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Post by elipshutz on May 10, 2016 4:56:20 GMT
The article "Functional MRI-based lie detection: scientific and societal challenges" discusses how the brain changes when someone is lying. Based on fMRI, a brain is more active when trying to deceive someone than being honest. If the brain has concrete changes when someone lies, and as humans we have the ability to measure these changes, then shouldn't we always be able to tell if someone is lying? On the surface the answer might appear yes, but in reality we have not yet developed that technology. First there is the idea that all this data has been collected in a lab. Despite efforts of trying to imitate real life scenarios there is still some disconnect. So any data taken might show up differently when someone is actually lying. Secondly lying is not binary. A person is not simply honest or dishonest. For example if I lie about killing someone or lie about eating a cookie when I said I didn't, are those the same levels of lies? if I simply withhold the truth or tell a friend something in order to not hurt their feelings are these considered equally false. Would all these different forms of lying show up the same in fMRIs? And if they could be accurate 100 percent of the time would we necessarily want them to be?
This video from National Geographic talks about how it is evolutionary helpful for humans to lie:
(its only a one minute video)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuEvCnPj9Kg
As humans we have evolved to be dishonest in times when it can help us. I am sure everyone can think of a time they told a white lie in order to help someone feelings and not create an awkward situation. If we want to appear more attractive to someone else, we might lie which will help lead to reproduction. Essentially lying is another way that we have optimized our ability to reproduce and continue the human race.
My questions are:
Do you think we will ever be able to develop an accurate lie detector? If we were to develop one, what limits, if any, do you think should there be? How do you think lying could be beneficial to us as humans and how do you think a lie detector could possibly harm society?
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paola
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Post by paola on May 11, 2016 2:43:05 GMT
The article and the posted video bring up some very interesting points. I was not aware that fMRI was being used as a way to detect deception in a human. After all, lie detectors have always stood in a grey area - especially the polygraph. A polygraph is a device that measures one’s physiological (blood pressure, heart rate, sweating rate, etc.) changes while a subject is asked to answer a series of questions. Usually, the physiological indices increase during deception and remain steady during truthful answers. However, there has been much controversy over the accuracy of the polygraph. For example, what happens when you measure someone who has anxiety? How does his or her anxiety come into play when being monitored by the device? You have to take into account this type of variability. Such variability comes to mind when I think of fMRI as a means to accurately measure lies. At first glance, it would make sense that fMRI can detect lies. fMRI measures blood flow to brain areas when they’re activated. The study suggests that there is more blood flow to decision-making areas in the brain during deception as opposed to when the subject is truthful. However, what happens to such fMRI results when the subject has taken a certain drug or substance that has affected his or her blood flow/blocked an artery? How does the fMRI in lie detection take such into account? Another challenge with this is highlighted in this interesting article by Scientific American: how do we “diminish the artificiality of the test protocol”? In other words, lying about killing someone versus lying about eating a cookie are two very different lies; such lies may not activate the same areas. Here again, variability comes into play and shows that it's something to take into account. |
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Post by elipshutz on May 11, 2016 15:58:46 GMT
I had not thought about how drugs or anxiety would come into play during a lie detector. Also I think the fact that if people are being tested for a crime, there is a chance that person does not have a stable mind set. If their mind already acts differently compared to the mass population, do you think their brain might act differently when lying?
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paola
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Post by paola on May 11, 2016 21:41:01 GMT
elipshutzCommitting a crime is considered as an abnormal action. So, if the criminal exhibits abnormal behavior, perhaps that suggests that his or her brain chemistry is (slightly or majorly) different than the average individual’s. That’s why I think that fMRI use to accurately measure deception is a tricky debate. Not all brains respond to a certain stimulus in one way. Activated areas in the brain during deception could vary from person to person depending on their brain chemistry. This is the "variability" I’m trying to highlight.
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Post by elipshutz on May 12, 2016 2:37:52 GMT
I agree. Do you think we will ever to be able to achieve a form of technology that could tell if a person is lying at all times? Or do you think this is a reasonable goal to have?
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Post by petekk on May 12, 2016 5:05:23 GMT
I think our chances of developing a perfect lie detector are pretty low. I emphasize perfect because I think if we start using lie detectors in law enforcement or other important matters we shouldn't be satisfied with a strong accuracy raid but rather aim for perfect so no one sips these tests. The reason I think our chances are low is that every person has a different internal reaction to lying. One can lie comfortably and easily while the other sweats or blinks. I think people who commit the crimes are the ones who are able to lie more naturally with minimum reaction to what they are saying. This is if we were ever to use a technology like this it should be 100% accurate and reliable.
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Post by stacyli on May 12, 2016 5:38:12 GMT
I don't think a flawless lie detector could be developed because generally people respond differently to lying, like petekk is saying. I definitely agree that people's internal reactions being different could affect how accurate a lie detector is, but I do think it may be possible to create near perfect lie detectors that could sense if somebody is truthfully answering very simple questions. Questions such as "did you take that without paying" or "did you shoot that man" or any other simple yes or no questions could probably be accurately detected as being truthful or not. I would think that questions that should have very straightforward answers should have straightforward signals in our brains. I think it takes a tremendous amount of self control (and being borderline insane) to be able to completely control and lie as naturally as possible. |
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Post by stacyli on May 12, 2016 5:44:49 GMT
Oh shoot, didn't really answer the second part of your question. I think lying and not really knowing the complete truth about everything is really beneficial to humans because we tend to react very emotionally and irrationally to many situations. Evolutionarily speaking, if we were to tell the complete truth about everything, chances are a lot more people would get hurt and a lot of people would react in aggressive, confusing, and disappointed manners. I think completely telling the truth would cause people to fight and develop a lot of animosity towards one another. Something I think is also really interesting is how people always so desperately want to know the truth even if they know that they may react very emotionally to it. Why do people put such an emphasis on knowing truth when we know that humans don't always respond rationally to it?
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Post by dchang on May 12, 2016 6:31:50 GMT
I think that creating a completely accurate lie detector is nearly impossible (not saying it is completely impossible cause who know?). I do agree that there are different degrees of lying; even though it may be possible to detect an obviously lie, there still exists subtle "lies" that may not be entirely true. So determining what are and what aren't lies for those "subtle lies" will definitely be a hard process.
I think that lying is very beneficial to the evolution of human beings because many times in society, lying may save us from a lot more trouble. Sometimes not telling the entire truth or telling a "white lie" may be the better for both parties. And to invent a lie detector that would be able to detect every single lie would disrupt the beauty of human interactions. And to be honest, it is often times better to tell a small lie ad make people generally happier than to be blatantly honest.
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paola
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Post by paola on May 12, 2016 9:09:17 GMT
elipshutzI agree with the above statements in that creating a perfect lie detector is highly unlikely. There's simply way too much variability among individuals in the way that they respond to questions/ the way they choose to lie, etc. In one man's case, a certain region of his brain is activated during deception, but in another man's case, due to different brain chemistry, another certain region is activated during the same exact type of deception. With such information, how are we supposed to tell if the individual is actually lying or not?
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Post by krish97 on May 12, 2016 11:22:46 GMT
Just another interesting situation to think about: remember the old recall and recognition memory test with the video showing a crime? Well, many of us were convinced that a someone in the suspect list given to us was indeed the criminal at hand even though no one on the suspect list really was. Could we consider that lying as well? We all had seen (subconsciously or consciously) the real criminal within the film, so somewhere in our brain we knew that the criminal was not on the suspect list; but we still said one of the subjects was a criminal.
Basically, the point I'm trying to get at is that some of the lies we tell we actually believe in; therefore, we say the lie as if it were the truth. In this case, could we actually test whether or not someone is lying simply by their brain activity (since the brain is effectively working as if it had just told the truth)? I personally think it has similar logic to why we can't tell whether psychopaths are lying.
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