Who else watched this insane, inane show? me. myself and I. Why? because I love watching people. also, i’m also a sometimes consultant to producers of game television.
Beyond the obvious hook to this show (jerry springer meets deal or no deal), this show is a perfectly crafted behavior experiment. This thing works on so many levels.
The Set Up
Gameplay is simple. A set of questions is worth a certain dollar amount. Answering a set of 6,5,4,3… questions earns you an ever larger amount of money. Truth is determined by comparing your “live” answers to answers done under a polygraph situation. e.g. You can fail the polygraph without knowing it and then answer the same answer in the live show and not be telling the truth. or you can attempt to lie or switch your answer from polygraph if you knew you were lying during the lie detector test.
There are 3 friends/family members in the studio often asked for responses.
The host cleverly (perhaps not so cleverly) asks leading questions that frame up the truth question.
The questions get progressively more damaging – the truth could hurt a close relationship, hose a job, lead to distrust, etc. etc.
There’s ambient music with a “heartbeat” and an ominous female MC voice.
The family and friends can end it at any time.
Payout amounts
First 6 questions are worth $10,000
Next 5 are worth $25,000
Behavior Groups
The Studio Audience
The questions early on get the audience going. Lots of typical white lies, religious and sexual overtones. Raises the stakes while the money is low.
The Contestant
The first part of the show eases the contestant into the game. 6 questions remove the fear of telling the truth and get you to lose any “real life” risk aversion you may have.
The Television Audience
TV audience is draw immediately in with a quick launch into questions and personality reveals throughout the gameplay. Lots of questions come early, before the first commercial. Early questions are very good “conversation starters” for a roomful of people watching on television.
Lots of up close facial shots. Shots of nervous ticks. Audio track includes heartbeats.
Consequences
The money, audience and “ease” of early questions provide positive reinforcement to keep going early, at least through $10,000.
At $25,ooo, contestants claim “i’ve revealed too much to stop.”
Family members want contestants to continue because “they are curious.” “They want to know.”
$25,000 doesn’t seem to matter much to people. (need more data)
Audience reaction doesn’t matter much to contestant as answers have been given. However, audience reaction seems to affect the family member.
Questions
When will most family members make it stop? why? how can we measure discomfort?
What types of family members/friends/relationships are most disrupted?
Are the contestants coached to add dramatic pauses and misdirection to their responses? I mean, they already took a polygraph…
how did they screen for contestants? You need risky people to make this work. And you need clean cut people that seem like the “truth” could be damaging.
What’s the dollar figure that matters?
Notes and Observations
There is a point/threshold at which this is no longer a “game” for people. The questions stop being cute or easy or “party” like. A series of questionable answers may have the same effect.
There are tons of very nervous humor that only comes out when people are asked to explain their answers.
The host raises the stakes a lot. Increasing the interaction between family and contestant has a very interesting effect.
The “stop” button near the family is just far enough out of reach to put up a physical barrier.
Need to see the ratings on this.
Social Mode 
What we are witnessing with “THE MOMENT OF TRUTH” is voyeurism involved in watching a train wreak that has already happened… so you, as the voyeur, are not responsible for helping, avoiding, escaping, etc.
Furthermore, you can relate to being in similar situations and thus, you are watching the strategies used to navigate those potentially damaging and toxic results for you, family and friends.
Conflict set-up is this: expose what we say is ‘truth’ and what is the quantified truth is, as shown by the lie detector ‘technology’. People are publicly – family and TV audience – put conflict situations that they don’t have to face typically or publicly and are made to face them by virtue of being on the show. The person’s values responses come from the two sources: 1) the inter-response time after the questions are asked and 2) the answer itself which is framed to expose the person as a liar or a truthful person that comes out looking less integrated, nice, amicable, etc., than they want to be.
The other conflict that is set up is that the contestant that is out of their comfort zone because that are revealing things that are not in alignment with typically a) who they are to the world or b) who they are to themselves most of the time… (as in “I hate humus we have at every meal” or “your mother hit on me and I don’t like it when she visits” or my favorite, I hate my wife, my boss and my life but I am too chicken to change”)
Actually, the money to be won potentially is secondary to the cumulative social effects of being a public figure and involving their own family and friends network. Money appears to be a way to keep score rather than any means to an end. The combination is made all the more palatable by the opportunity to make some money…much of which the government will take as incidental winnings income… Somehow the contestants know the consequences of having a lot of money [from the show] is that they could have no one to spend with or on, and that is a sobering thought.
All in all this is a truly molar interactive showcase where there is not a potential for only “nice” questions and answers just like in life there is not a 1:1 relationship between who we say we are in our verbal behavior and who we are based on how we’ve connected things. Inability or lack of experience in connecting things makes the lie detector tests more sensitive due to the startle response for a question not fitting you as a person and not appropriate out of the context you have organized it in the past.
The show will get a lot of attention not because of the money to be won but because of what the viewers [voyeurs] bring to the show when they watch. Unless the questions remain ruthless people will become less reinforced by the strategies used by contestants. Look for the show to get late night buzz and social commentary because of the content and the consequences but certainly not the money.
I’ve been watching this show for a whileand I must say I’m annoyed with the payout increments for the prizes. The prize levels goes from 10k to 500k in varying increments. But when you get to the 100k level, you have to risk the entire 100k just to win another 100k. This makes it so that hardly anyone goes past the 100k mark. Risking 25k to get another 75k makes sense because you get 3:1 odds for your money, but the later rounds make no sense. I do enjoy watching this show, but I think they would see more people taking risks if they make the prize money increments make more sense.
Maybe in future seasons they’ll address this issue and have the prize pools become more enticing or maybe not force the contestents to risk everything to move on to the next level.