The Psychological Stress Evaluator: A Recent Development in Lie Detector Technology
![handle is hein.journals/davlr7 and id is 370 raw text is: The Psychological Stress Evaluator:
A Recent Development in
Lie Detector Technology
For centuries people have sought an objective and verifiable means
by which to differentiate truth from falsehood. Primitive societies
relied upon trial by ordeal to expose liars, trusting that God would
reward the innocent with victory and punish the guilty with defeat.'
Modern means of lie detection utilize sophisticated chemical and
mechanical monitoring devices to detect and accurately record stress
induced physiological changes.2 Such modem means of physiological
lie detection are based on the theory that lying induces a psycho-
logically stressful state which is accompanied by inevitable and ob-
servable physiological changes.3
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pioneers in
the development of the polygraph,4 notably Cesare Lombroso, Vit-
torio Benussi and Harold Burtt, recognized that lying was ac-
companied by such observable physiological responses as changes in
blood pressure, pulse rate, breathing rate, breathing amplitude and
skin conductivity.5 From this initial research into the relationship
between prevarication and these physiological responses emerged the
modern polygraph.6 The polygraph is simply an instrument to ac-
curately monitor these stress related physiological reactions by
means of sensors attached to the person being monitored.'
'H. GOITEN, PRIMITIVE ORDEAL AND MODERN LAW (1923); W. GIBSON, AN-
CIENT MODES OF TRIAL (1847).
2J. REID & F. INBAU, TRUTH AND DECEPTION 1 (1966) [hereinafter cited as
REID & INBAU ]. This is considered the leading work on the operation of the
polygraph.
3McCormick, Deception-tests and the Law of Evidence, 15 CALIF. L. REV. 484,
484-85 (1926); REID & INBAU, supra note 2, at 1-5; Skolnick, Scientific Theory
and Scientific Evidence: An Analysis of Lie Detection, 70 YALE L.J. 694 (1961).
4See REID & INBAU, supra note 2, at 1-3 and F. INBAU, LIE DETECTION AND
CRIMINAL INTERROGATION 2-5 (2d rev. ed. 1948) for a discussion of the histori-
cal development of the polygraph.
5Trovillo, A History of Lie Detection, (in two parts) 29 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOL.
848, 30 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOL. 104 (1939).
6J. LARSON, LYING AND ITS DETECTION (1932).
7REID & INBAU, supra note 2, at 3-5.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/davlr7&div=23&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Psychological Stress Evaluator: A Recent Development in Lie Detector Technology
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