Introduction
Yesterday I presented The "consequences" Of Being a Psychologist.
As both a psychologist and a polygraph examiner at the same time, I felt I should do a post about “my other half” as well.
To be honest I think it would be even more interesting to some of you, given the fact that there is so much mystery and mythology about What Doеs Thе Polygraph Mеasurе? and the profession in general.
So without further ado I would like to start with the positive “consequences” of being a polygraph examiner.
Positive consequences:
You become really good in asking precise questions.
Everything in this profession is about asking the correct and precise questions. In the everyday life this helps a lot because you start defining what information exactly you want to obtain from somebody, and most importantly how to do it.
You become a very good listener
Literally. Your primary job is to listen carefully what the other person says to you, because that would help you formulate the right questions to him or her. By taking this ability outside of the working field, you actually become a very good listener to the people around you.
You become really good in detecting different non-verbal and verbal indicators in others
As you become a good listener, you start not only analyzing what somebody is saying, but how he is saying it. A lot of times, in stressful situations, people lose control over their behavior and speech and that’s the time where you should use your abilities to understand what’s going on.
You start learning a lot about different professions and jobs
Every day you have to talk to different people with different jobs or professions. In most cases you do not have any preliminary information about what he or she is doing for a living and what exactly is their profession about.
So part of the polygraph examiner’s job is to obtain as much information as possible about different companies, jobs and professions. This expands their culture and understanding about different sectors in the business area.
You get a lot of experience in life
By constantly talking to different kinds of people and working on different cases on a daily basis, you expand your knowledge about a certain detail or piece of the puzzle that we call life. Every person’s story has different lesson to offer, If you are careful enough to catch it.
Negative consequences:
You become really stressed
The stress levels in this profession are overwhelming. The job is really responsible and a single mistake could in some cases change a person’s course of life. These stress levels affect the polygraph examiner’s life in a negative way and could also influence his or her relationships with other people.
You become a negative person
It’s no surprise that the job of the polygraph examiner has a lot of negativity to offer. Working on a daily basis on minor and major crimes is not a pleasant experience. You see the worst parts of the human personality: the greed and the despair. When you are surrounded with this amount of negativity in your everyday work environment it’s really difficult to “believe” that there’s still left something good and positive in this world.
You become suspicious about everything and everyone
As your primary goal in this profession is to ‘catch the liar’ and to look for clues of deceptive behavior, you could easily ‘slip’ and transfer that pattern of communication with people outside of your professional circle. This means that you start questioning every information you receive from people around you. This might disrupt your relationships with the closest ones to you.
You start overthinking and become anxious
A common struggle in this profession is the battle between your expectations of people and the results you get from their tests and others. This leads to overthinking and self-doubt which automatically boosts your anxiety level.
You start feeling as a bad person
Even though your job is to solve what’s going on, sometimes it’s possible to feel pity of the people who have committed certain crime. Especially if they did it out of despair. In times like these you might start feeling bad about yourself, despite that your job is actually to bring justice in the end.
Final Comment
In the end I would like to say that even though I've intentionally put fiver versus five "consequences", the ones on the negative side are a lot more. And that's perfectly normal.
Are they worth it?
Absolutely.
The result in the end is what justifies all the trouble that you went through.
I hope that for some of you it was useful and insightful. If you would like to add or ask me something, please feel free to do so in the comment section.
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