The TV Talk Show Effect: When Lie Detector Tests Expose Cheaters

It's one thing to try to beat a lie detector test if one is facing serious criminal charges. The motive there is obvious. But what on earth are these people thinking by voluntarily subjecting themselves to lie detector tests on National TV when they know they are cheaters? Time and time again, talk show after talk show the results are always the same: the cheaters swear up and down they are innocent by all accounts and they fail the lie detector tests miserably.

I suppose there is some sort of myth that is still perpetuated that lie detector tests are not reliable and inadmissible in courts of law. This is far from the truth. There are many states in the union that do employ the use of lie detector tests in civil as well as criminal courts. There are also many US government agencies (ie: FBI, CIA, etc) that rely on the data which lie detector tests yield. Additionally there are many countries around the world which recognize the effectiveness of lie detector tests for a host of different situations from court room evidence to situations regarding potential employee hires. So what would make people who know that they are guilty put themselves in situations where they know they will be exposed and humiliated in front of untold numbers of television (and subsequently youtube) viewers?

I suppose that cheaters think because they have been able to successfully perpetrate their deceptions within their own relationships for so long their confidence gets to a point where they feel they can continue to their act with equivalent success on someone that they don't know. Cheaters are already insecure, ego-challenged individuals who seem to gain some sort of validation by getting over on as many people as they can. It would make sense that they would try to continue that boost to their ego by continually upping the ante. And what better way for cheaters to get their ultimate kudos than to get rewarded for their Academy Award-winning performance by beating a lie detector test on national TV? Predictably, the cheaters react one of three ways:

1. They continue to deny, deny, deny.

2. They act shocked, then enraged and demand a retest. (And then it is revealed they'd already had several.)

3. Rarely, they come clean now that they have been finally exposed.

Without fail, every single time cheaters are exposed by a lie-detector test TV talk show they react one of the previously stated three ways.

And then there are the cases where the cheaters simply don't care whether they get caught or not.

In the vast majority of cases the cheaters' behavior is painfully obvious to everyone in their community; most of all to their significant other. The suspicious significant other has only the cheaters' word of their innocence which is not backed by their behavior. So I don't understand the need for a lie detector test on a nationally broadcasted TV talk show. If more people would just live by the theorem "If I feel the need to suspect my partner then I should examine the relationship." life would be much less complicated. If we just stopped lying to ourselves then we wouldn't be deceived as often by the lying of others.

Male or female, every person deserves to be treated like they are the most important person in the world by their significant other. If your partner does not make you feel that way, serious attention needs to be given to that issue. If both parties don't feel the need to comply with this sort of relationship examination in a straight-forward fashion, then the relationship is not as serious as either of the parties had been led believe. There is no mystery here. Either the relationship was never that serious for one of the parties or the priorities of one/both of the parties has changed over the course of time and neither one or both has cared to come out and address this fact.

If two people don't have trust they have nothing. Trust is the most necessary basis for the foundation of any relationship.