Jeremy Kyle

Lie Detection, NLP and Polygraph Machines

Recently I saw some daytime television where shows are using Lie detector machines or experts who claim they know when someone is lying with 96% accuracy. Jeremy Kyle, Tricia and Judge Judy are some. Judge Judy for instance claims to know when someone is lying by their Eye Accessing Cues, a little more about them in a moment, Jeremy Kyle uses an expert with a lie detector machine and Tricia uses an interrogation expert. the results and the shows host’s assertions change people’s lives; for the good or the worst, only the individual’s concerned will know in time.

On one Jeremy Kyle show five linked people took lie detector tests, four came back that they were telling the truth, the fifth result came back as inconclusive to one question. Apparently the person being tested had a slight reaction, not enough for the expert to say they were lying. Jeremy Kyle then added, One day you may tell her the truth. This was a very damaging remark because of the implications that the person was lying, which even the PolyGram expert said was inconclusive.

One NLP operating presupposition is, Memory and imagination use the same neurological pathways and have the same potential impact. I could ask an embarrassing question say to a heterosexual male such as, Have you ever kissed a man? the answer to this question is most likely yes, because we kissed mummy and daddy goodnight. However the implication of the question could be taken differently. now a no answer would be a lie, potentially worse is that the individual may have fantasied about kissing another man and this would spring into their mind. here the no answer would be true though could easily show as a lie on a PolyGram report.

There is a big difference between the Truth and someone lying. If someone believes what they are saying, then they are telling Their Truth. For example four people can witness an accident; there will be four different versions of what happened. They can all be telling their truth and yet all four may not be telling the Truth, that’s why the Police have special accident investigators. our truths are subjective and are limited by our sensory equipment, sight, hearing, feeling, taste, smell and what we pay attention to at any one time.

The lie detector or PolyGram only detects changes in emotions; it cannot tell if someone is lying. I will repeat that last bit, it cannot tell if someone is lying, only that the individual had an emotional reaction to the question asked or their interpretation and association’s to the question. This is the same for the so called experts. the only real way of telling if someone is lying is for them to tell you they lied otherwise it can only be the experts opinion. Anyone wanting more technical information about the PolyGram can visit skeptics.org.uk/article.php?dir=articles&article=polygraph_or_lie_detector.php

Firstly let’s look at the advice of the world’s foremost expert in lie detection and FBI interview trainer Paul Eckman PhD. there is NO ONE THING that a person may or may not do that indicates they are lying. Paraphrased, there are indications of inconsistency which need to be gone over again and again and areas where corroborating evidence needs to be sort. Eye accessing cues are the movements our eye’s make when we are seeking information from our memory banks or constructing, making-up something, in our head. with calibration, checking it out, Eye Accessing Cues can tell us how someone is processing information and not if they are lying. it is quite common for someone to construct a memory from things they know must have been in the memory, a kind of association, one thing leads to another. in NLP we use this information gathered using this model for rapport and the benefit of our client’s, so it is a very useful model.

Eye Accessing Cues Model Explained

The Eye’s can be split into three zone, Upper, Middle and lower. when the eyes move into the upper zone either left or right the person is processing visually, in pictures or movies, when the eyes move left or right in the middle zone, that is horizontally, the person is processing sounds, which we call auditory. when the eyes move into the lower zone the person is either processing through feelings, emotions or tactile feelings and playing internal tape loops, called inner dialogue. Generally a right-handed person will look up and to their left to remember pictures or movies and right to construct pictures or movies, look left in the middle zone to remember sounds and middle right to construct sounds, look down and to the left for internal dialogue and down right for emotions and tactile feelings. the big misconception is that if a person is constructing either pictures or sounds they are lying. the only thing it means, if they are right-handed and conform to the model, is that they are processing information by constructing rather than it being a remembered picture or remembered sequence of sounds.

Let me give you an example. If I asked you what you had for dinner on a Wednesday four weeks ago, can you remember? Some people can, some will work backwards and reconstruct, piece together, what they had and others like me would not have a clue.

The Eye Accessing Cues is a model, not everyone conforms to it, not all left-handed people are the reverse of the right-handed model. the only way to find out how a person is processing information is to check it out on an individual basis. Remember that this is only a model of someone’s processing and not a lie detecting model. Also remember that a constructed picture or sound, once constructed can become a memory and change to a remembered picture or sound.

Conclusions on lying

If someone is willing to deliberately tell lies so the observer or a PolyGram operator can calibrate to the act of lying, then they are asked simple questions of no value, for example they turn over a deck of cards one at a time and they can either tell the observer the truth or a lie about the card’s suit, then an accurate indication of the lie can be obtained. Ask them a question about something that is important to them, then you might get a reaction that might be considered a lie and still you won’t know for sure if they are telling the truth or lying, especially if they believe what they are saying is Their Truth, unless they then tell you or you have evidence to prove a lie.

Be careful what you consider to be a lie, as everyone’s truth is only as good as their senses and what they paid attention too consciously and no truth is the Whole Truth, as we all Delete Distort and Generalise and that’s another useful NLP Model.