Concept introduced by James Matte, and a central component of his Quadri-Track Technique. Because guilty examinees usually stand to lose something of importance if their deceptions are uncovered by the polygraph, Matte argues that they are hopeful that there will be an error in the outcome. A challenge to Matte’s hypothesis is that truthful subjects are also deceptive during testing – to probable lie comparison questions – and they too might be hopeful for an error to occur. During testing Matte includes a direct question regarding the examinee’s hope of an error and scores the question as a relevant question. See: Matte (1996); Matte & Reuss (1989); Nelson & Cushman, (2011).
