The Truth Factory, cpt, Cape Town (2026)

14/06/2016

Witnesses can catch criminals by smell: Human nose-witnesses identify criminals in a lineup of body odour.

"Police often use human eye-witnesses, and even ear-witnesses, in lineups but, to date, there have not been any human nose-witnesses;" explained Professor Mats Olsson, experimental psychologist at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden; "We wanted to see if humans can identify criminals by their body odour."

Dogs have been used to identify criminals through body odour identification in court, but it is commonly thought that the human sense of smell is inferior to that of other mammals.

However, research shows that humans have the ability to distinguish individuals by their unique body odour. Our olfactory sense is often associated with emotional processing and is directly linked to the areas of the brain associated with emotion and memory; the hippocampus and the amygdala.

There is ongoing research into how the memory of a crime scene can be affected by emotion. This is largely focused on visual memory as visual lineups are the common method of criminal identification.

"Our work shows that we can distinguish a culprit's body odour with some certainty;" concluded Olsson; "This could be useful in criminal cases where the victim was in close contact with the assailant but did not see them and so cannot visually identify them."

13/06/2016

Riots are complex events. It's no surprise that established authorities, feeling attacked, see the violent behavior of their citizens in such terms. They react by becoming dismissive and punitive.
And often there is an element of truth in such descriptions - yet in ordinary circumstance people like you or me will not shout, shove, throw rocks, smash windows, loot etc.

It usually takes an incident to get a riot started and quite often this incident might be an accident.

But once it has begun, the raging mob has a life of its own. Deep-seated resentments, repetitive frustrations and long standing disappointments galvanize people into action. And the mob provides cover, an anonymity that makes it easier to overcome one's usual reticence or moral scruples.

One is immersed, engulfed. And it can become an exuberant experience, a joyful release for long suppressed emotions. It can also become manic, driven, a means of restlessly seeking new outlets. Leadership emerges spontaneously and changes rapidly.

It offers a kind of intense belonging, not dissimilar to what spectators feel at a sports event or fans at a rock concert. But because it isn't focused on a game or performance, it easily gets out of hand.
This is not to justify the behavior of the mob, but to recognize that we all can so easily become "hooligans" ourselves. To be sure, delinquents and petty thieves can easily join in under the cover the mob provides. But riots do not rely on criminals or "criminality, pure and simple."

Thinking that way, though, can distract us from the underlying conditions that give rise to such events. They can be appeals to be heard, when normal channels don't work. They can be eruptions of rage, when frustrations boil over. They can be expressions of hope that things could change.

If there's one underlying condition that these movements share, it has to do with unemployment and bitter poverty among people who desire to be part of the middle class, and who are keenly aware of the sharp inequality between themselves and their country's wealthy elite.

Distracted by the flames and the looting, we can easily forget that these are "social revolutions with a small ‘r,' protests against social conditions that have become unbearable.

13/06/2016

Ukraine's Defence Minister: 40% of ministry's officials fail polygraph tests

Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak says that 40% of the Defense Ministry's senior officials have failed to pass polygraph tests during personnel re-evaluation.

Thirty-five senior officials from the ministry participated in the tests, and about 40% of them failed, Poltorak said. He said that he would dismiss those who have failed, and respective documents would be prepared in the coming week.

"There is no other way out. This is because the people who do not take decisions on time, who had been working for 30-40 years without changing anything in their work have a little prospect. In fact, they're facing employment problems. The system is inefficient if it works as before," Stepan Poltorak said.

In his words, changing the personnel will take from three to four months.

He also says he plans to reduce the personnel of the Ukrainian Navy's headquarters to 300 people from 500. "The Navy's headquarters should not exceed 300 people," Stepan Poltorak said.

Nowadays, the Ukrainian fleet numbers about 11,000 men with 500 people staffing the Navy's headquarters alone, he added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, almost two-thirds of the ministry's senior officials are facing dismissal following re-evaluation.

Reporting by UNIAN

23/05/2016

The Psychodynamics of Interviewing and Interrogation

Interviewing and Interrogation is often the most important and at the same time the most difficult phase of an investigation.

Investigative Interviewing skills are required in many different settings - formal investigations, internal investigations, security managers and investigators in private companies, auditor investigations, questioning a witness or a client etc.

It is through the successful application of psychological interviewing or interrogation techniques that the truth is established, valuable intelligence gathered and false confessions avoided.

Too often methods used to extract information is violent/bordering torture, resulting in false confessions, inaccurate intelligence and immense psychological and or physical damage to the subject.

The Psychodynamics of Interviewing and Interrogation is an intellectual approach designed to obtain legally acceptable confessions.

19/05/2016

The makers of the Oscar-winning movie Dallas Buyers Club are displaying some dubious tactics in their ongoing crackdown on BitTorrent pirates. In California, the filmmakers recently asked an accused pirate to submit to a polygraph test, but changed their opinion after he agreed.

The makers of Dallas Buyers Club have sued thousands of BitTorrent users over the past two years.
Many of these cases end up being settled for an undisclosed amount. This usually happens after the filmmakers obtain the identity of the Internet account holder believed to have pirated the movie.

Not all alleged downloaders are eager to pay up though. In fact, many don’t respond to the settlement letters they receive or claim that someone else must have downloaded the film using their connection.

“When plaintiff’s counsel then agreed to take such a test with the proviso that defense costs and attorney fees be covered, plaintiff then refused to pay costs and revoked his offer to conduct a polygraph.”

Because of these dubious tactics the court should set aside the default that was entered earlier this month.

“This action is further proof of the malicious motives of plaintiff’s counsel who proceeds against an innocent defendant with nothing other than an IP-address to support his allegations,” he concludes.

17/05/2016

LUCID DREAMING/NIGHTMARES

Have you ever had a dream where you knew you were dreaming? This unusual state of consciousness is called lucid dreaming.

Lucid dreaming has long been a topic of interest in dream research. The term "lucid dreaming" was coined by Frederick van Eeden in 1911, who reported on lucid nightmares among other lucidity phenomena. In a lucid nightmare the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming and that the dream is a nightmare. The nightmare themes often involve demonic figures out to inflict terrible harm on the dreamer who struggles to wake up but can’t.

But the more common lucid dream is a typical dream where the dreamer is aware of the dream and has no strong desire to wake up and end the dream.

What is so fascinating about these dreams are the implications they hold for a theory of consciousness and identity.

Consider the fact that the dreamer quite clearly has awareness and self-consciousness. He can discriminate the real from the unreal so he is not insane. The ability to reason and to engage in logical thought is intact. Access to the dreamer’s autobiographical memories is intact. The ability to take on third person perspective is intact so the dreamer can consider, entertain and imagine what another character in the dream is thinking or feeling as well. Indeed whole interactions, dialogues between the dreamer and dream characters can take place just as in waking life.

The dream characters furthermore cannot be considered mere creations of the lucid dreamer, as they act as if they had full mental capacity and autonomy, and in nightmares they clearly act contrary to the wishes of the dreamer. In short, all of the constituents of Mind that we take for granted in waking life exist in the lucid dream state for both the dreamer and the dream characters.

Most interesting, of course, is the fact that the lucid dreamer is essentially a fully awake human person who cannot be said to be hallucinating (because he knows what is real and unreal); and yet who observes a fully realized visual world replete with settings, environments, characters, movements, actions, storyline, plot and "atomsphere" just as occurs in the waking world. Indeed this dream world and the characters in it are so real that they can intensely affect the dreamer’s physiologic reactions even unto death.

What about physiologic accounts of the lucid dream? While the lucid dream does in fact emerge very often from the REM state (and that is why it is legit to call it a dream), it functions in some sort of hybrid REM-NREM transitional state or better REM-partial awakening state. Thus it is not strictly speaking a sleep state—even though it most often arises within a sleep state.

While the fact that the prefrontal and parietal cortical networks are re-activated in lucid dreams, this fact only helps us explain access to logical thought and awareness while in the lucid state. The lucid dream’s most fascinating mysteries remain unexplained.

25/04/2016

Ringing In The Ears and Anxiety

The ringing in the ears (Tinnitus) symptom can precede, accompany, or follow an episode of nervousness, anxiety, fear, and elevated stress, or occur ‘out of the blue’ and for no apparent reason.

The ringing in the ears (Tinnitus) symptom can range in intensity from slight, to moderate, to severe. It can also come in waves, where it’s strong one moment and eases off the next.

The ringing in the ears (Tinnitus) symptom can change from day to day, and/or from moment to moment.

All of the above combinations and variations are common.

Many people notice their ringing in the ears more so when resting, relaxing, and/or when trying to go to sleep.

What causes the ringing in the ears (Tinnitus) symptom?

The ear, an organ, is comprised of a complex system of nerves, muscles, bones, and pressure that is intricately organized to provide sound and balance information to the brain. Because of its complexity, diagnosing ear-related problems can be difficult. For example, there can be many causes of this symptom, such as exposure to loud sounds, age, ear injury, ear wax build up, ear bone changes, an adverse reaction to medication, high blood pressure, head or neck injuries, sinus or ear infection, and a variety of other medical causes. Because of the many causes, it’s wise to discuss this symptom with your doctor.

Although not mentioned on many levels, elevated stress is another common cause of ringing in the ears. In fact, many anxious people experience this symptom as a result of the elevation in stress that being overly anxious can cause.

Since anxiety activates the stress response, and since stress responses stress the body, behaving in an overly apprehensive manner can stress the body to the point where it becomes symptomatic. Ringing in the ears is a common symptom associated with stress and anxiety. We see this symptom a lot among anxious people.

Stress-caused ringing in the ears is NOT a problem worth worrying about. In fact, worrying about it stresses the body, which can cause ringing in the ears to persist.

How to get rid of anxiety associated ringing in the ears?

Because stress, including the stress that being overly anxious can cause, is a common cause of the ringing in the ears symptom, working to reduce and eliminate unhealthy anxiety and stress should be the number one priority. Many people have found that as their anxiety and stress are reduced, their ringing in the ears diminishes. The more rested the body becomes, the less of an issue ringing in the ears becomes.

Because it can take some time for the body to recover from elevated stress, you may need to work at stress reduction for a while before meaningful results can appear.

Can ringing in the ears cause anxiety?

Anxiety occurs when we behave in an apprehensive manner. Therefore, anxiety isn’t a cause in itself, but a result of a certain style of behavior. In this regard, then, no, ringing in the ears doesn’t cause anxiety. But worrying about ringing in the ears can cause anxiety, since worry is apprehensive behavior. As we mentioned earlier, worrying about ringing in the ears stresses the body, which can cause ringing in the ears to persist…which is a common reason why people experience this symptom persistently.

The combination of good self-help information and working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist, coach, or counselor is the most effective way to overcome anxiety and its many symptoms. Until the core causes of anxiety are addressed - we call these core causes the underlying factors of anxiety - a struggle with anxiety unwellness can return again and again.

14/04/2016

The word BIPOLAR is often carelessly and loosely used in social settings.

If you are not diagnosed by a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, you have no business labeling yourself as such. Also, if you are not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist you have no business in labeling others.

Bipolar disorder is a very specific disorder that also includes additional specifiers of Bipolar Disorder and Depression.

Following is information regarding additional specifiers:

Bipolar Disorder or Depression with Anxious Distress

This specific manifestation of bipolar disorder is applied when a person has noticeable symptoms of nervousness/anxiety during a related mood episode. A person must have at least 2 of the following symptoms the majority of days during the current or most recent mood episode:

Feeling irritable, short-fused, or “keyed up”
Feeling unusually restless.
Difficulty concentrating because of worry.
Feeling of dread that something awful may happen.
Feeling that the individual might lose control of himself or herself.

Bipolar Disorder or Depression with Melancholic Features

The specifier “with melancholic features” is applied when an individual is at the depths of a depressive episode. In this state, there is almost no access of capacity for feelings of pleasure. A helpful guideline for determining whether you are in a melancholic state is the inability to react emotionally in a way that is expected given the event. Either mood does not brighten at all, or it brightens only slightly. For example, one may only feel only fleeting positive reactions for 20 to 40 percent of the time to a positive event.

During melancholic depression, individuals exhibit a slower rate and energy level for responding to events (compared to their norm).

Melancholic features are more frequent in inpatients, as opposed to outpatients. These features are also less prevalent in mood episodes of persons who are not diagnosed with a severe mood or psychotic disorder.

Bipolar Disorder or Depression with Atypical Features

This specifier refers to the case when the clinical presentation of a mood episode does not fit the significant majority of those with the same episode. However, these atypical symptoms are prevalent enough in those with mood disorders to be noteworthy. For instance, though chronic low mood is typical major depression, in atypical cases, a person can be “cheered up” to the degree that they no longer feel depressed for a period of time in response to a positive event (for example, an adult receives a visit from children; a person receives compliments or an award).

To be diagnosed with this subtype of depression, 2 symptoms involving changes in sleeping, eating, motor movements, or interpersonal communication must be evident, including:

Significant weight gain or increased appetite.
Hypersomnia (sleeping more/for longer periods than usual).
Feeling heavy or leaden in arms/legs as if one is “weighed down.”
Having constant fear of rejection (this can be consistent with when a person is not depressed, but is exacerbated during a period of depression); this interpersonal sensitivity must interfere at the workplace or in personal life.

Bipolar Disorder or Depression with Psychotic Features

This specifier applies if delusions or hallucinations (auditory or visual) are present at any point during a mood episode.

Bipolar Disorder or Depression with Peripartum Onset

Most commonly referred to as postpartum depression.

Bipolar Disorder or Depression with Seasonal Pattern

Most commonly referred to as seasonal affective disorder.

This specifier can be applied to the pattern of major depressive episodes in bipolar I disorder, bipolar II disorder, or major depressive disorder, recurrent. The essential feature is that periods of depression tend to occur and remit during certain times of the year. In most cases, the episodes begin in fall or winter and remit in spring. Less commonly, there may be recurrent summer depressive episodes.

This pattern of onset and remission of episodes must have occurred during at least a 2-year period, without any nonseasonal episodes occurring during this period. In addition, the seasonal depressed periods must substantially outnumber any nonseasonal depressive episodes over the individual’s lifetime. Younger persons are more at-risk for seasonal depression. This specifier does not apply to those situations in which the pattern is better explained by seasonally linked psychosocial stressors (e.g., seasonal unemployment or school schedule).

12/04/2016

A funny thing happened on the way to romance: How humor influences romantic relationship initiation

Some evolutionary theorists suggest that humor may have evolved specifically to support successful dating decisions, or in evolutionary terms, mating decisions. This perspective begins by recognizing humor as a puzzling characteristic.

Being funny differs from traits like social dominance, wealth, or physical attractiveness, preferences for which can be explained for their direct evolutionary benefits. A socially-dominant, wealthy man can provide resources for his family, enhancing his and their survival. Likewise, a woman’s physically attractiveness signals her health and fertility, which promote successful reproduction. Humor, however, bears no direct influence on survival. Up against this mystery, researchers looked more deeply into the experience of humor and what it might reveal in social interactions.

Hard-to-Fake Humor
Think for a moment about your funniest friend. Could you easily imitate his or her witty comebacks or hilarious stories? Probably not. Humor is often incredibly difficult to imitate, a characteristic that suggests it might reliably signal underlying fitness. By fitness, scholars mean the quality of individuals’ heritable traits, including genes, physical health, and psychological functioning.
To reliably signal fitness, humor must be difficult to imitate. Unlike memorized jokes, difficult-to-fake humor involves creativity, spontaneity, and a keen awareness of social timing and interpersonal dynamics. When humor is more rudimentary, its effects are less impressive. Unrefined opening gambits that sound like memorized jokes keep conversations going less well than spontaneous wit.

Humor as a Cue for Intelligence
Both men and women desire intelligent partners and intelligence translates to advantages in resource acquisition, social interactions, genes, child-rearing, and co-parenting. These outcomes enhance survival, explaining the appeal of intelligence from an evolutionary perspective. If humor can reliably signal intelligence, then humor might itself be attractive during relationship initiation. This fits nicely into sexual selection theory (Miller 2000a; 2000b): over time, displaying humor to communicate intelligence may have proved reproductively beneficial, rendering humor an established courtship behavior in today’s mating game.

11/04/2016

Let's focus on the effectiveness and legalities of using the lie detector to prevent dishonesty and/or identify culprits of dishonest acts.

Do you know who you employ?

It is a known fact that the majority of crimes are committed by employees. Some of these crimes could have been avoided if pre-employment polygraphs had been carried out and these crimes can be stopped by identifying the culprits.
What are the “do’s and don’ts” involved in using this valuable tool?

Q. Can I force an employee to take a polygraph test? A. No.

You need their permission at the time or it should be written into an employment contract that both the employer and employee have previously signed. Every polygraph examination should be preceded by the completion of a “polygraph consent form”. Bear in mind the suspicion created when an employee refuses to consent to a polygraph examination without reasonable grounds.

Q. Can I dismiss an employee for failing a polygraph test?
A. No.

The information can only form the basis of an investigation and must be supported with further evidence which proves within a “balance of probability” that an offence has taken place. The polygraph can therefore only be used as supporting evidence in a disciplinary hearing and it is not accepted as evidence in a criminal trial, where guilt has to be proven “beyond reasonable doubt”.

Q. Can an employee be questioned about more than one issue in the course of one test?
A. Yes.

The success of a polygraph examination is based on the composition of the questions, therefore the series of questions to be asked must be carefully formulated and not vague or generalised.

Q. Can a pregnant lady be polygraphed?
A. No (as a rule).

Although there is no medical evidence to date that the polygraph can cause any harm to the mother or unborn child.

Q. How accurate is the polygraph test?
A. The American Polygraph Association has a compendium of research studies available on the validity and reliability of polygraph testing. The 80 research projects listed, published since 1980, involved 6 360 polygraph examinations or sets of charts from examinations. Researchers conducted 12 studies on the validity of field examinations, following 2 174 field examinations, providing an average accuracy of 98%.

Q. If a person is a habitual liar, can he still be polygraphed?
A. Yes.

05/04/2016

Silent Treatment: Preferred Weapon of People with Narcissism

The silent treatment is a form of emotional abuse typically employed by people with narcissistic tendencies. It is designed to (1) place the abuser in a position of control; (2) silence the target’s attempts at assertion; (3) avoid conflict resolution/personal responsibility/compromise; or (4) punish the target for a perceived ego slight.

Often, the result of the silent treatment is exactly what the person with narcissism wishes to create: a reaction from the target and a sense of control.

The target, who may possess high emotional intelligence, empathy, conflict-resolution skills, and the ability to compromise, may work diligently to respond to the deafening silence. He or she may frequently reach out to the narcissistic person via email, phone, or text to resolve greatly inflated misunderstandings, and is typically met with continued disdain, contempt, and silence.

Essentially, the narcissistic person’s message is one of extreme disapproval to the degree that the silence renders the target so insignificant that he or she is ignored and becomes more or less nonexistent.

Because no further communication can ensue unless and until the narcissistic person decides to give the target another chance, a false sense of control is nurtured. Often, the narcissistic person will demand that the target apologize for whatever inflated transgression the target may have committed (the target may have set a limit or asserted a boundary).

04/04/2016

FOMO!!!

"You missed out." Known as FOMO in millennial-speak, fear of missing out is quickly taking a toll on Generation Y - and it's probably causing damage to your own life.

Do you have trouble sitting through a movie without obsessively checking your phone? Does your family complain about your constant social media habit? If you panic at the thought of not having a window to the world, you may be experiencing FOMO -- which was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.

Living our lives through this virtual filter isn't really living at all - it only fuels an anxious mindset that we must be 'missing out.'

With at least 24 percent of teenagers online 'almost constantly,' it's no surprise that fear of missing out is an epidemic among millennials. "FOMO is especially rampant in the millennial community because they see a peer achieving something they want, and somehow in their mind, that achievement means something is being 'taken away' from them," said Darlene McLaughlin, M.D., assistant professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and a psychiatry and behavioral health specialist with Texas A&M Physicians.

It's easy to define our lives based on the virtual crowd watching, critiquing, and applauding our every move. It's even easier to conform to the crowd's mold - constantly measuring our lives against a celebrity's Instagram post or a friend's life event.

This 'give me more' and 'I want that' attitude can be detrimental to us both physically and mentally. In fact, recent studies have shown that FOMO is linked to feelings of dissatisfaction. "The problem with FOMO is the individuals it impacts are looking outward instead of inward," McLaughlin said. "When you're so tuned in to the 'other,' or the 'better' (in your mind), you lose your authentic sense of self. This constant fear of missing out means you are not participating as a real person in your own world."

The average college student spends eight to 10 hours killing time on their cellphone each day, and when we consistently believe we are 'missing out,' anxiety and depression may set in. It's no surprise then that anti-depressant use is very high and grows each year.

"FOMO certainly instills anxiety and depression, but, we need to push back against framing this 'fear of missing out' as a mental health condition," McLaughlin said. "FOMO is an emotion -- driven by thoughts -- that can create the fear and anxiety which leads to a mental health diagnosis. Part of social anxiety is the fear of being judged by others or embarrassing oneself in social interactions," she said. "FOMO is very damaging to someone suffering from this anxiety disorder because it fuels a lack of self-confidence and social avoidance."

While we may not all experience severe social anxiety, sadly, many of us have pretty bad cases of FOMO -- even if we're unwilling to admit it. And, this incessant worrying about what everyone else is doing only causes us to miss out on our own lives even more. So, how do we fix FOMO? Maybe with a large dose of YOLO (you only live once).

The Truth Factory

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