Steven W. Horowitz

Steven W. Horowitz was affiliated with the Department of Psychology at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut, where he held a faculty position. His doctoral dissertation on "The role of the control question in physiological detection of deception" was completed at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City in 1988, where he worked closely with the renowned polygraph research laboratory led by David C. Raskin.

Horowitz made significant contributions to the scientific understanding of comparison question polygraph techniques. His meta-analysis of 14 mock crime studies of the control question polygraph technique revealed accuracies ranging from chance to 100% correct, helping to establish the empirical foundation for understanding variability in polygraph accuracy. His 1997 study published in Psychophysiology examined different types of comparison questions in deception detection, comparing relevant-irrelevant, trivial directed lie, personal directed lie, and probable lie formats in a controlled experiment with 120 participants. This work was instrumental in refining the theoretical understanding of how comparison questions function in the Comparison Question Test (CQT).

Horowitz held a master's degree and worked as part of the University of Utah polygraph research team that conducted major field validation studies for the National Institute of Justice. He was a frequent collaborator with John C. Kircher, David C. Raskin, and Charles R. Honts—a team that represented the leading polygraph research laboratory in the United States during the 1980s and produced numerous influential studies on both laboratory analog studies and field validity research. His work appeared in top-tier journals and contributed to the 1989 book chapter "Recent Laboratory and Field Research on Polygraph Techniques," which became a foundational reference in the field.