The North American polygraph and psychophysiology: disinterested, uninterested, and interested perspectives

Abstract

From both a scientific and an applied psychophysiological point of view, the related but different ideas of using physiological measures to differentiate and detect deception are of considerable potential interest. This paper's primary concern is with psychophysiological detection, and it is mainly focussed on the North American ‘Control’ Question ‘Test’ (CQT). The treatment is disinterested in the sense that there is an insistence on employing fundamental terms in a logically consistent way. Following a detailed description of the CQT, and an analysis of it and related psychophysiological deception procedures, it is suggested that, by and large, the North American research psychophysiological community has failed to measure up to the standards of disinterestedness with respect to the psychophysiological detection of deception. Instead it has adopted an uninterested perspective, which has allowed the interested community of professionals who employ the CQT to hood-wink both themselves and others (including the American Psychological Association) that the CQT is a controversial, but scientifically based, test for detecting deception. As the most cognate organization, the international psychophysiological research community needs to take a more active and disinterested role in this salient purported application of psychophysiology — the detection of deception.