Lie Detectors

----------------------

Lie detectors come in many ways to detect that someone is lying. Telling someone is lying can be judged on sweat or nervousness. Lie Detection can also be based on the study of the brain and getting wavelengths that spike this is a polygraph. Does looking at the brain instead looking at physical appearance more accurate? The answer to that question would be no it’s not as accurate as looking at a polygraph and examining the brain. A lie detector lets you know the physiological changes considered to be associated with lying. These studies of lie detection only started studies on this last year. The fMRI is not accurate because of course some people will be nervous being there and running tests. The machine will just make them even more nervous causing the machine to spike and incriminate themselves. The court system isn’t allowing the lie detection methods as evidence just yet due to the chance that it’s not accurate and stable.

The background info that the audience needs is that lie detectors aren’t accurate machines and that's why they aren’t brought into court just yet. The viewpoint of the person getting tested is that they are already nervous that they can have a chance to go to jail. The other point is that they are “accurate” but in most cases they aren’t. On the other hand people think that the people are nervous because they are wrong. Imagine being in their position.. First, being on trail would make a person nervous even if you didn’t do it. Then on top of that then being tested on would of course would make you nervous. I believe that these testing have to be further improved before they are used in the courthouse.

Some of the original lie detector test involved trying to use sweat and heart rates as a way to determine if someone is lying. The polygraph was the typical machine that is used to do lie detector test. While the polygraph may be know as typical and not reliable at times it it is the most accurate method of detecting lies that we have. There is a lot of belief that something happens in your brain when you lie that can be shown through graphs and exams. The way people get lie detectors verified is to take them to a court and put them to a test.

What are lies exactly? A lie is a made up state that someone attempts to pass off as the truth by withholding the truth itself. Most lies are made to either avoid telling someone the truth because they are afraid of how that person would react to the truth, or just to hide a dark secret. Of course there are other reasons people lie.

I personally believe that lie detectors are valuable and if the polygraph works now it has to be the best method of telling a lie. I do however believe that it is not perfect and engineers/scientist should keep designing better ones until one of them work. Other people of course believe that lie detectors don’t work and that everything said is a lie. Those are the same people that go on shows like Maury.

The science behind lying says that we when lying we first have to decide things like, how much trouble will we get in, is it worth it, and will we get away with it. We can’t lie more than our self worth. By that I mean we lie enough to maintain our image if we get caught. When tested studies show that people lie when it comes to money in-order to to increase their wealth. In society over 50% of adults lie every 10 minutes just because and almost 100% of children take that and begin their lying careers.

http://www.scienceofpeople.com/2015/03/the-science-of-lying/

http://mentalfloss.com/article/30609/60-people-cant-go-10-minutes-without-lying

The human brain is a marvelous thing with many different components that allow us to do the things we do. The many different parts of the brain are associated and linked to certain behaviors and allow us to perform the actions we perform in our day to day lives. In some cases there may be apart of one’s brain that may cause their senses to be off. The frontal lobe which is in control of one’s motor function, problem solving, memory, language, impulses, and social and sexual behaviors. When this part of the brain is tampered with or stuck by another force, detrimental effects that could lead to permanent damage could occur.

In one case a 40 year old school teacher claimed that his tumor was the cause of his sexual behavior. It was noticed that something was wrong with him and even had severe headaches. This tumor was the size of an egg that pressed against the right side of his frontal lobe. This was one of the claims as to why he would act the way he did and was said that the tumor was the cause. The tumor was said to give him urges where and that he was in no way aware of his urges. He was eventually convicted and the day before that he had walked into an emergency room with a headache and was suicidal. These signs all were said to lead back to his tumor and he had the tumor treated so that it had shrunk. The urges no longer existed but once the tumor grew back so did the urges. What was the true reason as to his behavior? He was

In another case a 19 year old teen was murdered by who is pretty much remembered as a psychopath. One night after a night out with her friend, once she separated from her friends she was expected to be home and never showed up. At this point her family decided to start looking for her as any other caring family would. In this case Travis originally lied about what he did and the truth eventually came out with evidence. Once interrogated again he said “It was a mistake” and then went on to basically say he does not want to be remembered as a bad person because he just wanted to do some good by actually burying her instead of throwing her in a dumpster. Psychopaths lack emotions for empathy and the awareness in what their actions might do to someone else. This was linked to the cerebral cortex, and was noticed to be the cause of why people would lack empathy, self control, and common moral rights.

Each region of the brain correlates to specific body functions and when a part of the brain is damaged or injured, that can cause effects on the brain that can alter one’s life. In these cases these changes in the brain led to personality disorders, making it difficult for someone to control certain behaviors and impulses. In our law system there are cases where people plead insanity but in reality is it actually one’s fault for their actions if the reason for their behavior is from neurological disability or damage?

All around the world, children who commit crimes are being tried, and often times they are being tried as if they were adults. There has been a very big debate in science and with the people convicting kids of crime on whether kids should really be so harshly punished for what that are doing. While the kids are doing things that are bad, should they be tried and charged they way they do when they are still developing and aren’t fully finished growing yet?
When people are growing and maturing, their brains are also growing and maturing. It doesn’t all happen at once which is a cause for younger people changing emotionally. Our brains continue to grow until we are fully grown. When our brains are growing like this, according to Laurence Steinberg, we can’t always be taken responsible for our actions. Steinberg also said that because these brains will be changing later on that trials with young people should be revisited once they are adults. In this article, written by Emily Kaiser, she talks about 6 facts about the crime with children. One of her facts is that when kids are in groups with their friends they make more risky decisions. In this section she talks about Steinberg's driving simulation that he did with kids. He would take one kid and have them do this driving game and then he told him that his friends were watching him and had them do the simulation again. What they saw was that he crashed more and did worse things when his friends were “watching”. They saw that this was because when you’re with your friends, a part of your brain is stimulated which is the same part of your brain that makes it seem like you are being rewarded. Especially at this age when reward is such a big thing to teens.
Another side of this is that even though the brain of these young people are still developing, if they are going to commit horrendous crimes they need to be tried. These kids know that the crimes that they are committing are illegal and wrong so why not be tried for what they are doing? By the age that kids are allowed to be going out and doing things on their own they should have learned all of this, and the changing of their brain shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
Elizabeth S. Scott from Columbia University along with some other professors, did a study about this in 2007. They wanted to find out how the brain of a child or young adult differed from that of an adult and what it had to do with the likeliness of being reckless and doing things that they shouldn't do. They got people from the ages of 10-25 and studied their brains while doing different activities in different moods and emotional states. They also looked at what the brain function was like under the pressure of peers around them. The study is not complete yet but it is in the process of being completed. Research like this is helping change the minds of people who believe that children should be so harshly punished for crimes they commit.  
From the studies that have been conducted and that are still being conducted, we can see that children are not 100% responsible for every action that they do when their brains are still developing. There are many kids who are in jail with life sentences. What will happen to these children? And how do we know if a child is really responsible or if it had something to do with their brain developing?

Cites used:

1. Kaiser, Emily. "6 Facts about Crime and the Adolescent Brain." Minnesota Public Radio News. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2016. <http://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/11/15/daily-circuit-juvenile-offenders-brain-development>.

2. "Criminal Justice and the Juvenile Brain." Columbia Law School. Columbia University, 10 July 2013. Web. <https://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2013/july2013/scott-brain-research>.

As society progressed we, as a human species learned how to use technology in our advantage, later on inventing new ways of predicting new things such as how many foods will need to be harvested in order to feed a population or even better for safety such as finding patterns or predicting crime in certain minds. As we know finding patterns that relate a psychopath can help the world from a lot of hurt and sadness so machines that can find these patterns can be very useful.

Some major issues associated with this are the fact that brain changes over time altering the outcomes for example if a young child were to be labeled as the black sheep or the bad seed of the family it could ruin their future due to the fact that the machine is not perfect affecting the individual's life and everyone around them.

Other reason why this practice isn’t very useful is the issue of since the brain changes and the studies need to be done on young teenagers it could never really be very accurate due to the fact that the brain is done maturing around the 20’s even late 20’s and that is when you can find a better formed example of a fully grown psychopath. For example psychopaths tend to start doing rebellious acts at a young age some even at the age of 7! But most of or at least a minimum of these acts are later on stopped due to the parents taking actions which later on changed the outcome of their brain.

Most of the signs of being a psychopath are the lowering of affection due to other humans distress which means that if a psychopath and a average person were having a “heart to heart” conversation the psychopath would show little to no care about the others feelings almost as if there was nothing wrong. A lowering in decision making, meaning if the psychopath were to talk about a very gruesome act such as blowing up a building he wouldn’t really feel the nervousness or think of the acts following such act meaning they wouldn’t really think of caring about jail etc. Lastly as a psychopaths they see their wrongs as rights and not care about others, meaning if I were to think robbing a bank it’s a terrible idea they would see it as a good or average thing with “fun” feelings.

A dilemma that has been plaguing law enforcement for ages is whether or not adolescents who commit crimes should be treated the same as an adult who commits crimes. It’s only fair that criminals should be held accountable for their actions but should that be reconsidered when it comes to children? That is the question that the criminal justice system can’t come to a decision on.

First, let’s get the facts straight. Adolescents act different when out in groups. In a study conducted by Temple University, adolescents were asked to participate in an activity where they had to make a last minute decision on whether they should stop for a yellow light or keep going and hope for the best. When the adolescents were under the impression that their friends were watching them complete the activity, they were much more likely to run the yellow light. Although for adults, there was no change in behavior when they were told a friend was observing them. When compared to the results gathered from adults who participated in the experiment as well, it was obvious how much of an impact the presence of peers has on adolescents’ decision making skills. When adolescents are out in group the part of their brain that has to do with rewards light up which makes them more focused on the reward for making a risky decision than the possible dangers.

Some people think that in order to fix this problem, actions should be taken to try to reduce the crime rates of adolescents so that they don’t have to get involved in the criminal justice system in the first place. They want to stop the problem at the source. Changes that can be made to make this possible are better enforcement of curfew and increased adult supervision. Although there are some people who believe that adolescents should be held to the same standards as adults, regardless of their age. These people doubt that adolescents’ not yet fully-developed brains affect their behavior and that they should be able to control themselves and their urges when around their friends.

Another unique viewpoint on this debate is to blame the parents of the young offender. These people believe that the child acts out because of economic or social problems in their family. Children are a product of their parents and if the kid is a bad egg, the parent must be too. This poses the question: Who is really to blame? The adolescent with the easily influenced brain, the bad parent, the bad friends, all of the above?

http://readingcraze.com/index.php/cause-and-solution-of-juvenile-delinquency/

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/11/15/daily-circuit-juvenile-offenders-brain-development