Polygraph Glossary Practice

embarrassing personal question

Definition

The embarrassing personal question (EPQ) was a question type — frequently with a sexual theme — used by Leonarde Keeler with the Relevant/Irrelevant test in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Keeler hypothesised that guilty subjects would not respond to it (remaining focused on relevant questions), ...

What Is an Embarrassing Personal Question?

The embarrassing personal question (EPQ) was a question type — frequently with a sexual theme — used by Leonarde Keeler with the Relevant/Irrelevant test in the 1940s–1950s. The EPQ provoked a known emotional reaction, providing a physiological response benchmark against which relevant question responses were compared.

Historical Function

In the R/I technique, the primary comparison was between relevant and irrelevant (neutral) questions. The EPQ added a third reference: a question expected to produce strong emotional response regardless of guilt/innocence. If relevant question responses exceeded the EPQ response, deception was inferred.

Why the EPQ Was Abandoned

The EPQ was abandoned for several reasons: sexual or deeply personal questions create hostility and distress compromising the examination; embarrassment is psychologically distinct from deception, making it a poor comparison baseline; and the Comparison Question Technique provides a vastly superior mechanism through comparison questions that generate responses through the same psychological set mechanisms driving relevant question responses.

Modern Successors

The comparison question in modern CQT formats serves the same broad purpose — providing a within-subject comparison baseline — but through a psychologically sound, ethically appropriate, and empirically validated mechanism. See: comparison question, probable-lie comparison question, directed-lie comparison question.

Cross-references

More practice terms in this glossary

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