Week 3 - 3-05-17

Many people say that our project isn’t worth the time and effort. Many ask why we can’t just look up the information online. Some may ask us why even bother with this project. What’s the point? Why go through the work of it? Just take the easy way out and look it up. We think differently than what most in society would think about researching and experimenting with this topic.

Stanford University’s Anthony Wagner disagrees. He makes a good point about how lie detection is studied in lab settings. The big picture statement is that they aren’t able to model them well. Wagner says that, “laboratory studies involve instruction to tell a low-stakes lie about an action they recently performed. However, in the real world, lies are self-generated, often high risk and emotionally charged, and lie detection may occur years after the event in question”.

I would first like to address the fact that some people may say that this project isn’t worth the time. Me and my partner disagree with that. Because there are so many conflicting ideas between scientists and no complete and reliable ideas as to why people lie and I think that this is an excellent topic to do my own personal research on. Because the use of lie detectors is so controversial as to whether or not it works,  I feel as though it would be very useful to see if me and my partner can become our own human lie detectors.

I also find it interesting that as a person grows up they lie for different reasons according to one of the articles I have read. I feel as though this is important because it can be useful information to know when raising a child. The Truth About Lying states that, “if you can step back and view lying as a part of your child’s emotional and intellectual development, you will find that telling lies doesn’t condemn your child to a life of betrayal or serious behavior problems”. This supports the “Why do this project?” argument. If we can learn more about how and why children lie we can possibly get the basics as to why people lie in general and it can be our first stepping stone into research on how lying disorders are different from what we call “normal lying” and maybe gain insight on if lying disorders could possibly be related to the brain being stuck in a phase that a child might grow out of.

Overall I find this 20 time project to be extremely interesting due to the many factors that we must consider. I also find this project very interesting because of how this topic has no definite rhyme or reason and how scientists still disagree among themselves on this topic. Who knows, maybe one day we will use this research to change the world.