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Wouldn’t life be so much easier if we could all #BeMoreFrankAndHonest?

That’s the theme we’ve been playing with for the latest Frank and Honest campaign. Since Irish people are notoriously bad at saying what they really mean, we decided to have a little fun by testing their honesty. Grabbing a coffee with someone is the perfect opportunity to be more frank and honest, so we set up meetings between best friends, couples and even a mother / combo – but with a twist! Under the watchful eye of lie detection expert George Ferreira (and his trusty polygraph machine), our participants were invited to answer a selection of very tricky questions. With the machine monitoring their answers, how would these usually polite folk fare?

As George explains, studies have shown that the polygraph is about 96% accurate. But do people still think they can outsmart it? “Absolutely”, he laughs. “They read rubbish on the internet and think if they don’t react, they’re going to pass. But it doesn’t work like that!”

“It’s not natural to get a score of zero”, he continues. “You have to win points to pass, and lose points to fail. That’s why there are generalised questions, like, ‘Have you ever lied to someone who trusted you?’. There’s not a person in the world can say they haven’t! So, I ask something like that, and there should be a little reaction. But people concentrate so hard that they don’t even react on the ones where they’re told to lie.”

So – aside from entertaining ad campaigns – what kind of polygraph scenarios does George usually find himself in? “Mostly cheating accusations”, he says. “One woman had me over three times in a year; she kept telling me I was wrong, and I so started doubting myself. But on the third one, she cracked and confessed!”

Check out our video in full below, and for more on Frank and Honest, head over to their Facebook page.

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