NCJ Number
122820
Journal
Polygraph Volume: 18 Issue: 3 Dated: (1989) Pages: 143-157
Date Published
1989
Length
15 pages
Annotation
The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not innocent parties who are given the guilty knowledge polygraph test are incorrectly diagnosed as guilty at chance levels as theorized in the literature.
Abstract
The first phase of the study compared the reported distribution of scores attained by innocent subjects in earlier studies to the values expected by chance. It was found that significantly fewer (p less than .0001) false positives were reported in these studies than predicted by the probability model. The second phase consisted of a guilty knowledge polygraph experiment which included 54 innocent subjects. The false positive rate for these subjects did conform to chance expectancies. Possible explanations and implications of the findings were noted. 3 tables, 20 references, 1 appendix. (Author abstract)