Jung, Luria and lie detection

[Teacher]

The main formula in lie detection is what verifiers study at the very beginning - stimulus - processing - reaction. In the context of science, these concepts were investigated by Carl Gustav Jung in an associative experiment and our compatriot Alexander Romanovich Luria, who presented his reactological theory of affective behavior.

Jung's associative experiment was born at the beginning of the twentieth century on the wave of the fact that psychoanalysis actively used the method of free associations as a means of penetrating the unconscious layers of the psyche. Jung drew attention to the fact that people think about some words in the associative row longer than others. Slowing down the time of the associative reaction normal for a person by more than two and a half times indicates, as a rule, that these associations affect his affective-emotional sphere. Deviations from the usual course of associations (for example, pencil-paper, night - dark) was also a sign of the importance of the topic for a person.

Around the same time, our compatriot Luria is interested in a similar topic. He noticed that affective-emotional experiences affect not only the reaction rate, but also the general behavior, manifested in specific movements - mimic, pantomimic, speech. This is how the method of "coupled motor reactions" was born. In his experiments, Luria asked the subject, simultaneously with the verbal response, to make movements with his hands, for example, press a button with two index fingers. The motility of the affective process always showed signs of sharp excitement: the pressure curve becomes broken, covered with sharp trembling movements.

Thus, both in the associative experiment and in Luria's study, the tasks of experimental diagnostics were reduced to being able to set stimuli that cause disturbances in reactions, and to be able to objectively trace them, fix them.

Currently, these observations are actively used both in the work of the polygraph and in the methods of non-instrumental lie detection. Assessing the reaction rate, observing non-verbal behavior and signs of stress at the physiological level is the basis of the verifier's work. Jung used a stopwatch, Luria used a device that records changes in motor skills, we have our attention and observation as a tool.