Can hypnosis be used to determine whether a person is lying

[asl123]

Is it possible to use hypnosis to determine whether a person is lying.

[Merlin]

no.
not really

[Jack]

To elaborate on Merlin's reply: in an hypnotic state it is not possible to determine if a person is lying since the subconscious 'mind' is quite capable of lying, usually to protect the emotional interests of the person who has been hypnotised.

Jack

[Poodle]

Hypnosis is not a truth serum; however, one can know if someone is not telling the truth with NLP. :cool:

Pood

[Don]

The difficulty in answering your question is that you have not defined "lying." It can mean different things to different people.

For example, if I saw a person crossing the street on a red light and said they were crossing on a green light, that is certainly a conscious lie.

But if I was told that Mona was having an affair with John and passed that information on to someone else, I would be spreading a rumor. If it turned out that there was no affair, would that still be a lie? It depends upon whether you consider spreading false information without knowing it was false a lie.

If the government tells you that the reason for going to war is X, and you honestly believe that is so and repeat it, is that telling a lie? What if it is later proved that X is untrue? Here, in the U.S. we were told we should go to war because of X and millions of people believed it as there was no public information disproving it at that time. Now, however, over time, we have learned that X was untrue (and the government has given new reasons for war). Did what we may have passed as truth suddenly become a lie? I don't know.

I can say that if a person believes they are telling the truth hypnosis, as practiced by most people, will not be able to indicate they are lying. A master hypnotist may be able to bring a person to self-discovery where they will learn that what was believed was a false memory and they will no longer hold the belief. Of course, from that point on they won't lie, either.

If a person is lying, and knows it, you generally don't need hypnosis to find that out.

And one last thing--hypnosis won't do anything other than put a person into a trance. It's what a trained professional does after a person is hypnotized that matters.

[Terry]

And one last thing--hypnosis won't do anything other than put a person into a trance. It's what a trained professional does after a person is hypnotized that matters. Not only can I tell if a person is lying due to my experience in dealing with clients who do so for reasons of embarrasment, I am reasonably accurate in reading lying posts online which is much more difficult. On the other hand, I do not recommend it as a tool for such purposes.
My last comment however would be to note that you did not say who was telling the lie. You certainly can't force a person to "fess up just because you hypnotise them. In my case, if a client chooses to circumvent the truth when such is detrimental to success, I will take their money happily and fail. It happens only rarely thank heavens, I like success more than money personally, but I do resent a lie....