Lie Detection and Trust in Twentieth-Century America

K E N A L D E R ASocialHistoryofUntruth: Lie Detection and Trustin Twentieth-CenturyAmerica Inthewinterof2000 , shortly beforethe release ofthe nuclear scientistW en HoLee— the LosAlamos employee accusedof havi ng soldatom bombsecrets to the Chinese government—itemerged that agents ofthe Federal Bureauof Investigation had lied to Lee when they toldhim he hadfailed a polygraph test.1 Thisarticle suggests how such lies have becomestandard procedure in the useof the polygraphmachine, an instrumentthat measures four basic physio- logicalparameters ( bloodpressure, galvanic ski nresistance,heart rate, and breath- ingdepth) whi le the subjectis interrogatedabout his or her activities.By the time Lee regainedhis freedom —hisprosecutors, it turned out, had misrepresented many otherfacts in the chargesagainst him— thousands of otherAmerican scien- tistsin the nationalweapons labs were being systematically subjectedto polygraph exams forlie detection. 2 Notlong after ,inthe wake ofthe RobertHanssen spycase, the FBIbeganto test itsown agents witha polygraph,even thoughyears ofannual polygraphexaminations had failed to catch the doubleagent AldridgeAmes at the CIA.3 Mostrecently ,the variousagencies thatwi llsooncomprise the Department ofHomelandSecurity have begunto polygraphdetai nees held inconnectionw ith terrorismon U .S.soi l.The useof the polygraphin these circumstancesdoes not seem tostrike most A mericansas eithersurprising or objectionable.Nor is itnew . What issurprisingis the historyof how we gotto thispoint: why Americanslook toa lie detectormachine to ferret out the truth,even thoughthere isabundant evidence thatthe machineitself dependson lies. In ASocialHistor yofT ruth Steven Shapinfocuses on the conditionsthat promptedseventeenth-century English gentlemen tospeak the truthon behalfof recalcitrantnature. 4 Thispaperw illfocuson the e Vortsof twentieth-century Amer- icanexperts tooblige recalcitrant men andwomen to tell the truthaboutthemselves. How diVerent arethese twoenterprises? When AlbertEinstein inscribed above his replacethe motto,‘ ‘Nature’s Godis subtle,but He isnotmalicious,’ ’ he surely ac- knowledgedas acorollarythe possibility that people mightbe malicious,if alsosome- timessubtle. It is thislatter corollary that has inspiredthe proponentsof an Ameri- Representations 80 · Fall 2002 q theregentsoftheuniversityofcalifornia is sn 0734-6018 pages1– 33. Allrights reserved.Send requests for permission toreprint toRights andPermissions, University of CaliforniaPress, Journals Division, 2000 CenterSt., Ste.303, Berkeley,CA94704-1223. 1 canscience oflie detection.Their premise is thatwhile a humanbeing may tell a consciouslie, thatperson’ s bodywi ll‘‘honestly’’ betrayhis or her awarenessof this falsehood.By the middleof the twentiethcentury ,sometwo mi llionlie detector tests werebeing administered each year tocriminal suspects, members of the na- tionalsecurity apparatus, and ordinary citizens as aroutinepart of employment. Thisproliferation of lie detectortests intwentieth-centuryAmerica could not have occurred,of course,had not their expert proponentspersuaded their co-citizens thatthe tests served somepurpose. No novel technologycansucceed unless someonebelieves the claimsmade on itsbehalf. But, in the case ofthe lie detector, somethingadditional was required.There, the claimsmade on behalfof the tech- nologywerethemselves integralto the operationof the technology.Asseveral of itsproponentsacknowledged, the lie detectorwould not ‘ ‘work’’ (thatis, deter mine the fatesof itshuman subjects) unless itssubjects believed it‘ ‘worked’’ (thatis, distin- guishedtrue utterances from false ones).In otherwords, the machinecould not catchliars unless they believed they mightbe caught.T othatextent, the historyof the lie detectoro Versa dramaticexample ofthe degreeto whichthe transformative powerof technologymay residein whatmedical science has dismissively termed the ‘‘placeboe Vect’’ :the residualpotency produced by the ‘‘merely social’’ condence thatmedical technology inspires in itslay subjects—and in itspur veyors too.5 The machineryfor catching liars, then, isanilluminatingexample oftechnol- ogy’s dependenceon the socialimaginary .Assuch,it may serve asan idealprobe intothe Americanpopular i magination. Indeed,as aninstrumentdesigned to assess the condence thatone citizen may placein the utterancesof another ,the lie detectordirectly engages the problemof trustand mistrust that governs dai ly life inalarge,anonymous society .Duringthe courseof the nineteenth centuryAmericans became increasingly immersed in the exchanges ofmarketplacecommerce; yet they stilllargely encounteredone another inface-to-facei nteractions.As KarenHalttunen has shown,the abilityto read appearanceswas one of the acquiredski lls inthe repertoireof Victorian sociabil- ity,enablingcitizens to disti nguishthe conman from the legitimatesalesman. 6 Twentieth-centuryA mericans,by contrast, increasingly found themselves operat- ingwithinlarge hierarchical organizations— both withincorporate capitalism and stateinstitutions— organizations whose main rationale was the substitutionof bu- reaucraticpredictability for the (expensive) uncertaintiesof the marketplace.But couldthe managersof these new bureaucratichierarchies trust their subordinates any morethan Victorianshad trusted traveling salesmen? Thispaper argues that the lie detectorwas oneof the principaltools by whichtwentieth-century A merican societytried to solve the problemof trust.Designed to drawa sharpline between lawfuland unlaw fulbehavior ,toprivilege expert insightover lay assessment, and toregulatelife withinhierarchicalinstitutions, the historyof the lie detectoris part ofthe historyof how America coped with the riseof a masspublic, on the one hand,and the riseof new large-scale organizationson the other. 2 Representations ABriefHistor yofDissembling Ofcourse, all Yahoosocieties thrive byspeaking what Jonathan Swift called‘ ‘the thingwhich is not.’’ Despitephilosophical injunctions against falsehood fromSt. Augustine to Immanuel Kant,dissembling is asu Yciently advantageous practiceto befound among all peoplesat all times.There are Machiavellian lies disseminatedby the strongand defensive lies wovenby the weak.A ndof course there arethe many falsehoodswe individuallyand collectively tell ourselves—what onemight call ‘‘BasicLies.’ ’ 7 Perhapsfor that very reasonthere isagoodcase to bemade,as JosephBrodsky has done,that consciousness does not begi nuntilone tells one’s rst deliberate lie.8 Butif dissemblingis something ofahumanuniversal, the measurestaken to rootit outmay betreatedhistorically .Every Yahoosociety possesses its own individ- ualsandinstitutions whose authority depends on their presumed ability to unmask certainkindsof petty falsehoods—ifonly tobetter preser ve the bigones. One ven- erableapproach to this problem (sanctioned already i nclassicaltimes by physiog- nomy) has been toread morals by appearances: shifty eyes ora rosyblush may be signsof deceit. 9 Butcon dence men canmaster their faces, and women may paint. So,more probing tests have oftenbeen thoughtnecessary . The justicesystem has longwrestled with such tests becausecri minalactivity , almostby de nition, cloaks itself in the sortof falsehoodthat society wishes to un- cover.Wecanidentify (roughly) three phasesin the developmentof suchtests in the West.In the medieval trialby ordeal, the alleged criminal’s innocencewas inter- rogatedby a physicalchallenge sothat God might deter mine the outcome.In one suchtest, presumed liars were asked tolick aburning hotpoker .IfGod wanted to commendtheir honesty ,theirtongues would not be burned. By the twelfthcentury ,asecondphase emerged on the EuropeanContinent: an inquisitorialsystem ofjustice. In the pursuitof certainty of judgment, magis- trateswere authorized to order the useof judicialtorture to obtai naconfession, then consideredthe ‘‘Queen ofProof.’’ The problemhere (as the juristsunderstood fullwell) wasthat forced confessions might be unreliable.Hence, magistratescould only authorizetorture on the basisofstrongcircumstantial evidence; the examiners wereforbidden to ask overly suggestive questions;the confessorhad to supply cor- roborativeinformation; and the confessionhad to be repeatedafter the torturehad ceased.Still, jurists recognized how easily thissystem couldbe abused:that poten- tially innocentsuspects su Veredpain worse than any possiblesanction and that even reiteratedconfessions might be false. Althoughthe campaignto end torture wouldulti mately triumphunder the bannerof Enlightenment humanism,the practicealready was giving way in the seventeenth centuryto anewprobabi listic appraisalof the trustworthiness ofhuman testimony . 10 Itwasunder this probabilistic banner that the thirdphase took shape in early modernEurope. Increasingly ,statements ofwitnesses were probed in cross-exami- ASocialHistory of Untruth: Lie Detection andT rust inTwentieth-Century America 3 nationby lawyers and judges, w ithultimate judgment on theirveracity— and the guiltof the accused—depending on the intime conviction ofthe magistrate(or in England,on the ‘‘moralcertainty’ ’ ofthe jury).At the same time,however,avariety ofexperts alsobegan to take aprominentrole in speakingon behalf of circumstan- tialevidence, evidence thatlay beyondthe ability ofthe laity (orthe magistrate)to assess and beyondthe powerof the accusedto dissemble— and that therefore could beusedto corroborate (or not) human testimony .Itis thisformof courtroominves- tigationthat, in all itsmani foldper

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