get kicked off campus – and their body doesn’t really respond the way a cheating spouse whose whole marriage is on the line.

We used poly’s in my time in LEO. Mainly when we maybe had a group of suspects and had to narrow it down. Ask 10 men and the result might completely eliminate 4-5, strongly implicate 2 but maybe leave 2-3 still suspect. We could then focus on those 2, then the other 2-3 and so on. But that result was never used in court, and definitely wasn’t air-tight. A person that had no qualms about raping or killing wasn’t going to have any difficulties lying.

Would I use a poly on a spouse?
Well... Yes...
If there was an impasse. If they insisted the truth was out and there was noting being hidden and yet I had doubts... then yes.
But it would be a one time thing. It would be clear right from the start that if they failed it would indicate they didn’t trust me with the truth and couldn’t commit to the truth, and therefore any hope of reconciling would be out the window. It’s not something they get to do twice or thrice. One.

In my opinion, the success in getting to the truth was all in the proficiency of the polygraph operator.

True!

But... if they passed and I wanted to R – and the only reason to do a poly is a wish to R – then I have to acknowledge that they are telling the truth, and that there is some base to build from.

My personal opinion is that if you need a polygraph test to believe your cheating spouse, then there is a serious trust issue and i am not certain a polygraph test will help you.

I started to reply to this thread earlier but I figured Bigger would be along with the "definitive response". He didn’t disappoint!

My personal opinion is that if you need a polygraph test to believe your cheating spouse, then there is a serious trust issue and i am not certain a polygraph test will help you.

Unfortunately, being cheated on creates a "serious trust issue". At least it did for me. The person that stood at the alter and swore to forsake all others for me, didn’t. She cheated before we were married a year. She continued to cheat for 20 years. I suspected in real time, she lied. She lied by omission for 20 more years. On D-Day she lied some more and continued to lie to my face for another month. She looked me in the eye (while tears streamed down my face) and lied. She continued to lie when we started MC. When I told the MC I couldn’t accept I had the truth, I was told "she has given you all the info you are going to get and if you can’t accept that maybe YOU need IC". I replied "if this is all the info I’m going to get, then I’m going to divorce her lying, cheating ass. We’re done here". MC then backpedalled and offered a polygraph. I accepted. More APs and "interactions" were immediately disclosed. Shocker, she was still lying. "Trickle truth" is lying. The truth continued to come out up until the time of the polygraph.

So yes, we had a serious trust issue. Cheating and lying about it broke my trust. Just like IC, MC, Recovery courses, videos, books and even this website, I view the polygraph as a tool that helped me regain trust for my wife. Do I trust I have the truth of the infidelities? To the degree she remembers it, yes, finally. Is it a shame it had to come to this? Absolutely!

Being cheated on and lied to by the person I trusted most in the world has tainted my view on trust. I used to trust people until they gave me a reason NOT to. Now, I don’t "give" trust at all. It has to be earned. I’m in the "trust but verify" camp.

I worked in Financial Services for many years. Our Quality Assurance department had a slogan many years ago (that wouldn’t fly these days) that I always got a chuckle out of: "In God we trust, all others we monitor".

All this to say, "yes, the polygraph helped me". As others have said, the experience and qualifications of the Examiner are key. Your mileage may vary…..

I agree with Bigger - if there are a couple of critical issues that can be resolved by 'yes/no' answers, and if you'll go one way if they pass and another if they fail, go for it. I don't understand going through a poly, seeing a WS fail, and then not going for D....

I believe, however, that most of the questions that really matter for the R/D decision can't be answered with simple yeses or noes.

Trust was not an issue for me on and after d-day. I didn't believe anything my W said, and I knew I had to recalibrate my ability to read her non-verbals accurately.

More important, some of my most basic questions can't be tested by a poly. Those questions included 1) Does she love me? 2) Is she in love with me?, 3) Would she be monogamous from then on? Her answers were always honest, and she backed up her answers with actions. After thousands of honest answers and actions, I came to believe and trust her. A poly wouldn't have sufficed.

I’m certain liars can beat a polygraph. And if you were married to that type of person then you will never be certain of the polygraph results.

I think actions speak louder than words and that may be a way for the cheater to turn things around.

But if you can never trust the cheater’s words, no polygraph is going to help you unfortunately.

Chalk me up as another yes to the poly.
If they are useful to the fbi,cia,nsa then they are
Good enough for cheaters.

Best practices is to have a complete timeline of the affair, then base the questions you want answered on that timeline. The WS should know beforehand that there will be a polygraph to verify the timeline. No, I don’t think the WS should know the questions beforehand at all. This brings me to the real benefit of the poly, the panic / parking lot confession. Not everyone gets one if they’re still lying, but some do, the rest gets exposed by the poly questions.

I don’t have much experience in this area, but do have recent experience.
My DDay 1 was about 22 months ago. My husband told me about the affair, broke it off the next day-went no contact. Since that time the conversations have been endless. I started IC early and he followed. Then we did ESMO 2 months later which lead to DDay #2.
It was not a new affair or timeline, but lots of details he was withholding.
He has worked incredibly hard on himself, which I appreciate. He has totally changed his interactions with our kids, he wants to be part of family activities, etc. so I have been see seeing changes in him, but I always has the nagging sense of I am believing a cheater that this is it, the timeline, the number of affairs and that NC has occurred. I know the OW has attempted to contacted him many, many times the text records on our bill indicate her attempts. She is blocked at the c phone carrier level so her texts don’t reach him but the attempts are there. So I wanted solid footing that I knew all that I was dealing with if we were going to rebuild. (I hated feeling like the floor could drop with more at any time, even though he insisted he had told everything.)
He agreed to a polygraph, researched a reputable firm, one that tests for our state government, had 20 years of experience and the qualifications. When he talked to the examiner to set it up, the examiner told him that he would highly recommend he talk through everything with me and include a counselor, before taking the test. We had already done this so he scheduled him and completed the exam on Monday.
The examiner then hand scored and computer scored the exam, was able to in complete confidence say that my UH was answering the 3 questions I had truthfully. He also emailed a report.
This didn’t magically fix my pain, or make things ok. It does allow me to know I can trust what I’ve been seeing, that he is working to better himself and I have reached the bottom floor of what happened. For me, this allows me to start building forward with more confidence and less looking over my shoulder. Now blind trust will never happen, but building trust can.

I asked my wife to do a poly about a month after D-day. She was very resistant to it at first, but eventually grudgingly agreed. Then after D-day #2 she was much more willing, but it was still really difficult for her.

We used a service provided by a therapist that specializes in disclosure and they use EyeDetect technology for their lie detector tests. This type of test is much different from the traditional lie detector test from what I understand. It uses a camera hooked to a computer that runs software watching eye movements and iris dilations when questions are asked.

The process is also different. The therapist gave us a list of questions that have her detail her entire sexual history. This pretty much covered the entirety of the affair as well as the entire time we were together. I was also allowed to add questions at the end. Then she and the therapist would get on a zoom meeting and go over the whole set of questions three or four times until the therapist felt that she was ready for the test.

She physically went to their office and took the test. I wasn't present, but from what I understand they ask some control questions, and then some questions that ask if the whole set of answers she gave are truthful.

This test was much faster than a normal polygraph, and more comfortable since you aren't hooked up to a machine, they are just looking at a camera. The test creators claim test accuracy close to normal polygraphs (slightly above or below depending on the source). I have of course wondered if it is accurate or if there are ways she could have beat it. According to my IC it's more difficult to fake iris dilation than other things, but I'm sure if the person believes what they are saying it's the same as a normal polygraph - they can pass. I think I would probably wonder about accuracy with a normal poly as well.

I asked her to take it because I needed to know that the woman I have been with for two decades hasn't been lying to me this whole time. I needed to verify that the story she told me about her affair is truthful, and there were no other affairs. I also needed to know that she was really willing to stay in our relationship, and this wasn't an exit affair. I felt that if I could get the whole picture, and it was likely an accurate picture because of the poly, then that would give us a firm foundation to build upon.

She passed the test, and that did resolve a lot of fears I was having at that time. But it doesn't get rid of the pain of the betrayal, or the fears that she will start up another affair, or the fears that despite my efforts and intent one or both of us will want out of the relationship in the future.

I viewed it as a tool to allow me to go down the reconciliation path. It helped me feel like I could continue trying and that our relationship had hope for the future.

I have to take one every so often due to my security clearance.

I'm squeaky clean, but I hate the experience.

I am completely convinced that the value is that the multiple sensors (arm band, seat pressure pod, camera, pulse monitor, etc) induces psychological stress.

That stress just makes tells more pronounced, making it easier for the interrogator.

In my opinion, it's all about the skill of the interrogator, and the machine is just a tool.

polys work.....consider this
before the CIA trusted the information from a source about the location of Osama Bin Laden they put that source thru a polygraph...why? because they couldnt afford the risk of a failed extraction from a foreign country w/o prior approval, and then find out the source was lying just for reward $$......it would been a huge scandal from the CIA and for the US

Is not about the machine, its about the interrogator and the experience itself.