Lasso of Truth

The Lasso of Truth is a weapon wielded by DC Comics superhero Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themyscira. It is also known as the Lariat of Truth, the Magic Lasso, the Lasso of Hestia or the Golden Perfect. 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 understanding and perfecting the systolic blood-pressure test while working on his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University. Blood pressure was one of several elements measured in the polygraph tests that were being perfected since as far back as Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, in 1895. Marston's wife, psychologist and lawyer Elizabeth Holloway Marston, one of his inspirations for the Wonder Woman character, also played a key role in his lie detector research. 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. 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. In a 1997 academic article, psychologist Geoffry Bunn incorrectly reinforces a correlation between the lasso and the systolic blood-pressure test: Anyone caught in the lasso found it impossible to lie. And because Wonder Woman used it to extract confessions and compel obedience, the golden lasso was of course nothing less than a lie detector [...