Complexes

The boy was obviously frightened, not only because he was surrounded by sober-faced grownups, but because the strange equipment fastened to his arm and chest was, he knew, a "lie detector." The examiner asked him a few routine questions, then abruptly:

"Did you steal a car?"

"No."

The detector's graph showed, at this point, marked disturbance of breathing, pulse, blood pressure--presumptive evidence of a lie. Yet the lad was telling the truth. Patient questioning brought out that he had indeed not stolen a car, but that mention of "stealing" and "car" reminded him of the time when he had put only four gallons of fuel in the family automobile's tank, although his father had given him money for five. Hence his reaction.

This incident was related last week at the American Psychological Association convention (see above) by Verne W. Lyon of Chicago's Institute for Juvenile Research, who believed that "emotion detector" would be a better name than "lie detector."* Fluctuations on the graph might reveal "painful complexes" instead of falsehood.

Obscure emotional complexes of streetcar motormen which tend to cause accidents were discussed by Professor Glen U. Cleeton of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute of Technology. He set up elaborate equipment on which 700 motormen were tested for reaction time, coordination, attention, vision, etc. But the results did not account for all the difference between high-accident and low-accident men. An elusive factor in "accident-proneness" seemed to be quirks in the psychic makeup. One motorman had taken $1 from the fares and given it to a passenger whose hand had been caught in the door. When accused of this he had at first denied the facts, then sullenly insisted that he had not really stolen the dollar since he was saving trouble and money for the company. The psychologist thought it significant that this man had passed the ordinary tests with flying colors, but had accidents frequently.

* The most widely known ''lie detector," the polygraph developed by Law Professor Leonarde Keeler of Northwestern University's Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, has been useful mainly in extracting confessions from wrongdoers after they were confronted with the evidence of their emotional disturbance. Used by 52 Chicago banks on their employes, the polygraph has turned up many a petty pilferer. Corroborative evidence based on the polygraph has been admitted four times in U. S. courts of law. Last year Governor Comstock of Michigan pardoned a convict who steadfastly denied the murder with which he was charged and successfully passed a polygraph test.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.