The TSA will love this: “Do you promise not to blow up a plane today?”
IRS: “Do you promise you don’t owe more?”
Employer to job seeker: “Do you promise not to steal and to work hard?”

Promises are made to be broken, so it can be tough to tell which ones will be kept. But new-found patterns in brain activity can reveal whether someone intends to keep their word.

The finding raises the possibility of using brain scans to determine the true intentions of criminals who are up for early release on parole, according to Thomas Baumgartner of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

He and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to catch promise-breakers in the act.
[…]
The fMRI data revealed that certain brain areas became more active when trustees were breaking a promise. These regions – the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala – are known to be involved in emotion. They could reveal an emotional conflict in a person who knows they are doing something wrong, or feels guilty, says Baumgartner.




  1. The0ne says:

    I can do algebra by chewing bubblegum.

  2. Dennis says:

    The do this using an MRI scan, to find out if people may or may not be promising/breaking promises, yet I get turned down for the one to show the doctor what is wrong with my spine because it is deemed “Unnecessary and overly costly”??

    Why is this even being researched ?

  3. LibertyLover says:

    #2, Wrong Country.

  4. Thomas says:

    Can we run it on politicians and their campaign promises? I suppose a full battery of “they won’t keep their promise” would just make the test superfluous.

  5. Ah_Yea says:

    Welcome to the thought police!

  6. LibertyLover says:

    #6, You just like stirring shit up, don’t you 🙂

  7. Sister Mary Hand Grenade of Quiet Reflection says:

    Man, they should use this at the church. Do you promise not to molest little boys? Holy shit, coul

  8. Li says:

    What I love is how they are framing this. “Reading the thoughts of criminals to determine parole.” might be the best thing they could think of to justify this research, because virtually any other use one can think of is so openly Orwellian and tyrannical that they don’t think they would get their funding if people thought about it much.

    “Oh, it will be used on criminals, that’s all right!”

    Nothing to see here, move along now.

  9. Animby says:

    This could replace the Presidential Debates!

    “Candidate number three: Do you promise not to raise taxes?”

  10. MikeN says:

    No picture of Obama?
    How’s that Jan deadline for closing Guantanamo?

  11. deowll says:

    “They could reveal an emotional conflict in a person who knows they are doing something wrong, or feels guilty, says Baumgartner.”

    So what if they don’t see their behavior as wrong and don’t feel guilty about it?

  12. Uncle Dave says:

    #14: You mean a sociopath or religious fanatic?

  13. soundwash says:

    #15 -there is a difference??

    -s

  14. Uncle Patso says:

    Yeah, I can see this being big — giant multi-million dollar Functional MRI machines in every hiring office, police station, etc., practically on every corner!

    “You want to buy that on credit? Just crawl in here while the machine goes “BANG! BANG! BANG!” for half an hour to two hours while I interrogate you, won’t you?”


0

Bad Behavior has blocked 5634 access attempts in the last 7 days.