HOW TO PASS A LIE DETECTOR TEST

                     HOW TO PASS A LIE DETECTOR TEST

When someone hooks you up to a lie detector, they are measuring your physical
responses to psychological stimuli.  It's something like watching you to see if
you blush.  There are four levels they can measure.

1.  Your response when you are just sitting there, not being asked anything.

2.  Your response when you are asked a question you would have no reason to lie
about.  "What is your name?"

3.  Your response when asked a question they consider personal or
embarassing to most people.  "Have you ever wondered what it would be like
to have sex with your mother?"  I think only the government would have
enough nerve to actually do this.

4.  Your response to the questions they suspect you might lie about.

What they are looking for is whether your #4 responses are closer to #2 or #3,
and if the difference is significant with respect to #1.

If your response level to #3 is much higher than any of the others, you are
clearly telling the truth about #4.

If your responses to #1, #2, and #4 are low, and #3 is high, they think you
are telling the truth.

If your responses to #1, #2, #3, and #4 are all the same, they think that
you are either a psychopath or extremely well-adjusted and telling the
truth.

If your responses to #1 and #2 are low but #3 and #4 are high, they think
you are lying.

If your responses to #2, #3, and #4 are high, they think you are very
nervous and they call the result "inconclusive."

This last result is easiest for normal people to fake.  Just think about
something embarrasing every time they ask you a question.  Don't relax,
except between questions.

A more risky alternative would be to try to relax during the questions
you're going to lie about, but not during the "embarrasing" questions.  If
successful, this would produce the "normal truth" result they like the best.
If it failed, it would give the "lie" result.

If you take some sort of tranquilizer beforehand, you may be able to relax
enough to get the "psychopath" response.  It will probably not get you hired,
though.

One practice method would be to hook yourself up to an ohmmeter.  One wire
wrapped around your left index finger, the other wrapped around your right.
If the reading drops from (say) 100 K-Ohms to a third of that, you just
"lied."  Wear this into a police station, or a courtroom, or to your fathers
house, and practice lying.  See how you do.

Disclaimer:  I have never actually taken a lie detector test.  I learned this
from books and Psych courses.