The Psychopath and the Lie Detector

The article by Raskin and Hare (1978) asserts or very plainly implies that: 1) the control question lie test is extraordinarily accurate; 2) that this high accuracy can be achieved by objective scoring of the polygraph charts; 3) that the theory of this test is psychologically reasonable and was confirmed by the experiment reported; 4) that subjects give qualitatively different autonomic responses when lying than they do when telling the truth; and 5) that the experiment described shows that psychopaths can no more “beat” the lie detector than non‐psychopaths. All of these socially important claims or implications are critically examined and all of them are found to be untenable.