Comic-Snips: Lasso of Truth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasso_of_Truth
The Lasso of Truth is a fictional weapon wielded by DC Comics superheroine Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themyscira.[1] It is also known as the Magic Lasso[2] or the Lasso of Hestia.[3] It was created by William Moulton Marston, inventor of the lie detector, as an allegory for feminine charm, but it later became more popular as a device to extract truth from people.
The lariat forces anyone it captures into submission; compelling its captives to obey the wielder of the lasso and tell the truth.
William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman but he also worked, in the period before, during and after World War I, on the systolic blood-pressure test while as a student in psychology at Harvard University where he earned a Ph.D. in 1921. Blood pressure was one of several elements measured in the polygraph test put together by John Augustus Larson in 1921 though it had been associated with deception since at least 1895, when Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso invented a device that police used to measure changes in the blood pressure of crime suspects. Marston's wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, a student at Radcliffe College, apparently played a key role in his research: "According to Marstons son, it was his mother Elizabeth, Marstons wife, who suggested to him that 'When she got mad or excited, her blood pressure seemed to climb'".[4] Although Elizabeth is not listed as Marstons collaborator in his early work, Lamb, Matte (1996), and others refer directly and indirectly to Elizabeths work on her husbands deception research. She also appears in a picture taken in his polygraph laboratory in the 1920s (reproduced in Marston, 1938)."[5][6]
But the lie detector had nothing to do with Marston's creation of the Magic Lasso. Wonder Woman's Magic Lasso or Golden Lasso was the direct result of their research into emotions and was more about submission than truth.[4][7] So Marston created the Magic Lasso as an allegory for feminine charm and the compliant effect it has on people. The idea behind feminine allure was that submission to a pleasant controller (instead of a harsh one) was more pleasant and therefore made it more likely that people would submit.
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