The Lie Detector And The Human Brain

Perhaps the title should have been The Lie Detector In The Human Brain. Most of us certainly come equipped with one as standard equipment. A lot of misery could be avoided if we'd just pay attention to its warnings instead of waiting for the axe handle to hit us between the eyes.

In this modern era, people immediately think of the polygraph whenever anyone mentions catching fibbers in the act. That's natural. After all, we're inundated with TV shows (such as but not limited to Dr. Phil) that glorify the use of the polygraph as the Holy Grail of lie detectors. If it's on TV, it must be true, so why wouldn't we think of Saint Poly as the end all and be all of tripper-uppers?

It's not. The polygraph measures psychological responses. Period. If that. Additionally:

1. There are excellent articles readily available online which explain in detail how to beat the polygraph at will.

2. Some pretty intriguing sources consider the lie detector as we know it to be worse than worthless.

3. Society's most dangerous criiminal, the sociopath (thought I was going to say politician, didn't you?) will beat the machine without having to study how to do it.

So much for the official version of the lie detector. It's garbage. I've personally refused to apply for jobs where lie detector tests were required as a condition of employment. This was at a time (not unlike right now, come to think of it) when having a regular "day job" paycheck would have been very nice indeed. It's not because I consider myself more dishonest than the next guy. It's simply that I have a low B.S. tolerance, and the official lie detector is B.S. piled high and deep.

But wait! There's more! The unofficial version of the lie detector is awesome, or at least it can be. Yup. That's the one already hardwired in the human brain. Remember how Mom always knew what you'd been up to?

Oh, wait. In our family, that was Dad. Okay, so Mom had been raised as an only child in a family with money. Maybe that stunts your lie detector growth. Our Mom tended to believe all the wrong stuff and suspect me of being a sneaky teenager when I was being truthful. Well, not all unofficial lie detectors are perfectly tuned.

Dad, on the other hand...that dude had an in-brain B.S. spotter that could smell a fib faster than you could smell a f---. Oops. Got carried away there.

The old man was the eldest of eight and had an alcoholic father. More than anyone else, he held the family together. I'm guessing his drunk Daddy gave him plenty of practice in figuring out when somebody was off base. He's not the only one. You've got your own internal lie detector, as do most of us.

It's really not about figuring out whether or not someone is fibbing to you. Most of the time, we already know deception is involved. The lie detector is not a lie detector; it's a deception prover. Except it doesn't really prove anything.

You and I, however, are capable of proving all sorts of stuff. A few examples:

1. My third wife and I knew full well our sons (hers originally, but I'd adopted them) were out drinking one night like a camel just hitting an oasis after a month in the dunes. We also knew they'd stonewall when they got home. They did. Unfortunately for them, we had our investigation results in hand before we confronted them. When I refused to accept their heated denials and even told them the name of the whiskey they'd been drinking (Wild Turkey), they caved. Thought we were omniscient or something.

Being one of America's Dumbest Criminals, the older boy had written a letter to a friend in which he'd detailed their entire wild night out. I'd sneakily found and read it before it hit the envelope. Do I have a great lie detector in my human brain? They sure thought so! I didn't tell him how I'd done it until he was thirty-five years old.

2. During one stint as live-in houseparents in a group home, my second wife and I had to deal with a very beautiful and also very promiscuous sixteen year old blonde. She had no clue what made us so certain she'd played roll me over in the clover do it again with the boy who'd taken her out in his van for a burger and a coke and, obviously, some dandy condiments to go with the fries. This young lady was mentally brilliant...but instead of putting her panties back on when they were done doing the deed, she'd stuffed them in her jacket pocket--and we could see the bulge.

Better than the bulge a year or two later that resulted in her living on the dole as an unwed mother, but we'd done what we could.

3. Last October (2008) I was in the process of buying my own truck with which to make a financial killing in the Colorado gasfield drilling boom. Or so I thought. We had a loan approved for a truck that filled the bill admirably and had wired our down payment of $2900 to the truck broker's bank to hold in escrow until the deal closed. I was ready to book a flight to Florida (where the truck was located) and only needed contact details at the dealership.

At that point the broker informed me that the lender had closed its doors temporarily. Ouch. But they intended to reopen after the election, so if I could hang in there just three more weeks....

Our lie detector went off. A few phone calls, including one to the dealership where the truck was parked, uncovered the fact that yes, that specific lender had indeed closed its doors. But not for three weeks. Permanently. Did we get our $2900 back? Nope. The broker, we figured, had already spent our money in the belief that closing the deal--and it truly had been by all counts a "done deal"--would keep him covered. Suing him would accomplish nothing. We might have been able to get him busted for fraud, have him do a little hard time, but it wasn't worth the effort and the Lords of Karma would take care of his punishment, anyway.

But we did figure it out.

Both Pam and I believe that we humans almost always know; the problem is that we don't always listen to the knower inside, that organic lie detector hardwired into our very cells.