Big ideas for TED talk

• "Human lie detector"
• Changes in lying habits as you age
• Lying disorders
• Catch the liar

But the biggest part..... make it INTERACTIVE

Polygraph One Pager

Have you ever watched a movie or a TV show and wondered how the lie detectors work? Have you ever questioned whether or not those lie detectors are completely accurate? Most people claim that these lie detectors can’t possibly be wrong. It’s a very common assumption considering how we see these being used as proof in multiple shows and movies, but you will soon come to find that these devices may not be as accurate as you originally thought.

While looking on the American Psychological Association, I found an interesting article on the reliability of polygraphs (also known as lie detectors). As the author writes, “Evidence indicates that strategies used to "beat" polygraph examinations, so-called countermeasures, may be effective”. In other words, the author is trying to get across that the polygraph tests may not be as accurate as you think. As the author said, you can fool a polygraph test using common countermeasures to ensure not getting caught. Some of these countermeasures include, simple physical movements and manipulation. The author also states that “A particular problem is that polygraph research has not separated placebo-like effects (the subject's belief in the efficacy of the procedure) from the actual relationship between deception and their physiological responses”. This proves that the polygraph tests aren’t accurate a majority of the time due to outside factors that could cause physical reaction. These outside factors could cause the polygraph to detect lies even when the participant is telling the truth.

As for me, I, like many others, used to think that polygraph tests were more accurate than not when it came to detecting lies. But after reading this article, I’m starting to have different thoughts. The evidence in this article led me to realize that more goes into detecting lies than what I originally thought. I never realized that outside factors could influence the data, causing the results to be skewed. In conclusion, I came to find that I was wrong about the accuracy of the polygraph and came away having learned some valuable new information that will help me and my partner further our research in lying.

Field Experience

Me and my partner Ali decided to focus more on field experience for this part of our 20 time project. We focused more on doing field experience because our project focuses on a topic where it is essential that we do experiments on people of all different ages. So far we have been able to get field experience at the middle school and are hoping to get field experience here at Kennedy High School in the coming days. At the middle school we ended up getting some great footage of liars and non liars, and this footage helped us to go back and review the physical signs of the liars in order to better explain to the class how to tell if a person is lying by using physical body language. I feel as though all of the videos we have taken will be TED talk worthy because it's easier to explain the signs of lying by testing yourself with some real people. By doing this field experience, I feel as though it gave us a renewed excitement for our project. (Please see email with videos for a glimpse of our experiences)