Hello. My name is warrrreagl, and I'm a liar.
As mentioned in
another thread, Grancey and I are involved in our local police department's Public Safety Academy, and last Thursday night we were given a demonstration of the standard polygraph test.
The police expert had a bunch of statistics concerning lies that were fascinating (I don't have them with me here at work, but I'll dig them out later). He told us how many lies an average person tells a day, and it varies from face-to-face conversation, phone conversation, or e-mail.
There were two highly interesting factoids that continue to grab my attention. First, every species on the planet is deceptive is some way - it's a basic part of survival. Therefore, lying is a basic part of our fundamental nature as a successful species. And since we seem to be much better at being deceptive than recognizing the deception of others, human society continues to develop laws that help to "even up" the score and try to force people to restrict their deception.
Second, the polygraph only works if the subject has something to lose. If a person is caught in a situation where they could lose something significant to themselves, then lies can be detected from the body's natural reaction to fear. In other words, if I ask you if this is the year 2007 and you say "No," then nothing would register on a polygraph because it is a meaningless lie. However, if I ask you if you've ever lied to your spouse and you say "No," then the polygraph will register your innate fear of losing your relationship and status with your spouse.
We watched a demonstration of that exact question and how the subject's reaction differed from meaningless lies to significant ones.