Examiner Approach and its Impact on Polygraph Results

When categorising the diff erent approaches of polygraph examiners toward their examinees on a continuum, one end of the spectrum is taken by the interrogative approach, and the other by the diagnostic approach. What are they? Examiners practicing the interrogative approach perceive polygraph test as a way of extracting confessions from the examinee using the polygraph instrument as a threatening or intimidating tool making the examinee confess, while examiners holding to the diagnostic approach perceive the polygraph as a scientifi c tool that establishes the examinee’s truthfulness or deceptiveness.