The Truth Machine (29 page)

Marston's gender dimorphism was not unusual. In a 1938 feature, “A Machine to Measure Lies,”
Look
magazine reported Dr. Orlando F. Scott's belief that “women respond with so much electrical energy that their lies are easier to detect than those of men.”
¹¹⁷
“It Really Understands Women” read the caption to a newspaper photograph of a woman being given a “photopolygraph” examination,: “All Emotional Reactions Recorded.”
¹¹⁸

The iconic image of male examiner and female subject permits contradictory readings, however. As Marston and his contemporaries suggested, women were either “more emotional” than men or their honesty varied with the situation. In either case, they were shown as inferior to their male examiners, whose scientific authority positioned them as objective, truthful, and composed. The female subject, however, can perhaps be read as representing an authentic conjunction of truth and nature. Women were putatively more “naturally emotional” than men and thus better subjects for polygraph examination. The notion of nature as a woman unveiled by science has a long history stretching back to the scientific revolution.
¹¹⁹
In this model, masculine science is a form of power wielded over feminine “nature.” In pictures of lie
detector tests, examiners are invariably clothed in the vestments of authority, such as the police uniform, the scientific white coat, or the business suit. Female subjects, in contrast, are usually casually attired. In some photographs the tight-fitting pneumographic tube accentuates the subject's breasts.
¹²⁰

The erotic meaning inherent in the scientific “lifting of the veil” is echoed in the ideal polygraph examination scene. Male examiners were shown gazing intensely at their female subjects, ostensibly seeking “behavior symptoms” of deception.
¹²¹
Examination rooms are designed to provide numerous opportunities for voyeuristic surveillance via two-way mirrors and concealed microphones.
¹²²
The division of gender and power extended to the instrument itself. Lie detectors were evidently “toys for the boys”; the technique rendered masculine by virtue of its association with the heroics of invention and crime fighting.
¹²³
None of the early pioneers were women, and there are relatively few female polygraphists today. In 1975 the
Journal of Polygraph Science
thought the story of a female examiner sufficiently notable to warrant the front-page headline, “Why a Female Polygraphist?”
¹²⁴
Female examiners were reputedly more successful than their male counterparts on account of the liar's “mother-complex,” an inability to lie to a “mother-figure.”

According to Roland Barthes, the function of myth is to express and justify the dominant values of a given historical period. Barthes claimed that “The Brain of Einstein,” for example, was a “machine of genius,” symbolizing the power of thought and embodying “the most contradictory dreams.” Einstein was a machine and a magician, a tireless researcher and a romantic discoverer.
¹²⁵
Barthes concluded that myth is unconcerned with contradiction so long as it establishes a “euphoric security”: a credible and intense ideological edifice. Lie detection was such a mythic and ambiguous enterprise, a manifestation of contradictory notions such as science and magic, freedom and coercion. The various signs circulating through the discourse were not isolated but were invariably linked in incongruous pairings. The black box was scientific but also intimidating. The scientific instrument could perform magic. The humane technology that promised to replace the third degree was threatening. While it functioned automatically, the lie detector nevertheless apparently possessed sentient agency. Thus, although the discourse of lie detection was loosely homogenous, it was far from being internally consistent. Such contradictions were unimportant, however; what mattered was that the complex of signs rendered the lie detector practically workable, socially acceptable, and culturally meaningful. From about 1921, the lie detector became
an important resource for newspaper reporters and magazine writers wishing to find a symbol of a new approach to crime fighting. To a considerable degree, the lie detector was created in those pages. Lie detector discourse emerged primarily in publications like
Collier's,
the
New York Times,
the
Popular Science Monthly,
and the
Saturday Evening Post.
These were the vehicles that launched the lie detector on its quest for euphoric security.

What are the facts about razor-blade quality? That's what Gillette
wanted to know. And that's why Gillette retained Dr. William
Moulton Marston, eminent psychologist and originator of the
famous Lie Detector, to conduct scientific tests that reveal the
whole truth. Truck drivers, bank presidents … men in every
walk of life … take part in this investigation. Strapped to the Lie
Detector … the same instrument used by police … these men
shave while every reaction is measured and recorded.

—Life
magazine advertisement (1938)

Looking back on that period, it seems to me now that while
Nard had carried on hundreds of experiments with the lie
detector and had worked on numerous police cases during his
college years, he was still waiting in the wings. The stage was set,
the actors ready, but the curtain had not yet risen on the
big show.

—E. Keeler,
The Lie Detector Man
(1984)

On August 31, 1937,
Look
magazine explained “How a Lie Detector Works.”
¹
The article was illustrated with a photograph of a subject being examined and diagrams of two sections of polygraph chart. One was captioned
“THE MAN IS LYING,”
the other
“THE SAME MAN TELLS THE TRUTH.”
“If you tell a lie, you upset your emotions,” the piece clarified. “Your breathing becomes heavy, your blood pressure increases.” “That's why Leonarde Keeler of Northwestern University's crime detection laboratory has been able to invent a machine which, he claims, can test the truth of statements. The Keeler Polygraph or lie detector is used to determine the guilt or innocence of crime suspects. Many thousands of such tests are made monthly all over the U.S.” The following
year, on December 6, 1938,
Look
magazine published another feature about the lie detector. This time, Marston was credited with inventing the instrument. “Would
YOU
Dare Take These Tests?” was the headline to the doublepage photo story: “Real Life Stories from a Psychologist's Files.” Originating from “the Field of Crime,” the lie detector had now entered “the Fields of Love.” It was capable of telling you whether or not your wife or sweetheart loved you, and vice versa: “Dr. William Moulton Marston, the inventor, reports success with his device in solving marital or other domestic problems and adds that it will disclose subconscious secrets of which the subject is utterly unaware.”
²
Not only did the machine discover that “the neglected wife and her roving husband” still harbored some affection for each other, but it also revealed that a young couple were in love, despite being engaged to other people. Once the “disinterested truth-finder” had diagnosed the cause of the symptoms, the consulting psychologist was able to confer his blessings on the unions. “United by the lie detector,” the happy couple thanked Marston for recommending marriage.

These two magazine articles reveal much about Marston and Keeler and their respective agendas for the lie detector. For Keeler, of Northwestern University's crime detection laboratory, the instrument was an important weapon in the fight against crime. For Marston, a famous consulting psychologist, it could be used to resolve marital or other relationship problems by disclosing secrets unknown to the subject. Reporting on Keeler's infallible lie detector back in 1924,
Collier's
had reassured its readers that there was “no immediate danger of the lie detector following the talking machine and the radio set into the intimacy of domestic life.”
³
By the late 1930s, this is exactly what Marston was enthusiastically advocating.

Marston received an LLB from Harvard Law School in 1918 and a PhD in psychology three years later.
⁴
His doctoral research was concerned with the physiological detection of deception. Having performed experiments with the so-called “systolic blood pressure deception test,” and after testing it on suspected spies during the First World War, in 1923 Marston unsuccessfully attempted to get his deception test admitted as evidence in a court of law.
⁵
During the early 1920s Marston devoted himself to empirical research on the detection of deception and the measurement of systolic blood pressure. In 1924 he traveled to New York City to work with the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, and then to Texas, where he later claimed to have analyzed “every prisoner, male and female, in the state penitentiaries” according to his theory of the emotions.
⁶
He later advanced a “psychonic theory of consciousness,”
debated the relative merits of materialism and vitalism, and speculated on the relationship between “primary colours and primary emotions.”
⁷
This productive period culminated in his first book-length study,
Emotions of Normal People
(1928).

In 1928 Marston used his systolic blood pressure deception test to investigate the emotional responses of “blondes, brunettes and red-heads.” The experiment was reported by the
New York Times,
which was enthusiastic if skeptical. “Blondes Lose Out in Film Love Test,” it proclaimed. “Brunettes Far More Emotional. Psychologist Proves by Charts and Graphs. Theatre a Laboratory”: “By elaborate and allegedly delicate instruments known in scientific circles as the sphygmomanometer and the pneumograph, by charts and graphs, and by the simpler expedient of holding hands, Dr. William Marston, a lecturer on psychology at Columbia University, proved yesterday in the presence of a staff of coy press agents, camera men, motion picture operators and columnists that brunettes react far more violently to amatory stimuli than blondes.”
⁸
The Embassy Theatre was an appropriate setting for the vaudevillian experiments. The technique involved strapping women to the apparatus and showing them clips from movies such as the Greta Garbo-John Gilbert pictures
Flesh and the Devil
(1926) and
Love
(1927). “The experiments more or less proved,” said the
New York Times,
dutifully reproducing Marston's interpretation of events, “that brunettes enjoyed the thrill of pursuit, while blondes preferred the more passive enjoyment of being kissed.”

Marston was preoccupied by popular psychology from the mid-1930s. “His versatility enabled him to break into the high-class magazine field at once,” a biographical piece immodestly recalled, “and he has written articles for all the leading magazines, besides many newspaper articles and popular books.”
⁹
A 1934
Chicago American
magazine article—by “Prof. WM. M. Marston (Famous ‘Practical Psychologist')”—was typical. Its inelegant title was “Science Derides the ‘Love-Slave' Verdict, Crying
‘Woman
is the
Man's
Love-Master.'”
¹⁰
The piece was a discussion of a recent New York City murder trial. Defendant Marquita Lopez claimed “she had acted under the compulsion of a man to whom she was passionately devoted; that as a ‘love-slave,' she had merely done what her love-master desired.” She was found not guilty. Marston's academic work had well prepared him to analyze true crime in a sensational manner, and his favorite psychological categories of dominance, submission, inducement, and compliance were perfectly suited to discussing the Lopez case. Psychological experiments, he claimed, had proved that “men really prefer to
submit
in the love situation, while women prefer to
induce.”
¹¹
“To excuse her from criminal liability for murder on this ground,” Marston wrote, “is as psychologically antiquated as it is to believe that man is the master in a love situation.” Although circumstances forced him into leaving the academy to forge a career as a “consulting psychologist,” Marston discovered that his theories had wide application in the public domain. Unusual as they were, his ideas allowed him to become widely known.

In 1928 Marston used his systolic blood pressure deception test to investigate the emotional responses of “blondes, brunettes and red-heads.” Frontispiece to William Moulton Marston,
Integrative Psychology: A Study of Unit Response
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931).