Polygraph Lie Detection on Real Events in a Laboratory Setting

This laboratory study dealt with real-life intense emotional events. Subjects generated embarrassing stories from their experience, then submitted to polygraph testing and, by lying, denied their stories and, by telling the truth, denied a randomly assigned story. Money was given as an incentive to be judged innocent on each story. An interrogator, blind to the stories, used Control Question Tests and found subjects more deceptive when lying than when truthful. Stories interacted with order such that lying on the second story was more easily detected than lying on the first. Embarrassing stories provide an alternative to the use of mock crimes to study lie detection in the laboratory.