Discuss how polygraphs test use is limited currently and the reasoning behind why organizations generally should not use them.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The use of polygraph tests has been severely restricted by a federal law passed in 1988. This law, the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, prohibits private employers (except firms providing security services and those manufacturing controlled substances) from requiring or requesting preemployment polygraph exams. Polygraph exams of current employees are permitted only under very restricted circumstances. Although much of the public debate over the polygraph as a lie detector focuses on ethical problems (Aguinis & Handelsman, 1997a, 1997b), at the heart of the controversy is validity--the relatively simple question of whether physiological measures actually can assess truthfulness and deception (Saxe, Dougherty, & Cross, 1985). Committee to Review the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph (2003) conducted a quantitative analysis of 57 independent studies investigating the accuracy of the polygraph and concluded the following: (1) Polygraph accuracy for screening purposes is almost certainly lower than what can be achieved by specific-incident polygraph tests. (2) The physiological indicators measured by the polygraph can be altered by conscious efforts through cognitive or physical means. (3) Using the polygraph for security screening yields an unacceptable choice between too many loyal employees falsely judged deceptive and too many major security threats left undetected.
In sum, as concluded by the committee, the polygraph’s “accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies” (p. 6). Responses to a survey completed by members of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and Fellows of the American Psychological Association’s Division 1 (General Psychology) indicated that the use of polygraph testing is not theoretically sound, claims of high validity for these procedures cannot be sustained, and polygraph tests can be beaten by countermeasures (Iacono & Lykken, 1997).