Word: polygraphed
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...could just as well have been a job for a trucking line, jewelry store or bank. Despite intense opposition from unions, legislators and civil libertarians, a growing number of companies are forcing present workers and/or would-be employees to submit to polygraph tests. Main reason; executives are looking for an easy way to cut down employee stealing, which insurance analysts estimate may total $3 billion this year...
Frank Answer. A candidate's day at G.P.C. begins with interviews on general background, which are designed also to get information about trustworthiness. Strand and Cormack have recently added the Dektor Psychological Stress Evaluator (TIME, June 19) to their battery of tests. The day ends with a polygraph session. "After this," says Strand, "they feel that they've been through the mill...
...lead anywhere." Sprague booked her into a hotel and began a series of lie-detector sessions that lasted eight days. "The thing that was difficult," says Sprague, "was that she wasn't lying. She was just withholding information. That is an extremely hard thing to get from the polygraph...
...made of iron," the polygraph operator recalls. "It was a test of mental determination-us against her. And she was built like Daisy Mae. Strong. Part way through the test, she told us she had willed that she would forget all the details of the case." At this point Sprague told her: "The deal's off. You aren't leveling. We're going to send you to the chair." On the eighth day, she broke, crying, her body suddenly racked with sobs, sweating profusely. "And she made a good confession," Sprague says. After that, it was easy...
P.S.E.'s reliability still has not been proved. No independent agency has double checked the company's TV experiment. Moreover, some lie detector experts caution that the weakness of the stress evaluator may lie in its dependence on a single measure of bodily function (the polygraph, or conventional lie detector, records several: pulse rate, blood pressure, respiration and sweat-gland activity). Besides, experts agree that although both the old and new devices can spot stress, neither can prove absolutely that the stress results from lying. The most serious objection to the P.S.E. is ethical. As the company itself...