Using conditioning to elicit skin conductance responses to deception

Lie detection research has focused on developing new methods of measuring physiological responses exhibited during deception. Little research has gone into understanding the contingencies that shape these physiological responses to deception. Using a conditioning procedure, participants’ deceptive responses on a Cluedo-type game were paired with mild electric shock. The results suggest that such conditioning significantly increases the discriminative skin conductance response (SCR) exhibited during deception. Implications of these findings for interpretation of traditional lie detection tests are discussed, as well as how the above procedures can be practically implemented.