Just on the basis of the definitions I italicized, quite a few million thoughtful Americans would seem to come under the cloud ot being “too controversial.”
The company-client may be anxious to know whether a man is controversial because he is too leftish or “stateish.” If it is affiliated with the strongly conservative American Security Council, some insight may be gained by inquiring at the ASC, which maintains a vast library on suspect organizations and their present or onetime members. A few years ago it was reported to have information on 1,000,000 individuals, though its president (an ex-FBI man) now insists it does not maintain a filing system on “individuals as such.” As recently as 1961 its brochure said its files were a source of information for “the personnel screening programs” of defense contractors. And its files probably contain the various ready-reference check lists of names compiled by congressional committees and other official and unofficial investigation bodies looking for “lefties” or people assumed for some reason to be security risks.
2. The Use of Lie Detectors
Promoters of the lie detector for screening potential employees argue that the detector (or polygraph) can take up where regular investigative methods leave off. One leading user of the lie detector for pre-employment screening is Dale System, Inc., an investigative company that has headquarters in New York but advertises that its services are “available in every city and state.” The polygraph, it contends, can “inform you with more accuracy than a background investigation whether your prospective employee is what he claims.”
Several hundred firms have leaped into the lushly profitable field of offering their services in polygraphic people-probing.
Until a few years ago the lie detector was used primarily in police work, inscrutinizing people assigned to highly classified defense installations, in testing guards for Brinks, Inc. Today more than three quarters of all testing is on employees or prospective employees for private companies. An official of John E. Reid and Associates of Chicago asserts: “We have done work for every major corporation in the United States.” The significance to business of the lie detector is indicated by the fact that the Wall Street Journal featured at the top of its front page a report on the growing use of them.
The Reid official, not content with proselytizing U.S. firms, had just returned from introducing his company’s methods to businesses and industries in Australia and South Africa. An official of Employment Services, which administers lie-detector tests, recently estimated that 5000 Texas firms now require their employees to take periodic tests.
And the Dale System states that among others it works for W.T. Grant Co., Westinghouse Electric Corp., Howard Johnson, Mangel Stores Corporation, Grand Union Co.
A substantial number of firms now offer polygraph service at a variety of locations within the United States. For example, the giant William J. Burns International Detective Agency, with 15,000 employees, has entered the polygraph field and now has machines at many of its forty-one offices. It screens the personnel of clients at all levels either before or after employment. One official reports: “We have quadrupled our polygraph business in the past eighteen months.” Its big rival, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, also has entered the polygraph field. Another large outfit headquartered in New York with polygraph examiners in many cities now is Lincoln M. Zonn, Inc. It boasts membership in the American Institute of Management.
What is clear from all this is that each year tens of thousands of American citizens seeking ordinary jobs—and this includes prospective filling-station attendants—find that a condition of employment is that they must permit themselves to be strapped into a chair. And while in that chair they often must answer highly personal questions. One firm, hiring out the services of the lie detectors, reported that less than one per cent of the people asked to take the test refuse to do so. There is a ready explanation. Usually applicants for jobs at client companies must state when filling out the application form whether or not they will be willing to submit to polygraph tests as a condition of employment
The general theory behind the polygraph test is that people can’t lie without creating physiological reactions within the body. A standard lie-detection machine tries to catch this lie at three points: in sweating palms, in the way the subject breathes, and in the reactions of his pulse and blood pressure.
For screening job-seekers, the lie detector is widely promoted as being particularly effective in learning five things about the applicant:
1. Are there any latent tendencies toward dishonesty? The regular investigation plus the application form have presumably already established that the applicant has no known record of dishonesty. But the lie detector, it is hoped, will make the applicant confess any dishonesties that only he himself knows, or dishonesties that occurred before the events were permitted to become a part of any official record. One polygraph examiner explained to me that records of juvenile crimes are usually not available to an investigator because the courts try to protect the youngsters. He added: “But on the polygraph you get any undetected crime, and this will cover juvenile offenses.”
2. What are his real intentions in regard to job “permanency”? Will he have a roving eye for more attractive jobs? Will he take advantage of what he has learned here to move to a better job elsewhere? Printing Impressions quoted a businessman who defended his use of the polygraph on job applicants in these words: “Now, when I hire a bright young man, I have the detection service inquire if he’s planning to use me and my know-how as a one-year training course, or if he’s seriously considering a career with my organization.” Some of the polygraph testing services claim they can help a company reduce turnover by pre-employment screening. (People may hesitate to take a better job that comes along because they have vowed to the lie-detection examiner that they planned to stay.)
3. Does he have dangerous habits not uncovered in the screening process? Is he a secret lush, or does he gamble secretly, or if married does he have a girlfriend on the side, or does he have a lot of unrevealed debts?
4. In his application did he falsify anything? Recruiters of managers report that about one managerial aspirant in twelve will on an application give himself a college degree he actually did not receive. This presumably happens because personnel directors are becoming rigidly insistent upon college degrees even for jobs where a degree has little relevance.
5. Is he a homosexual, or does he have any tendencies in that direction? Many personnel directors seem to want to know about this whether or not it has any conceivable bearing on job performance. Others are more tolerant of applicants for jobs at low levels in the company hierarchy provided they are not obviously homosexual.
During the course of my research I had several opportunites to watch through one-way mirrors while men were subjected to lie-detector tests. In one unforgettable case the young man under examination had applied for a job as an on-the-road salesman for a client company handling quite ordinary consumer products. This test took place at a polygraph testing center of an organization that does a good deal of such pre-employment testing in several American cities. The organization has a number of examiners at the center where I was visiting. (The reason I have chosen not to identify the center will soon be evident.)
Apparently the room under view was a typical polygraph setup. It had a one-way mirror on the rear wall (behind which I sat) and a bug in the room so that observers such as myself in the darkened next room could both watch and hear the interrogation. We’ll call the lad who hoped to be a salesman for the client company Bill. He was slim, blond, handsome, and understandably nervous; perhaps this was why he was so talkative. We’ll call the examiner, a man about forty-five, Mr. Probe. He told me earlier that he had examined more than 3000 people. (He also told me the name of a well-known college from which he had been graduated. A colleague