The Question

Lying is an important skill. You need it when you tell car guards you don’t have money, when you tell your partner that you have no feelings for your ex, and when tick off ‘no’ on the medical aid sheet which asks if you ever drink excessively.

For all the naughty things I’ve done, I’m generally quite open about them. However, there are obviously certain things which I wouldn’t want to discuss with an employer or potential father-in-law. If push came to shove, the question which we had at Smartaboutwhat was, can you beat a lie-detector test?

The Plan

I’ve seen them in movies, and heard they can be used in criminal cases, but I’ve never heard of anybody setting out to ‘beat the box’, as it is called.

Enter Ben Lombard, forensic psycho-physiologist , or in layman’s terms, polygraph examiner. Ben has a CV which would make Rambo feel uneasy, and has years of experience ‘in the field’, which sounds serious and intimidating. As I met him for the first time, I immediately knew it was going to be near on impossible to lie. He is tall, has piercing blue eyes (really, they seer into the soul), and when you first meet him he has a very frightening demeanour. After the test I would come to see his friendly and joking side, but before and during the test it was like being interviewed by a combination of the most scary head-master, the scariest neighbour who’s just bust you for tok-toki, and the guy from the Saw movies.

The problem with beating a polygraph test is that it’s not just a test; it is an art which has a lot to do with the examiner. I knew the test wasn’t going to determine if I got fired or went to jail, but nevertheless, by the time I sat down in the seat, Ben had me so nervous that my heart rate was notably elevated, my hands were shaking, and my voice had that nervous tremble of somebody about to break down. The lie detector measures nearly all of your measurable responses, many of which you have no control over:  blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, sweat, movement in the upper and lower body, as well as an examiner scouring your face for any emotion.

The Test

There were 4 methods we tried to employ. The first entailed the wonderfully named ‘anal clench’, which entails, well, clenching up, before control questions. This raises your blood pressure, and can make it look like your heart rate normally elevates after a question, so that when you actually do lie your elevated responses don’t seem too out of place. This was unfortunately brought to an end as Ben noticed the mat I was sitting on showing movement in my lower regions.

Our second method, using a drawing pin, also came to a quick end, but in a somewhat more painful manner. The drawing pin method entails putting a pin into your shoe and pressing your foot onto it before control questions, aiming to elicit the same result as the anal clench method. This is the most commonly used tactic in trying to beat lie detectors, and unfortunately the movement mat revealed the miniscule movements in my toe. Kindly, instead of just telling me, Ben walked to me to ‘readjust’ a fitting, and ‘accidentally’ stomped/tap-danced on my foot, knocking the drawing pin out of my toes’ grip, but at the same time inflicting wondrous suffering upon my foot.

After this failure, we brought in Charlie Keegan, professional actor, sex symbol, and long time crush/obsession of the Smartaboutwhat office. Charlie just finished a season as the lead role of Mnet’s League of Glory. If anybody can lie, it should surely be an actor, who in some ways lies for a living. However, despite the office’s disbelief, Charlie turned out to be human after all, and couldn’t beat the test.

Finally, in a last ditch attempt, I downed 5 Red Bulls and then took the test. Caffeinated energy drinks increase heart rate and blood pressure. Unfortunately they also make you cook out, tremble, and have incredible trouble sitting still for sustained periods of time. Although the monitors did notice an increase in sweating and heart rate, it just made me even more nervous for the questions I lied about.

The Verdict

Lying is hard enough when you’re staring into somebody’s eyes. With a machine that measures nervous system responses which you have no control over, you don’t have a chance. You just get the feeling where you want to break down and cry out “I did it, I did it!”, when they’re asking you what day it is. If, God forbid, you ever are forced to take a polygraph test, trust us, you cannot beat it. In the words of Mark Twain, ‘If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.’