I
AUTHENTICITY TESTS

2
Before Science: The Early History of Authenticity Testing

God knew the truth—and could be asked
Robert Bartlett,
Trial by Fire and Water

Appearances may deceive. People often have reasons to present themselves as something other than what they are. To foil the human tendency to dissimulate, techniques have been devised everywhere to bypass what people say and tap the underlying truth by other means. Foremost among these techniques are authenticity tests. Although qualifying tests are more prominent today, in preindustrial society, authenticity tests were the primary form of testing. This chapter, a historical review of authenticity tests, provides a context for the subsequent discussion of their contemporary usage. Moreover, analysis of their early forms allows further insights into the distinctive features of tests in general.

As already explained, tests are representational devices. The ultimate purpose of a test is to discover target information, of which the test result is a sign or representation. While deceptions may be artful, the truths beneath tend to be simple and stark. Therefore, the information sought in authenticity tests is usually

of an either/or form: genuine or impostor, honest or deceitful, faithful or heretic, innocent or guilty. Folklore provides a rich source for the variety of ingenious tests that might be used to answer such questions.

Identity

Tests frequently appear in folklore as means to determine someone's true identity: long-lost kinsman, heir to the throne, fugitive criminal, and so on. The testable sign of this target information may be some telltale capacity, as when a stranger is accepted as brother because he can accurately recount an event that occurred in childhood or when, as in an Indian tale (reminiscent of Latter Day Saint prophet Joseph Smith), a man's identity is certified because he is the only one who can read a magic book.^[1] The future King Arthur, Wagner's Sigmund, and Odysseus were similarly identified by the unique ability to withdraw a sword embedded in a stone or tree or to bend a certain bow. Conversely, the inability to accomplish a task may unmask an impostor, as when, again in a story from India, a false bride was undone when she was unable to finish the true bride's weaving.^[2]

Characteristics of the body are commonly used as signs in tests of identity. Fitting a slipper was the means of identifying Cinderella, and similar tests are found in many other folktales.^[3] In the Ozark tale, "The Soot on Somebody's Back," a pretty girl is repeatedly raped in the darkness, perhaps by one of her brothers. On the third night, she places a dish with soot and grease beside her bed and smears some of it on the back of her unknown assailant. The next day, at the invitation of the eldest (whom the sister had taken into her confidence), the six brothers go swimming, and one of them never comes back.^[4] Distinctive scars, birthmarks, and other permanent body characteristics frequently serve in folklore as the basis of tests for identifying kin, friend, or foe. A New Zealand Maori marked for vengeance was known to have overlapping front teeth. A suspect was tested by having a woman perform a lascivious dance in front of him, causing him to laugh. This enabled his enemies to see the telltale sign, and he was soon in their hands.^[5]

Tests of identity may pertain to class membership as well as to specific individuals. One test for vampires is to check for their lack of a reflection in a mirror, and Japanese folktales relate how it is sometimes possible to determine if certain individuals are mischievous foxes who have taken human form by looking for the tips of their tails peeping out from under their clothing. Strangers who claim to be of noble blood may be tested to determine if they possess the requisite sensitivity, as happens in the story of the princess and the pea. A male version describes a prince who said he thought he was sleeping on a heavy beam, which turned out to be a hair in his lower bedding.^[6]

Character

Many tests in folk literature are designed to ascertain if an individual merits trust or some great benefit, such as a king's daughter as bride and/or a kingdom (or half of one, anyway). Cleverness or judiciousness may be tested by asking candidates to solve riddles or answer questions; courage and ingenuity are signified by enduring frightening ordeals or fulfilling assignments that require perilous quests or impossible tasks. To determine his successor, William the Conqueror is said to have asked his sons what kind of bird they would prefer to be. The first said a hawk, because it resembles a knight; the second said an eagle, because all other birds fear it; and the third said a starling, because it makes its living without injury to anyone. The third was chosen.^[7] Cinderlad, the hero in the folktale, "The Princess on the Glass Hill," was tested on several occasions. First he demonstrated his courage by spending several nights in a barn despite terrifying manifestations that had driven his older brothers away, for which he was rewarded with three magic horses and suits of armor. Later those magical accoutrements enabled him to accomplish the impossible task of riding up a glass mountain and thus to claim the princess seated atop it as his bride, together with half her father's kingdom. Numerous European and Arab folk traditions include the tale of the peasant girl who helped her father win a dispute by solving riddles. Her cleverness caught the attention

of the king, who resolved to test her further by setting her to impossible tasks, which she succeeded in accomplishing. This sufficiently impressed the king that he married her and made her his trusted adviser.^[8]

Chastity, an issue on which folktales indicate that a woman's word is not invariably reliable, is a common subject for testing. Italian stories describe several devices. One is to lead a woman of questionable virtue to a place where there are two fountains. In the presence of a chaste woman, the fountain that produces clear water flows, but if she is unchaste, the other, muddy, fountain gushes forth. A litmus test of the issue was to set her before a picture that would change color depending on her condition.^[9]

Tests that may be classed under the general heading of loyalty are extremely common. The fidelity of spouses is a common subject of tests, the wife nearly always being the one whose behavior is scrutinized. The Bible establishes a ritual procedure whereby a wife suspected of adultery must drink consecrated water, which will cause her to miscarry if she has been unfaithful.^[10] The representational structure of the test is clear: the test result (whether or not she miscarries) differs from but signifies the target information (whether or not she has committed adultery). The British tale, "The Loving Wife," recounts how a husband pretends to be dead in order to test his wife. True to his suspicion, he had hardly been laid out before the wife entertained a young man in her bedroom. The "corpse" jumped up and attacked the pair with a stick.^[11]

Feigning dire circumstances also occurs in folktales when the fidelity of friends is to be tested. A ruse that usually succeeds in unmasking false friends is to inform them that all one's money is gone. Another test is to carry a slaughtered animal in a bloody sack to one's friends, telling them that one has killed a man and asking them to help get rid of the body.^[12]

As King Lear learned to his undoing, the true feelings of relatives may also be other than they appear. A test in such circumstances was devised when three sons disputed the inheritance from their father. The father's corpse was exhumed, and the sons were told that the one who could shoot an arrow closest to the heart would have the estate. The two older brothers let their

arrows fly, but the youngest could not bring himself to shoot. The estate was awarded to him, for he alone had demonstrated true love for his father.^[13] Similar is King Solomon's trenchant test for determining which of two claimants was a baby's true mother.^[14]

Biblical precedent (this time the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) is also visible in stories of how the obedience of servants might be tested. The master ushers the servant into the dining room and invites him to partake of anything of the sumptuous feast that is spread before him, save one covered dish. The master then leaves, and eventually, the servant, unable to contain his curiosity, raises the lid of the forbidden dish. A mouse jumps out and runs away. When the master returns and checks the dish, the absence of the mouse is taken as evidence of the servant's disobedience.^[15]

Honesty, Guilt, and Innocence

Tests of various sorts have always been used to help decide law cases, especially in the absence of more direct forms of evidence such as the testimony of unbiased eyewitnesses. Perhaps the simplest test in judicial procedures is the testimony of biased noneyewitnesses, or compurgation. Compurgators were character witnesses who swore not to the facts of the case but to the integrity of the person they supported, who was usually their kinsman.^[16] The number of supporters varied with the nature of the crime and the circumstances. In medieval Wales, a woman accused of infidelity could disprove the charge with seven compurgators, but fourteen were necessary to answer a second charge, and a third charge would be dismissed only on the oaths of fifty.^[17] To rebut a charge of murder by savage violence or poisoning, Welsh law demanded no less than 600 compurgators.^[18]

Compurgation qualifies as a test by our definition, in that it is an intentional and indirect effort by an organization (in this case, a court) to gain knowledge about an individual. It is not a very complex or instructive sort of test, however, because the gap between the information derived from the test and the target information is narrow indeed. For the Welshman accused of

murder by savage violence, for example, it is merely the difference between 600 of his relatives swearing that he would not do such a thing and the court's judgment that he did not do it. From our perspective, medieval legal tests become much more interesting when they move from seeking evidence from human witnesses to soliciting it from God. Divine judgment was sought primarily through trial by battle and by ordeal. As with compurgation—perhaps even more so—battle and ordeal were intended to be used only when more direct forms of evidence were lacking. In thirteenth-century Catalonia, for example, "if the accuser can prove his charge through authentic charters or through trustworthy witness, then that proof should be admitted and battle should not be adjudged . . . [for] men may have recourse to the judgment of God only when human proof fails."^[19] And the twelfth-century charter of Tournai specifies that an assault to which there are witnesses will be judged according to the accounts of the witnesses. If there are no witnesses and the assault occurred during the day, the accused may clear himself by a "sevenfold compurgation," but if it occurred at night without witnesses, the trial is to be by ordeal.^[20] As Bartlett explains, "In the case of an attack in the dark with no witnesses, there really might be the temptation to wonder who could know the truth of the matter. The ordeal offered a solution at just this point. God knew the truth—and could be asked."^[21] But since God could not be expected to answer in plain language, the question was posed by orchestrating a situation in which the either/or outcome could be read as a message from God.

Trial by Battle

Framing the test in the form of trial by battle (also known as the wager of battle) amounts to letting rival claimants fight, with the assumption that victory represents God's judgment in favor of the combatant who is in the right. The main biblical precedent is found in the story of David, the shepherd boy who challenged the huge, well-armed, and battle-experienced Philistine champion Goliath in full confidence that, with God's help, he would prevail.^[22]

Trial by battle was widespread in the early Christian era in Europe. In Ireland, "so general was it, indeed, that St. Patrick, in a council held in 456, was obliged to forbid his clergy from appealing to the sword, under a threat of expulsion from the church."^[23] "No legal procedure was more closely connected with feudalism, or embodied its spirit more thoroughly than the wager of battle."^[24] By the thirteenth century, however, French kings were attempting to abolish it as they strove to centralize power in their own hands and courts, while nobles clamored to retain it as a means of maintaining their privileges and independence vis-à-vis the crown.^[25] Eventually, the monarchy prevailed and the wager of battle dwindled, at different rates in different places, until by the fifteenth century, it was an oddity.^[26]

English law adopted trial by battle late (it was introduced by William the Conqueror) and was also late in abolishing it. One of the more common circumstances in which it might occur was in connection with the "appeal of death." This provision of English law held that within a year and a day after an individual had been acquitted of murder in a jury trial, the widow or next of kin of the deceased individual might demand a second trial. As a private suit, this second trial normally took the form of trial by battle. In 1774, an effort was made in the House of Commons to terminate the right of appeal of death in the colony of Massachusetts Bay (as part of a bill to punish rebellious colonists for the Boston Tea Party). This occasioned considerable protest that the erosion of fundamental rights, beginning in America, might soon come home to England itself, and the offending provision was struck before the bill could be passed. In 1818, more than two and a half centuries after trial by battle had ended in France, an Englishman named Thornton was acquitted of murdering a girl. Her brother claimed the appeal of death, and Thornton maintained his innocence and readiness to prove it by combat. The court certified the validity of the proceedings, and a trial by battle was scheduled. A crowd gathered, and the duel was precluded only by the failure of Thornton's challenger to show up. It was only the following year, 1819, that the right of appeal of death was finally abolished in England, and it may have been abolished as late as 1837 in South Carolina.^[27]

When in full flower, wager by battle spilled well beyond combat between the principals to a controversy. It was common for a suitor to accuse one of the witnesses against him of perjury and demand to have the truth of the matter revealed by battle between them. In thirteenth-century England, a litigant might even challenge his own witness to battle if the latter's testimony was not to his liking. And in both English and French courts of that time, the loser of the case might appeal the verdict by challenging the judge.^[28]

It was generally considered inappropriate for women, the physically disabled, and ecclesiastics to engage in combat personally, so they were usually represented in trial by battle by champions. For example,

When Gundeberga, the Frankish wife of the Lombard king Charoald (626–636), was accused of treason, a deputation from her relatives suggested, "Order the man who brought this charge to arm himself and let another man of Queen Gundeberga's party proceed to single combat with him. By the conflict of these two the judgement of God will be made known, whether Gundeberga is innocent or guilty of this charge."^[29]

Although in principle they should be represented by champions, in actuality, priests and monks were not always of pacific personality, and many accounts tell of churchmen avidly pursuing their interests by means of the wager of battle.^[30] Women too might occasionally represent themselves in combat. German law lay down certain procedures to be followed when a woman faced a male opponent:

The chances between such unequal adversaries were adjusted by burying the man to his waist, tying his left hand behind his back, and arming him only with a mace, while his fair opponent had the free use of her limbs and was provided with a heavy stone securely fastened in a piece of stuff.^[31]

One might puzzle over such niceties. After all, David's encounter with Goliath proved that the support of the Lord is sufficient to

overcome any disadvantage. Nevertheless, the men of the Middle Ages went to great lengths to ensure that when they placed their fate in God's hands, the odds as calculated in this world were not against them. Doubtless this was because the logic of trial by battle did not conform fully to the precedent of David and Goliath, where the human odds were so heavily on one side that divine intervention was credible only if it favored the other. One could scarcely attribute a victory by Goliath, that is to say, to an act of God. Trial by battle, however, aimed to create a circumstance rather like casting lots (a procedure that was also used in medieval trials and disputes), wherein the odds were so even that no human prediction of the outcome was possible. Then the result, regardless of the side it favored, could be attributed to God's intervention.^[32]

Thirteenth-century English law made fine distinctions as to what disabilities would excuse an individual from trial by battle. The loss of molar teeth was not adequate for disqualification but the lack of incisors was, for the latter were held to be important weapons.^[33] If the adversaries were unevenly matched, measures might be taken prior to the battle to equalize them. "Thus the knight who demanded that his antagonist should undergo the destruction of an eye to equalize the loss of his own . . . was strictly within the privileges accorded him by law."^[34]

These refinements make Welsh rules pertaining to twins appear all the more remarkable. Under Welsh law, twins were considered to be a single person; they received, for example, but a single share of the family inheritance. But the legal status that spelled disadvantage in one arena worked an advantage in another, for if a twin became involved in wager by battle, he and his brother would take the field as one man.^[35]

The scruples about equal odds operated only between social equals; when adversaries of different rank met in trial by battle, it was often a different story. If noble met commoner in judicial combat in France, the noble might enjoy the right of fighting on horseback with knightly weapons while the commoner would meet him on foot, armed with shield and staff. Such would be the case, at any rate, if the commoner had the audacity to be the challenger; if the noble condescended to challenge the commoner

they would meet on equal terms.^[36] While interclass duels did occur on occasion, for the most part, the wager of battle was very much the province of the aristocracy. In thirteenth-century Germany, a superior need not deign to fight anyone below his social station. A Jew could not decline the challenge of a Christian, but presumably the Christian was immune from challenge by a Jew.^[37] More fundamentally, in a sharply stratified social system consisting of an armed nobility and an unarmed peasantry, the lower stratum of society lacked the training and, it was doubtless thought, the fineness of mind and sense of honor to engage meaningfully in the wager of battle. Another sort of test was deemed to be more appropriate to judicial needs pertaining to the lower classes: the ordeal.^[38]

Trial by Ordeal

Ordeals of various forms are found all over the world. In medieval Europe, the three most popular were the ordeals of hot and cold water and of hot iron. The oldest of these—of Frankish origin and the only form to be mentioned from the earliest reference to trial by ordeal in about A.D. 500 until about 800—is hot water. The procedure required that the individual reach into a boiling caldron to retrieve some object, normally a ring or a stone.^[39] During the reign of Charlemagne, 768–814, several other forms of ordeal came into being, and for the next four centuries, ordeal was a major judicial instrument. The ordeal of cold water called for the individual to be cast into a stream or pond. The ordeal of hot iron initially required the person to walk over nine red-hot plowshares; somewhat later, carrying a red-hot iron for three paces increased in popularity.^[40]

As with trial by battle, the ordeal was a test that established conditions where, in the absence of witnesses or other sufficient human evidence, the decision of innocence or guilt was referred to God. In the case of cold water, God would signify his judgment by causing the innocent to sink and the guilty to float. This was thought to be so because water, a pure substance, rejects evil. Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims (845–882) and major advocate for the ordeal, explained that the guilty party "is unable to sink into the waters over which the voice of the majesty of the Lord has

thundered, because the pure nature of water does not receive a human nature which has been cleansed of all deceit by the water of baptism but has subsequently been reinfected by lies."^[41] In the ordeals of hot water and hot iron, the innocent emerge unharmed, while the guilty suffer grievously. The rationale for this is, variously, that with the help of God, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed'nego walked unscathed through Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace,^[42] that the burning bush through which God communicated with Moses was not consumed by the flames,^[43] that Lot was not harmed by the fire that destroyed Sodom,^[44] that the faithful will not be harmed by the flames on judgment day, and that fire seeks and burns out wickedness, to which it has a natural antipathy.^[45]

Precisely what qualified as not being harmed by the hot water or hot iron is not, however, entirely clear. The suspect's hand was bandaged after carrying the hot iron and was inspected three days later. Bartlett states that if the hand "was 'clean'—that is, healing without suppuration or discoloration—he was innocent or vindicated; if the wound was unclean, he was guilty."^[46] This is a clear indication that the innocent were anticipated to be burned. On the very next page, however, he refers to expectations that innocent suspects would not be burned at all by hot iron or hot water. Perhaps these matters varied with time and place and with the prejudices of those who officiated at the ordeal.

Most important, ordeals by their very design traded in miracles, and miracles tend to become increasingly miraculous with time and retelling. Hence the most memorable accounts of ordeals seldom concern themselves with nuances in how well a wound is healing. A favorite motif is the queen who, accused of adultery, vindicates herself by the ordeal. A prototype is the case of the barren Queen Teutberga of Lotharingia. In 858, King Lothar, her husband, wished to marry his mistress and legitimize their children in order to have an heir to his throne, so he accused Teutberga of a variety of sexual crimes. Her innocence was proven by the ordeal of hot water, undergone on her behalf, however, by one of her retainers.^[47] The embellishment of the theme is apparent in the

account of the ordeal undergone by Queen Emma, Edward the Confessor's mother, [which] is certainly fictional. . . . Emma was

accused by the villain of the piece, Robert of Jumieges, the Norman archbishop of Canterbury, of adultery with a bishop (a not uncommon conjunction). The queen offered to undergo the ordeal of hot iron; Robert of Jumieges unwillingly agreed, but only if he could specify particularly rigorous conditions: "let the illfamed woman walk nine paces, with bare feet, on nine red-hot ploughshares—four to clear herself, five to clear the bishop. If she falters, if she does not press one of the ploughshares fully with her feet, if she is harmed the one least bit, then let her be judged a fornicator." The queen, resting her hopes on her innocence and on the help of St Swithun, walked over the ploughshares "and did not see the fire nor feel the burning." In gratitude she gave to St Swithun nine manors, one for each ploughshare, and the bishop accused with her did likewise.^[48]

Events that brought down the guilty were no less miraculous than those that uplifted the innocent. Brother France Maria Guazzo recounts the sad tale of a man convicted of heresy by the ordeal of hot iron in Strasbourg. While he was being conveyed to the stake to be executed, he was exhorted to confess his sin and repent, so that he might not suffer the eternal fire of Gehenna. He did so, and immediately his hand was healed. When the judge presiding at the execution saw no trace of a burn on the hand, he concluded that the man must be innocent and released him. Then the complications began:

This man had a wife not far from the city, who had heard nothing of what we have just told. When he came to her rejoicing, and saying: "Blessed be God, who has today delivered me from the death of my body and my soul!" and told her how it had been, she answered: "What have you done, most unhappy one, what have you done? Have you recanted your true and holy faith because of a moment's pain? It would have been better for you if your body could have been burned a hundred times, than that you should once draw back from the true faith." Alas! who is not seduced by the voice of the serpent? Forgetting the great goodness of God to him, forgetting that undoubted miracle, he listened to his wife's advice and again embraced his former heresy. But God did not forget to avenge Himself for so great ingratitude, and wounded the hand of each of them. The burn re-appeared upon the heretic's

hand, and since his wife was the cause of his returning to his error she was made a partaker in the backslider's pain. The burn was so severe that it penetrated to the bones of their hands: and because they dared not in the town give vent to the cries which the pain wrung from them, they fled to a neighbouring wood where they howled like wolves. What need I say more? They were taken and led back to the city and together cast upon the fire which was not yet quite extinguished, and were burned to ashes. What, I ask, is the truth of the matter? Does the flame follow heresy, even as a shadow follows the body?^[49]

Although, in general, the ordeal was considered to be appropriate to lower classes while the nobility had more frequent recourse to compurgation and trial by battle, certain rank and other distinctions may also be drawn between types of ordeals. If a person of quality was to be tried by ordeal, hot iron was the means of choice, hot water and cold water being suitable for plebeians.^[50] Another distinction, this time between hot iron and cold water, had to do with speed of result. Trial by hot iron demanded a three-day waiting period before the verdict could be determined by the condition of the bandaged hand, while the result of the cold water ordeal was immediate: the individual either sank or floated. There was, therefore,

no neutral period of waiting in which crowds would disperse and emotions calm, and the cold water trial of heretics was thus particularly susceptible to crowd influence and mob justice. At Soissons in 1114, for instance, the condemned heretics were lynched by the crowd while the bishop's court was still discussing the sentence.^[51]

One might be tempted to imagine that trial by ordeal waned as the European mind lost its confidence in miracles in the face of advancing rationalism and naturalism. Such, however, was far from the case. The heyday of the ordeal came to a close in the twelfth century, long before such new modes of thinking had taken root.^[52] Ordeal was done in not by protoscientists who doubted miracles but by scholastic theologians who accepted them implicitly. Their main argument (which applied to trial by

battle as well as to trial by ordeal) was that these techniques tempted God. They set up situations that invited—even presumed to guarantee—a miracle to be performed by God in the interest of justice. But, the scholastics argued, a miracle is a free act of God; it may or may not occur for God's own good reasons. Therefore, ordeal and combat are unreliable as judicial tests, and those who promote them are impious in their belief that human connivances can force the hand of God. Such arguments had been advanced, even by popes, as early as the ninth century. However, they had effect only as the centralized church grew in power and influence. By the early thirteenth century, that process had reached the point that an official condemnation of trial by ordeal by the Lateran Council of 1215, under the papacy of Innocent III, was sufficient to bring the practice essentially to an end.^[53]

Tests of Witches

Well after its suppression in the thirteenth century, trial by ordeal reemerged in the great persecutions of witches in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. In many ways, witchcraft was the ideal crime for detection by ordeal: its secrecy made more empirical forms of evidence hard to come by, while its alliance with the devil made it particularly loathsome to everything pure and to God, who might therefore be expected to be more than a little willing to signal the truth through the outcome of the ordeal. In 1594, Jacob Rickius, a judge from Bonn, addressed the problems of evidence in witchcraft trials and the importance of the ordeal. He wrote to the effect that

the offense is so difficult of proof that there is no other certain evidence than the ordeal; that without it we should be destitute of absolute proof, which would be an admission of the superiority of the Devil over God, and that anything would be preferable to such a conclusion.^[54]

The most popular ordeal for witches in this period was cold water, in the procedure known as "swimming a witch" (fig. 1). As the famous witch-hunter, Matthew Hopkins, practiced it in sev-

Figure 1.
The witch swims! Illustration from
Montague Summers's The Discovery
of Witches: A Study of Master Mat-
thew Hopkins. Commonly Call'd
Witch Finder Generall . Published
by Cayme Press, London, 1928.

enteenth-century England, the suspect would be tied, right thumb to left big toe and left thumb to right big toe, and then lowered into the water by means of a rope tied around the waist. The test was repeated three times, and if the individual floated, it was proof of witchcraft.^[55] Rationales offered for swimming witches in this period stressed the witch's satanic connections. For example,

In 1583, a certain Scribonius, on a visit to Lemgow [Lemgo, in northern Germany], saw three unfortunates burnt as witches, and three other women, the same day, exposed to the ordeal on the accusation of those executed. He describes them as stripped naked, hands and feet bound together, right to left, and then cast upon the river, where they floated like logs of wood. Profoundly impressed with the miracle, in a letter to the magistrates of Lemgow he ex-

presses his warm approbation of the proceeding, and endeavors to explain its rationale, and to defend it against unbelievers. Sorcerers, from their intercourse with Satan, partake of his nature; he resides within them, and their human attributes become altered to his; he is an imponderable spirit of air, and therefore they likewise become lighter than water.^[56]

Curiously, in southwest Germany of the 1640s, the contrary notion, that the innocent would float and the guilty sink, prevailed. Before using it in earnest, the Bavarian army resolved to test the test and so offered twelve thalers to any innocent citizen who would volunteer to undergo it. A man came forward and validated the test by floating on three trials. Then the army swam a number of suspected witches (soldiers' wives, for the most part) and executed several of those who sank.^[57]

Swimming witches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries never commanded the official legitimacy that the ordeal had enjoyed during the medieval period. It was done primarily by peasants and viewed scornfully by the educated elite.^[58] Even some of the most ardent witch-hunters viewed the ordeal with skepticism. Dominicans Kraemer and Sprenger, authors of the famous fifteenth-century manual on witchcraft, Malleus Maleficarum , surmised that witches might come through the ordeal of hot iron unscathed because the devil would intervene to protect them. They even opined that persons who offered to undergo trial by ordeal should for that very reason be suspected all the more of being witches.^[59]

Another test for witches was to search for certain telltale marks on their bodies, which might have been placed there by the devil during their initiation ceremony.^[60] They were often red or blue in color and might take the form of the footprint of a hare, toad, dog, spider, and so on. A distinctive feature of devil's marks was that they do not bleed and are impervious to pain. Witch-hunters would arm themselves with long needles for pricking suspicious marks to determine if they could draw forth blood or a reaction of pain.^[61]

Other bodily features such as warts, boils, and even hemorrhoids or the clitoris were sometimes identified as special marks

of the devil. These were taken to be teats at which the devil himself or imps would suck blood from the witch. (Imps were spirit familiars that the witch would send out to do mischief.) Such teats tended to be found on the eyelids, armpits, lips, shoulder, or posterior of men and on the breasts or genitals of women. The bodies of suspects were minutely examined for these unnatural teats, and candidate growths were probed and jabbed with needles to ascertain if they would bleed or produce pain.^[62] John Taylor reports how in colonial America the body of executed witch Goodwife Knapp was examined for devil's marks after it was taken down from the scaffold.^[63] An argument broke out among several women concerning whether certain appendages (of the genitals, certainly) were witches' teats. One of the women claimed that they were not, on the grounds that she had them herself. The other women rebuked her, and (perhaps realizing the possible consequences of what she had been saying) she finally yielded.^[64]

Goodwife Knapp was but one of many suspected witches subjected to postmortem examinations. Although this seems not to have been the case in the West, some cultures contain the belief that individuals might be witches without being aware of it. The sure test to identify them is autopsy. Among the Azande of the Sudan, after death, the intestines of a suspected witch would be removed and carefully examined for witchcraft substance: a blackish, oval swelling. If found, that constituted proof that the deceased was indeed a witch.^[65] The Kaluli of Papua New Guinea believe that virtually all deaths are caused by witchcraft. In vengeance, an individual suspected of being the witch responsible for a death might be killed in a surprise nocturnal raid on his longhouse. The body would be dragged outside, opened, and an individual holding a position neutral between the relatives of the suspected witch and his killers would examine the condition of the heart. If it was firm and dark in color, the individual was not a witch, but a yellowish heart soft in texture identified the person as a witch.^[66] These testing procedures by autopsy have a number of factors in common with trial by ordeal. They share the assumption that a determinate, either/or condition actually exists: the individual in question either is or is not a witch. In each case, the avowed purpose of the test is to ascertain the true answer to

that question. A test, with its indirect or representational mode of knowing, is necessary because direct knowledge of the matter is impossible. In the European case, this stems from the inability to look at the contents of people's hearts (figuratively speaking) and minds, while for the Kaluli, a test is required because one cannot look at the hearts (literally speaking) of the living. One procedural difference is whether the victim is killed before the test (as the Kaluli do) or after it (the European way).

Torture

After the suppression of trial by ordeal in the thirteenth century, torture became an important means of determining innocence or guilt in European courts.^[67] As with ordeal and combat, torture was used particularly for those "invisible" crimes for which witnesses or other tangible evidence tended to be lacking: adultery, heresy, witchcraft, and so on.^[68] Torture, however, relied for its result directly on the suspect rather than on asking God to produce a miracle. It was applied with great alacrity in the persecution of witches during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. For one thing, it was believed that witches could be induced to remove their spells by beating or working other violence on them. It was necessary to pursue this tactic with diligence, however, because a witch would probably persist in the denial of being the author of the spell in question. If one hurt them badly enough, they would usually confess and undo their mischief.^[69]

Torture was also used as a means of releasing the witch from bondage to the devil. The limitations that normally constrained torture were often disregarded in the case of suspected witches because the devil was believed either to prevent the witch from feeling the pain or at least to encourage the witch to endure it. The ultimate breakdown and confession was conceived as the witch being finally wrenched from the power of the devil and liberated to speak the truth.^[70]

It was an impossible situation for the victim, who was considered either to be an unrepentant witch, in which case torture continued and intensified, or a penitent witch, in which case

execution followed shortly. Johannes Junius, burgomaster of Bamberg, was caught in this snare in 1628:

Junius had been accused of witchcraft and tortured until he confessed. His letter, written in a hand shaky from his sufferings, and smuggled from prison to his daughter, begins, "Many hundred thousand good nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or else be tortured until he invents something out of his head."^[71]

Many people of the time were blinded to such (to us) obvious injustice by the conviction that confession was a blessed victory for everyone concerned, including the witch, because the grip of the Evil One on a human soul had been broken. As Guazzo put it, rapturously,

The Divine Shepherd in His unspeakable mercy and loving kindness again and again recalls to the fold His sheep that have been carried away by the wolf and again He feeds them in the celestial pastures; and so when witches have been cast into prison and have confessed their sins, not grudgingly and under the stress of torture, but willingly and with penitential joy, it may well be said that they obtain the opportunity to avert so great and eternal a calamity from themselves at the small expense of their most wretched lives.^[72]

Torture differs from ordeal because, as a direct means of wringing confession out of a suffering prisoner, torture is not a test. Probably many pitiable souls, quailing before the impending agony of the boiling caldron or the hot iron, were also moved to confess. But such fear was in principle only a by-product of the ordeal; the expectation was that the possibility of pain should be a matter of no consequence to the faithful. The point of the ordeal was to read the ability of the suspect to go through with it, or the condition of wounds resulting from it, as a sign of something else: God's pronouncement of the individual's innocence or guilt. Ordeal was in that sense an indirect means of acquiring knowledge,

and thus it satisfies one of the defining features of a test. Torture, however, applied pain not as an appeal to God or in quest of a sign of anything. It was simply a technique of raising the stakes to the point that suspects—particularly slaves and lower-class people, whose word was not considered to be very reliable—would finally abandon their lies and reveal the truth. Therefore, torture is no test because, for all its paraphernalia and horror, it is merely a form of the direct means of gaining information by getting someone who knows to reveal it.

Analysis

We have defined a test as a representational technique applied by an agency to an individual with the intention of gathering information. Unpacking that definition with respect to tests from preindustrial society will clarify some of the fundamental elements of the logic of testing and will indicate certain consequences of testing—both intended and unintended—that will reappear in various guises in later chapters.

A Test is a Representational Technique . . .

Test results are important not in themselves but as indicators of some other, "target" information. It is therefore essential in the analysis or critique of any test to know how representation operates in it. In considering cases of representation, it is convenient to distinguish between the "signifier" and the "signified." In testing, the signifier is the test result, while the signified is the target information—what the test is designed to reveal. So in one test for witchcraft, the teats found on a suspect's body are signifiers, and the signified is the (presumed) fact that the individual is a witch.

Signifiers may be related to signifieds in different ways. Two of the most important ones are "metaphor" and "metonymy." Metaphor is the relation of resemblance or replaceability. The sign of the cross that a Roman Catholic traces on the forehead and torso resembles the shape of the cross on which Jesus was crucified and

is therefore a metaphoric signifier of it. Occasionally, in circumstances where the religion of the Dinka (a tribe of the Sudan) calls for the sacrifice of an ox and one is not available, a cucumber will be substituted with the promise that a beast will be sacrificed as soon as possible.^[73] Although the cucumber bears no resemblance to an ox, it nevertheless signifies it metaphorically because it replaces or "stands in" for the ox.

Metonymy refers to the relationship of contiguity, or co-occurrence. Cause and effect, given their co-occurrence, constitute one type of metonymy. "Where there's smoke, there's fire" is a case in point, the effect (smoke) being a metonymic signifier of the cause (fire). Metonymy may also be noncausal. For example, a neon sign depicting a martini glass signifies a cocktail lounge by metonymy, because that vessel is (in our society) conventionally found in cocktail lounges.^[74]

Tests rely on both metaphor and metonymy, and examples of each are visible in the tests that have been discussed above. Teats and devil's marks are metonymic signifiers of witches: such appendages and marks were thought to be found in association with witches, in the same way (logically at least) as martini glasses are found in association with cocktail lounges. The test in the story of the princess and the pea likewise relies on metonymy. It is assumed that a property invariably found in association with princesses is inordinate sensitivity. A test is conducted to determine whether a particular young woman has that property; if so, she must be a princess. Finally, metonymy underpins the logic of ordeal and trial by battle. God favors the righteous, the truthful, and the innocent; he abandons the heretic, the false, and the guilty. Therefore, victory in trial by battle, absence of pain or wounds in the ordeals of hot iron and hot water, and sinking in the ordeal of cold water metonymically accompany—are associated with—truth and innocence, while the opposite results are metonymic signifiers of dishonesty and guilt.

Some examples of trial by battle and ordeal also contain metaphor. Occasionally the test is undergone by a proxy, a champion for a woman or an infirm man in trial by battle or a servant who undergoes the ordeal in place of the accused (as happened when Queen Teutberga was tried for sexual misconduct). The proxy is

a metaphoric representation or signifier of the principal in the case. In its logic, if not in all particulars, the situation is similar to the Dinka sacrifice of a cucumber as a stand-in for an ox.

Another way that metaphor operates in testing is that the subject's behavior in the test is taken to be similar to—and therefore representative of—that person's behavior in many other situations. Examples are the ersatz mother who accepted Solomon's proposal to cut a disputed infant in half, the young man who could not bring himself to shoot arrows at the heart of his father's corpse, and the servant who opened the forbidden dish. In each, the assumption is that the subject will behave in the future (or has behaved in the past) in a manner similar to the behavior demonstrated in the test. This assumption underwrites the extension of the test result to the broader conclusion as to whether the subject is a true mother, a loving son, or an obedient servant. The test, that is to say, stands as a metaphoric signifier of the subject's more general conduct or character. This type of logic may be the most common to be found in all testing.

Nearly all tests achieve their representational character by the principles of metaphor or metonymy. Which of them is in play, and how, will be one topic of analysis for the various, more modern tests that will be discussed in later chapters. For the moment, it is crucial to recognize that metaphor and metonymy are not part of the nature of things but are rooted in culture. No intrinsic, invariable connection exists, for example, between the signifier "Omaha" and any particular signified. In Siouan languages, it refers to a tribe; in contemporary American English, it most commonly signifies a Midwestern city (but also a Siouan tribe and a beach in Normandy); and in Tahitian, it means "to urinate." A cucumber may stand in metaphorically for an ox, or a champion for a damsel, only because the conventions of the time and place provide for it. Similarly, cultural conventions alone certify that where there are teats there are witches, that victory in combat signals the favor of God, and that a loving son cannot bear to shoot arrows at the corpse of his father.^[75]

This point takes on great significance when we remember that the ostensible purpose of testing, preindustrial and since, is to reveal the truth about some purely objective, independently ex-

isting state of affairs. But what has just been said proves that this cannot be the case. Because representation is an essential component of any test, and because what counts as representation is a matter of social convention, tests provide information about reality as construed by culture . On the basis of certain bodily appendages or blackish swellings on the intestines, empirical evidence visible to anyone, fifteenth-century Europeans and African Azande made unequivocal decisions about who was a witch and who was not. But it does not follow that there objectively were witches in Europe of that time or in Zandeland. That conclusion depends on what the evidence means or signifies, and that is a product of the cultural understandings prevailing at a particular time and place. This is the nature of all testing, including the tests of honesty, vocational interests, and intelligence that prevail in contemporary America. No less than the Kaluli determination that a person is or is not a witch on the basis of the color and texture of the heart, these too rely on the cultural construal of what certain facts mean.

. . . Applied by an Agency to an Individual. . .

The design of the test and its administration are in hands other than those of the test taker. They decide if the circumstances merit a test, they oversee its application, they interpret its results, they determine what action (reward, punishment, whatever) is to be taken. It is, very simply, a matter of power.

The control of the situation by someone other than the subject of the test is obvious in the case of the master who told his servant to eat of anything spread on the feasting table save for one covered dish, or in the story of the princess and the pea. In these examples, the subject is not even aware that a test is being conducted. Someone else unilaterally establishes the conditions of the test, observes the subject in those conditions, and reaches a conclusion. The power differential is still more vivid and overwhelming in judicial tests. They demand the accused ones to gather compurgators to testify to their innocence, to fight or find a champion, to thrust arms into boiling water, to carry red-hot iron in the hands or walk on it with bare feet. And through all the prayer and

pleading, protesting, promising, and pain, they dispassionately watch, inspect, evaluate, and decide. They swarm over the body of a suspected witch, meticulously inspecting it for birthmarks, boils, and sundry appendages (genital and otherwise), pinching and probing with fingers, pricking with needles. They strip the person naked, tie toes to thumbs, cast the wretch into the water, and clinically calculate the buoyancy while the suspect suffers the agony of near-drowning.

It does not end here. Those accused of evildoing are reduced to the point not only of enduring the ordeal but even of asking for it, perceiving it to be the only avenue available to prove their innocence. And when they do, that indispensable fifteenth-century guidebook to witch-hunters, the Malleus Maleficarum , cautions in an exquisitely heartless twist that those who offer to undergo ordeal to clear themselves probably do so out of confidence that the devil will bring them through successfully. Therefore, they should be all the more suspected of witchcraft.^[76] And finally, those who are disfigured by ordeal, broken by torture, and sentenced to burning at the stake are expected to be grateful to their inquisitors and tormentors for having set them free from the grip of evil and having restored their candidacy for God's saving grace at the negligible price of their miserable lives.

Who are the "they" that exercise such power over those unfortunate enough to be accused of criminal activities? It is not really the executioners, torturers, and witch-hunters, for these are only agents. The same, ultimately, may be said of the accusers who begin the process and the judges who preside over the end of it, pronouncing the sentence. As with the "they" who control prices, decree the rate of unemployment, set the need for higher taxes, and establish vital national interests in today's world, the "they" who exerted power over the individual by means of the tests of preindustrial society are much greater, diffuse, and pervasive than any human individual or even any group. It is ultimately the total sociocultural system that dominates, inexorably expressing itself and evolving by working out the implications of its structure and fundamental principles.

However, as Foucault has so perceptively noted, the power exercised by ordeal, torture, and public execution was limited.^[77]

The measure of power is not how much pain and suffering it can produce but how efficiently it can achieve its ends. Witchhunting, for example, died out in Europe after the middle of the seventeenth century because developments in education, preaching, and pastoral care among the common people proved to be a more effective (if less dramatic) means of establishing religious discipline and containing heresy than burning witches.^[78] Judged by the results, power applied through the boiling caldron, the hot iron, the torture chamber, and the executioner's scaffold was comparatively feeble. It has since been replaced with subtler but more pervasive and effective expressions of power. Among these, as will become apparent, are the tests of industrial and postindustrial society.

. . . with the Intention of Gathering Information

The authenticity tests of preindustrial society are aimed at getting at the truth of matters such as a person's identity, fidelity, feelings, innocence, or guilt. They rest on the assumptions that a true or authentic state of affairs does exist and that testing is a means of ascertaining what that truth is when it is concealed from direct observation. This holds for contemporary tests as much as for those of preindustrial society.

These assumptions are mistaken. Because of their representational quality, tests measure truth as culturally construed rather than as independently existing. This has already been demonstrated. But there is more. By their very existence, tests modify or even create that which they purport to measure. Consider first the tests of royal blood in the tales of the princess and the pea and the prince who was unable to sleep because a hair buried in his bedding felt to him like a large beam.^[79] The logic of these tests, as presented in the stories, begins with the assumption that people of royal blood have inordinately fine sensitivities. This assumption validates the following test situation: if this stranger is of royal blood, then she or he will be able to perceive something as insignificant as a pea or a hair in the bedding. What is being tested is the status of a specific individ-

ual, on the basis of a general proposition about a class of people. But in the effect of their telling, the logic of testing in these stories runs in the opposite direction. It conveys the message that because this prince or that princess was disturbed by a hair or a pea concealed in the bedding, persons of royal blood must have inordinate sensitivities. That is, a general proposition about a class of people is being promulgated on the basis of stories about the experience of some individuals of that class. Therefore, these tests in folklore help create the circumstance they purport to measure: they are among the devices that ingrain in people's minds the belief that aristocrats are by their nature refined and superior to commoners.^[80]

These tests with peas and hairs are so fanciful that they certainly never actually took place, although that does not detract from their indoctrinating function. A test from folklore that could conceivably occur with the reported result is the master who tested his servant's obedience by inviting him to partake of any dish in a sumptuous feast save one covered dish, which contained a mouse that would escape if the lid were lifted. This test also fabricates what it purports to measure. Imagine that the test were actually conducted. It is entirely possible that an utterly loyal and obedient servant would raise the lid, not with any intention of taking what is inside but simply out of curiosity to see what it is. Nonetheless, he is dismissed as disobedient, and, insofar as his reputation is affected by the episode, he is treated accordingly by others. Hence the test literally made him, at least in the eyes of the world, into something that he had not been prior to it.

This test has another, more general fabricating capacity that has nothing to do with actually applying it. As with the princess and the pea or the prince and the hair, this story conveys a message. This time it is a message about the proper relation between master and servant. The good servant, it states, is blindly obedient to any command of the master, no matter how irrational, inconsequential, or unjust it may appear. Moreover, the message continues, the servant who deviates from this ideal is liable to summary punishment. In this way, the story about the test perpetuates the power of the dominant class.^[81]

The capacity of tests to fabricate that which they are presumed to measure works not only through folktales about tests but also—probably more so—through tests actually conducted. Consider tests for witchcraft. The Kaluli of Papua New Guinea really would remove and examine the heart of an individual killed on the suspicion of witchcraft, and if it was soft in texture and yellowish in color (as some hearts really are), they took that as physical evidence that the individual was indeed a witch. In this way, the test bolstered and verified the proposition that there are witches, a proposition that, in our time and place, is false. In precisely the same way, Europeans a few centuries ago really did tie unfortunates' toes and thumbs together and cast them in the water to observe whether they would sink or float. The outcome in the case of the more buoyant was taken as proof that the particular individual was a witch. And, of course, nothing could stand as better evidence for the general proposition that witches exist than proof that certain individuals are witches. Again, the reversal of logic is apparent. Ostensibly, the testing situation moves deductively from general to specific: there are witches, they have certain properties, this individual has those properties, therefore this individual is a witch. But so far as the proclamation of a message is concerned, the logic moves in the reverse, inductive direction: this individual has certain properties, those properties are characteristic of witches, therefore this individual is a witch, therefore witches exist. As with the capacity of stories such as the princess and the pea to promote attitudes about intrinsic differences between the classes, this is another example of the capacity of testing to create what it purports to measure.

It was, of course, too late in the case of the proven Kaluli witch, but in Europe, those who had tested positive as witches were invited to discourse on their black arts, to describe their intercourse with Satan, imps, and other denizens of evil, and to implicate others who had joined in witches' rides and participated with them in the obscene sabbat. Some of the confessions were remarkably detailed and vivid. Matthew Hopkins, the seventeenth-century English witch-hunter, records the revelations of a witch from Maningtree, in Essex, and even claims to have been an eyewitness to certain events (see fig. 2).

Figure 2.
Frontispiece from Matthew Hopkins's The Discovery of Witches .

So upon command from the Justice they were to keep her from sleep two or three nights, expecting in that time to see her familiars , which the fourth night she called in by their severall names, and told them what shapes, a quarter of an houre before they came in, there being ten of us in the roome; the first she called was

1. Holt , who came in like a white kitling.

2. Jarmara , who came in like a fat Spaniel without any legs at all, she said she kept him fat, for she clapt her hand on her belly, and said he suckt good blood from her body.

3. Vinegar Tom , who was like a long-legg'd Greyhound, with an head like an Oxe, with a long taile and broad eyes, who when this discoverer spoke to, and bade him goe to the place provided for him and his Angels, immediately transformed himselfe into the shape of a child of foure yeeres old without a head, and gave halfe a dozen turnes about the house, and vanished at the doore.

4. Sack and Sugar , like a black Rabbet.

5. Newes , like a Polcat. All these vanished away in a little time. Immediately after this Witch confessed severall other Witches, from whom she had her Imps , and named to divers women where their marks were, the number of their Marks , and Imps , and Imps names, as Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peckin the Crown, Grizzel, Greedigut etc.^[82]

Hopkins would swim accused witches, search, probe, and prick them for teats and devil's marks, prevent them from sitting down or sleeping, and force them to walk incessantly as part of his confession-provoking procedures.^[83] He went on, curiously, to deny the use of "any torture or violence whatsoever,"^[84] but torture was generally a favored technique for loosening the tongues of suspected witches. In circumstances where torture would intensify until a confession was obtained, a great many victims certainly fabricated stories they knew to be entirely false just to stop the pain.^[85] And yet these confessions must have acquired tremendous existential import for those who made them. They terminated the agony of torture, and they were the basis for the subsequent sentence of death. While being led to execution, often by the terrible means of burning at the stake, confessed witches were earnestly exhorted to repent of the deeds they had described,

for the salvation of their eternal souls. With such ultimate meanings in play, it would be anything but surprising if many of those accused, convicted, and executed as witches came to believe their own confessions, no matter how fabricated they may have been at the beginning, with desperate sincerity.^[86] In that event, tests for witches, especially when seconded by torture, contributed to the creation of a reality devoutly affirmed not only by zealous inquisitors and a credulous populace but also by at least some of those convicted of the crime.

Conclusion

Several important generalizations have emerged from this analysis of the tests of preindustrial society.

1. The testing situation entails the application of power over the subjects of tests. Such power is to a degree in the hands of the persons who order and administer the tests, but it inheres more importantly in the organizations they represent and especially in the total social system.

2. Given the intrinsic representational character of all tests, and given further that what counts as representation is a matter of social convention, tests are not and cannot be measures or indicators of some purely objective, independently existing state of affairs or reality. They are concerned instead with reality as constructed by culture.

3. Related to and expanding the second generalization is the third generalization that tests are important in the array of mechanisms whereby culturally constructed realities are formed. Tests, that is to say, act to transform, mold, and even to create what they supposedly measure.

While it is possible to draw these generalizations with special clarity from an analysis of the tests found in preindustrial society, they are not limited to those tests. Indeed, the major objective of the following chapters is to demonstrate that they hold as strongly (if, occasionally, more subtly) for testing as it is currently practiced.

3
Lie Detection

A fluttering Heart, and unequal Pulse, a sudden Palpitation shall evidently confess he is the Man, in spite of a bold Countenance or a false Tongue.
Daniel Defoe,
An Effectual Scheme for the Immediate Preventing of Street Robberies
and Suppressing all other Disorders of the Night

Our exploration of contemporary authenticity testing begins with lie detection. It may appear to be a curious beginning, for lie detection occupies the less-reputable neighborhoods in the city of testing. German courts have held that lie detection's aim to bypass the conscious mind (which may wish to conceal certain information) so as to dredge facts directly from the unconscious compromises the right to avoid self-incrimination and erodes the basic human quality of free will.^[1] No less august a personage than Pope Pius XII was moved to condemn lie detection for its capacity to "intrude into man's interior domain."^[2] Subjects I have interviewed often reported feeling demeaned by the suspicion of wrongdoing implicit in the request or insistence that they submit to a lie detector test and violated by the prospect of machine-enhanced snooping into their private affairs. Attitudes such as these have given lie detection an unsavory enough reputation in official circles that a federal law greatly curtailing its use in the private sector took effect at the end of 1988.

These foibles notwithstanding, lie detection is of great interest for our analysis because it brings certain common characteristics of testing into peculiarly interesting and instructive focus. Most important, because the whole purpose of lie detection is to reveal information that subjects wish to conceal, the power that test givers typically exercise over test takers is particularly prominent here. After analyzing certain exaggerated—occasionally even caricatured—features of testing as they appear in lie detection, it will be easier for us to identify the subtler versions of those same features that lurk in more respectable forms of testing.

The Ghost in the Machine

In tracing the context of assumptions within which lie detection operates, it is helpful to begin over three hundred years ago with French philosopher René Descartes. Standing at the source of modern philosophy, Descartes distinguished sharply between the body and the mind. His theory, now known as Cartesian dualism, holds that while activities of the body take place openly in the physical world, where they can be observed by anyone, the thoughts and emotions that constitute mental activities occur in some metaphorical "place" deeply buried within a person. The doings of the mental "ghost in the machine" (as Ryle termed it)^[3] are hidden from public view. Observation of them is the exclusive prerogative of the self, who (until Freud and others muddied the waters with the concept of an unconscious mind) has immediate and total access to them by introspection.

People have long cherished the prospect of intruding on the private precincts of other minds, and no society has lacked shamans or psychics who lay claim to the pertinent preternatural powers. In our own society and century, the strongest bid for direct communication with ghosts in other machines comes from a persuasion that claims to have solved the problem by the judicious application of modern science and technology in a family of procedures known generally as lie detection or (a somewhat more genteel designation often used by proponents) the detection of deception. In essence, lie detection operates on the premise

that a mind-body connection exists such that it is possible to know something about what a person is thinking on the basis of certain measurable physiological responses. Lying—or, more precisely, anxiety about being discovered in a lie—is thought to produce bodily perturbations. These may be no more than slight fluctuations in blood pressure or subtle changes in the voice, however, so liars are often able to conceal their prevarication-provoked physiological responses from the ordinary scrutiny of human observers.

One scheme for unmasking callous deceivers was advanced by Daniel Defoe. Although he proposed it in 1731, the tactic of scrutinizing subtle bodily signs for evidence of a guilty ghost lurking within is totally in accordance with the assumptions that underwrite contemporary lie detection:

Guilt carries Fear always about with it; there is a Tremor in the Blood of a Thief, that, if attended to, would effectually discover him; and if charged as suspicious Fellow, on that Suspicion only I would always feel his Pulse, and I would recommend it to Practice. . . . It is true some are so hardened in Crime that they will boldly hold their Faces to it, carry it off with an Air of Contempt, and outface even a Pursuer; but take hold of his Wrist and feel his Pulse, and there you will find his Guilt; a fluttering Heart, an unequal Pulse, a sudden Palpitation shall evidently confess he is the Man, in spite of a bold Countenance or a false Tongue.^[4]

Today, thanks to the ultrasensitive instruments of modern technology, the imperceptible quickenings of the most accomplished, cold-blooded liar are now susceptible to precise measurement, recording, and scientific analysis. This points, incidentally, to another way in which the analysis of lie detection reveals a general characteristic of testing in a special light. Testing has a tendency to fragment or decenter the subject, to characterize the person in terms of one or a very few dimensions rather than as a fully rounded, integrated human being. This appears in the case of lie detection in a peculiar, extreme, and (from the suspect's point of view) threatening form. Not only is the subject divided but the parts are actually set against each other, so that the mental

ghost is betrayed when the blabbermouth bodily machine spills the beans. But bad news for the subject may be good news for the community, especially for that branch of it devoted to law enforcement. As one interrogator happily described the distinctive achievement of lie detector tests, "the criminal can no longer hide in the deepest recesses of his mind."^[5]

Many of the medieval tests described in chapter 2 sought to plumb the deepest recesses of criminals' minds by putting questions to God, who would answer through the outcome of ordeal or combat. As part of an overall secularization of society, one of the most salient transformations in assumptions about tests in general as we pass from these antecedents to their modern forms is the renouncing of all reliance on God's omniscience in favor of purely human knowledge, as enhanced by the methods and mechanisms of science. This is especially visible in lie detection, where issues that would previously have been put to trial by ordeal or battle are addressed from a putatively scientific perspective and with heavy reliance on technological devices. Lie detector tests deal with human qualities in terms of things. The polygraph itself is a thing, a machine. Its job is to measure the activities of other concrete things: the heart, the lungs, and the skin. The ultimate purpose is to detect truth and deception, but these too are understood as correlates of physical things and events rather than purely as subjective qualities of mind or morality. The aura of science is further fortified by a tendency to classify subjects according to their physical responses in polygraph tests. To examiners, people become objectified as "spot responders," "reactors," "nonreactors," "respiratory reactors," or "diminishing reactors."^[6]

As we have seen, modern testing has its roots in positivism. Lie detection's redefinition of human qualities in terms of things is an outstanding example of the agenda charted for positivism by Saint-Simon. He argued that human misery, strife, and war stem from decisions and actions in the realm of human affairs that are taken on the basis of opinions. If they could instead be based on things, as scientifically determined and understood, then human affairs would be regulated according to positive facts rather than ephemeral, uncertain opinion.

It is no longer men controlling men. It is truth alone which speaks; it is impersonal, and nothing is less capricious. In short it is things themselves—through the mediation of those who understand them—that indicate the manner in which they should be handled.^[7]

Advocates of lie detection have anticipated similar happy results from the extended application of polygraph technology to, say, the legal system. Unlike the capricious, opinion-laden decisions of judges and jurors, the scientific lie detector test is not subject to bias.^[8] Robert Ferguson, Jr., provides example after example where polygraph tests have rectified the errors of juries, proving the innocence and securing the release of falsely convicted defendants.^[9] In one case, a judge had his doubts about a jury's conviction of a man tried for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He delayed sentencing and ordered a polygraph test. The results indicated that the convicted man was in fact innocent. Refusing to allow a man to be convicted under these circumstances, the judge vacated the jury's verdict.^[10]

The results of polygraph tests are grounded in concrete things as known systematically by scientific methods of measurement and are therefore objective and certain. The polygraph speaks truth as a matter of principle. Therefore, if the results of a particular polygraph test are manifestly mistaken, the problem lies not with the nature of the test but with how it was conducted or, perhaps, with the person who was being tested. On the analogy that one does not lose confidence in fingerprinting because particular prints are occasionally smudged, "there is no reason, therefore, why any derogatory implication should be attached to the lie-detector technique because of the occasional unfitness of the person upon whom a deception diagnosis has been attempted."^[11]

The situation is fascinating: a testing technique that has been touted as being so thoroughly saturated with science as to be nearly infallible has been so widely perceived as fundamentally flawed that a law has been passed against it. Arguments on both sides of the issue will be reviewed here and in chapter 4, as we examine more closely what lie detector tests are, how they work, and what social consequences they have.

Lie Detector Machines

Modern lie detection boils down to a machine-enhanced capacity to detect minute bodily perturbations, together with the professional skill to interpret their mental correlations. The machine most commonly used in lie detection is the polygraph. Quickly reviewing some of the highlights of its development, the polygraph was foreshadowed in the mid-nineteenth century when Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso utilized measures of pulse and blood pressure in the interrogation of suspects. By 1908, the well-known psychologist, Hugo Munsterberg, was advocating the use of blood pressure for detecting deception in the law courts. William M. Marston, one of Munsterberg's Harvard students, claimed to have discovered a specific physiological response that accompanied lying. An avid publicity hound, he made several unsuccessful efforts to apply his technique in the investigation of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. Ultimately, Marston went on to other pursuits and, under the pseudonym of Charles Moulton, created the comic strip character "Wonder Woman."^[12]

Marston's claim that a specific physiological response exists for deception did not survive, but exploration into more general links continued. John A. Larson developed a large and unwieldy machine capable of providing continuous measures of blood pressure, pulse, and respiration rates. Working closely with the criminologist and police chief, August Vollmer, he used the instrument for investigations in the Berkeley Police Department. His most famous success was a shoplifting case in the early 1920s. The culprit was known only to be one of thirty-eight women living in a certain dormitory. Larson interrogated all of them with the assistance of his machine and found that one reacted much more strongly to questions about the thefts than the other thirty-seven. Confronted with the findings, she made a full confession.^[13]

A high school student named Leonarde Keeler, fascinated by police work, used to spend his spare time around the Berkeley Police Department in those days. He took a keen interest in Larson's and Vollmer's experiments, and in 1926, Keeler developed the first compact, portable polygraph machine. It remains the

prototype for current models. Keeler went on to become one of the founders of the lie detection profession. Based in Chicago, he utilized his polygraph extensively in criminal investigations during the 1930s and 1940s. Keeler developed some of the formats for lie detector tests that are still in use and founded the first polygraph examiner training institute as well as a company that manufactures polygraph machines.^[14]

The polygraph is a device that simultaneously monitors several different physiological processes. The machine is attached to the subject in several ways. An expandable band is placed around the chest (and perhaps a second one around the upper abdomen) to measure breathing patterns. A blood pressure cuff is applied to the upper arm and inflated to about halfway between the diastolic and systolic pressure, to measure fluctuations in blood pressure and pulse rate. A small clip placed on a fingertip measures galvanic skin response (GSR): an electric current, so small that the subject cannot feel it, is passed through the clip, and changes in conductivity reveal variations in the subject's perspiration. Another, similar clip may also be applied to measure pulse and blood volume in the fingertip. Readings from these sensors are recorded by fluctuating pens on a long sheet of graph paper that moves steadily beneath them. During the course of the test, the examiner writes the number of each question on the graph paper as it is asked. This makes it possible, when the chart is analyzed, to connect physiological responses as recorded on the chart with the various questions.

No one (at least, no one since Marston) claims that deception can be measured directly. As with all tests, lie detection deals in representations. In the case of polygraph tests, these representations take the form of a chain of causality leading from prevarication to anxiety or psychological stress and then to physiology. As already noted, the general theory is that emotional stress produces variations in one or more of the physiological functions monitored by the polygraph. One form of stress that may produce such physiological variations is apprehension about being caught in telling a lie. Assuming that other reasons for stress can be ruled out, significant changes in the polygraph tracings that accompany the response to a given question (when a subject

"hits" on a question, in the parlance of the trade) may be interpreted as signifying deception.

The type of signification that operates in polygraph tests is metonymy. The presence of an observable effect metonymically signifies the co-presence of its cause, even if the cause is not observed directly. Precisely in the same way as smoke signifies fire, in the logic of the polygraph, certain physiological perturbations, properly analyzed, signify deception.

Stanley Abrams sets out to provide a more detailed account of the rationale behind polygraph examinations.^[15] In an apparent effort to drench his discussion in as much science as possible, he even includes information on the human cell and the operation of neurons, although, alas, no relation between these particular matters and the operation of the polygraph is identified. In the more pertinent part of his account, Abrams keys polygraph to the "fight or flight" reaction that has been indelibly imprinted in human beings and other animals over eons of evolution as an adaptive response to situations of danger. The threat of being discovered in a lie provokes this reaction, which consists of a set of physiological changes that prepare the individual to fight or to run away. "Vasoconstriction takes place in the peripheral blood vessels and causes an increased flow of blood to the skin, thereby allowing for a dissipation of the heat engendered by muscular effort and fostering a reduction of blood loss should injury occur."^[16] Moreover, sweat appears on the palms and hands "to aid in locomotion or grasping. . . . Stronger contractions of the heart send more oxygenated blood through the body and an additional blood supply is directed to the skeletal muscles allowing for a more effective utilization of the arms and legs."^[17] These developments are monitored by the various measuring devices of the polygraph. Therefore, lie detection by the polygraph, as Abrams cogently points out, produces an interesting twist on evolutionary patterns of self-preservation: "ironically, those same responses that typically serve to get the individual out of trouble get him into difficulty if he is deceptive during a polygraph test situation."^[18]

Although this polygraph machine is the one in general use today, technological elaborations have been tried from time to time. The Darrow Behavior Research Photopolygraph (fig. 3), mar-

Figure 3.
Darrow Behavior Research Photopolygraph. From Paul V. Trovillo.
"A History of Lie Detection." Journal of the American Institute of Criminal
Law and Criminology 29 (1939):874.

keted half a century ago, seems to have been attached to the subject's body in every way imaginable. Apparently, the apparatus used by the CIA, which makes frequent use of instrumental lie detection, is similar. An informant said that it expands the number of physiological characteristics monitored from three or four to twenty-eight and that an individual wired up to it "looks like an astronaut." At the other extreme, Israel's Weizmann Institute has developed a machine that does not touch the subject's body at all. It measures palpitations of the stomach remotely, by microwaves, on the theory that such movements increase in frequency when an individual is lying. The device is in use at border checkpoints, where individuals may be subjected to lie detection without their being aware of it.^[19]

Lie detection by remote sensing, of course, obviates the necessity to hook the subject up to clips, tubes, and wires. These attachments frequently provoke a good deal of consternation.

Several polygraph examiners told me that it is frequently necessary to assure subjects that the machine will not give them electric shocks; occasionally, people observe with apprehensive humor that they feel like they are going to the electric chair.

The psychological stress evaluator (PSE) is a type of lie detector machine that attaches nothing to the subject's body. It is designed to analyze stress in the voice. As its history was explained to me by a PSE examiner, the device was invented by two army officers, Charles McQuiston and Allan Bell. They wanted to give lie detector tests to suspected double agents and others in the jungles of Vietnam and found that the polygraph was not suitable for such use in the field. With the PSE, one asks the same sort of questions as would be used in a polygraph test, but the subject answers (yes or no) into a tape recorder microphone. The tape is then run, at one-quarter speed, through a special analyzer that produces a chart composed of closely packed lines of varying heights and positions on a narrow strip of paper similar to that used in cash registers. The expert studies the chart for points of vocal stress or tension, not audible to the ear, that may be found in the answers to certain questions on the test.

The general theory behind the PSE is identical to that informing the polygraph: anxiety about being caught out in a lie produces certain physiological responses (this time in the voice), and these can be detected and recorded by the machine. In an interview, a PSE examiner provided a more detailed rationale that (in contrast to Abrams's reliance on the fight or flight reaction) trades on the relation between the subconscious and conscious sectors of mind. It is an outstanding example of the tendency of lie detection to disarticulate the person into fragments that are then set against each other. The subconscious mind, he explained, is like a computer data bank with no discriminating controls. In response to any question, the subconscious simply dumps everything it has on that topic. The conscious mind, which is a highly discriminating gate-keeping device, reviews what the subconscious has produced and decides what to reveal. The verbal answer to any question is what the conscious mind lets pass. Even if a question has potentially damaging implications for the self, such as whether one stole something (when one in fact did

steal it), the subconscious foolishly churns out the correct answer: yes. The conscious mind, however, in effect says (and this is a quotation from the PSE examiner), "You dummy, I'm not going to say that. It will get me in trouble." Hence the subject gives a false answer to the question: no. Whenever one lies, then, there is a difference between the responses of the unconscious and conscious components of the mind. That difference produces psychological tension, or stress, and that in turn affects the voice in a way that is measurable by the psychological stress evaluator. The logic of signification is the same as for the polygraph, operating on the assumption that perceptible effects signify, by metonymy, concealed causes. The word "stress," incidentally, was frequently used both as a noun and as a verb by the two PSE examiners I interviewed. Whereas polygraph examiners tend to say the subject "hit" on a certain question, the PSE examiners would say the subject "stressed" on it.

As with the Israeli remote sensor, it is possible to give PSE tests without the subject being aware of it. A polygraph examiner told me that some insurance companies record telephone conversations with policyholders concerning loss claims so as to subject them to analysis by the PSE. Another pointed to a PSE tape prominently displayed on the wall of his office. It was, he said, the voice of Patty Hearst as recorded from a telephone conversation while she was with the Symbionese Liberation Army, and he indicated several points on the chart where she stressed.

The lie detection profession itself has stressed on the question of the PSE. PSE examiners argue that their newer and simpler technique is as accurate as the polygraph. Polygraph examiners, who are much more numerous and whose technique is more common, tend to dismiss the claim, often with expressions of contempt not unlike those that critics of the whole idea of lie detection level against the polygraph. Thus an unfriendly schism has emerged between PSE and polygraph examiners.

Uses of Lie Detection

The U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment has estimated that as of 1987, some two million polygraph tests were

given annually in the United States.^[20] Lie detector tests are regularly employed by the CIA and the National Security Agency to detect spies or double agents in their midst. Police departments test criminal suspects and their own personnel in various internal investigations. In 1972, Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton ordered Ku Klux Klansmen to take lie detector tests in an effort to root out informers and FBI plants in their midst.^[21] George Steinbrenner had lie detector tests administered on several occasions to New York Yankees executives when he was angered that news of trades leaked out before the official announcements.^[22] In 1985, the Reagan administration was planning to plug leaks by demanding lie detector tests of high government officials, including Cabinet members, until Secretary of State George Shultz shot the plan down by saying he would resign rather than submit to such a demeaning and ineffective procedure.^[23] One examiner told me that he was engaged by the church to test a Catholic priest who was accused of having an affair with a female parishioner. The church fathers decided they would take the opportunity to also look into the state of the priest's faith. In addition to questions about his relationship with the woman, while the priest was hooked up to the machine, he was asked if he assented to the various propositions of the Nicene Creed. It seems that he passed that part of the test with flying colors, although he did not do so well on the morals charge.

Prior to the 1988 legislation banning it in the private sector, by far the most common users of lie detector tests, accounting for 90 percent of the two million annual tests estimated by the Office of Technology Assessment, were private businesses whose employees regularly handle cash or items of value, such as retail firms, pawn shops, and banks. Businesses using the polygraph included over 30 percent of the Fortune 500 companies and at least half of the retail trade firms.^[24]

Business turned to lie detection in an effort to control employee theft. Not many years ago, retail firms chalked up most of their unaccounted losses to external factors such as shoplifting. Now they attribute the lion's share to internal theft. Not that the reality has changed. Instead, managers have reluctantly come to the conclusion that their employees simply

do not (and never did) deserve the trust that was once placed in them. Although internal disciplinary measures or termination are much more common responses to employee theft than legal action, in 1982, some 335,000 American workers were arrested for stealing from their employers. When employees who are not prosecuted and those who are never caught are added, the totals become impossible to verify. Estimates vary widely; among the more pessimistic are that 70 percent of all workers steal something during their employment, that employee theft is responsible for some one-third of all business bankruptcies, and that annual losses suffered by American business due to employee theft total $40 billion or more.^[25] Staggering as this total is, some perspective is provided by a National Institute of Justice estimate that corporate management steals three times that amount through securities fraud, corporate kickbacks, embezzlement, and insurance fraud. This moves critics of the business use of lie detection to ask why hourly employees have been forced to submit to lie detector tests while executives are rarely tested.^[26]

However they may answer that question, employers have sought to combat employee pilfering and other problems by applying lie detector tests in four main circumstances: preemployment screening represents an effort to avoid hiring untrustworthy employees; current employees may be kept under surveillance and deterred from unacceptable behavior by periodic tests (given at regular intervals) or random tests (given unannounced at any time); and specific tests are given in the course of investigations into thefts or other particular acts of wrongdoing that have occurred. (Tests of the last sort are also used by law enforcement agencies in criminal investigations.)

Until very recently the use of polygraph tests by American business was dramatically on the rise, having tripled in the decade prior to 1987.^[27] Lie detection expanded in this period not only because of the growing perception that employee theft was more common than had been previously suspected but also because legislation protecting employee interests made it extremely difficult to learn about applicants from previous employers. To protect themselves from possible legal action, employers will

often divulge no more about former employees than the period of their employment and the position they held. Potential employers are interested in knowing more about their work history: their reliability, congeniality, honesty, and habits that may have adverse consequences for the company, whether they are likely to agitate for a union or make other trouble, why they left earlier jobs, and so on. Two issues of special interest are drugs and homosexuality. Drug use may have an impact on job performance and place the employer in serious legal jeopardy if the employee is in a job that affects the safety of others. Moreover, drug addiction is extremely expensive, and addicts frequently steal to support their habit, often from their employers. Intravenous drug users and homosexuals represent high-risk categories for AIDS, and this disease is so expensive to treat that one or two cases have serious repercussions for a company's health insurance program. Unable to ascertain information of these sorts from previous employers, many companies resorted to lie detection as a means to discover it for themselves.

If the experience of the Vermont State Police is any guide, what they discover may be startling. A preemployment lie detector test was used in the screening of the 203 individuals who applied for positions in 1983. Nineteen applicants did not even show up for their scheduled tests, and only 75 were retained for further consideration after the test. The other 109 admitted, under the scrutiny of the polygraph, to a total of 238 kinds of disqualifying offenses. These included drug use, larceny, lying on their application forms, abnormal sexual practices, and "immature acts." Sixty-five of the 75 who "passed" the lie detector examination made admissions of misdeeds that were not considered serious enough to drop them from further consideration.^[28] One wonders, incidentally, if any of those who did not show up for the test or were disqualified by it had a record as distinguished as a former police officer who (unsuccessfully) applied for a job in the Washoe County (Nevada) Sheriff's Department. In the course of the preemployment lie detector test, that worthy "admitted accepting bribes on two occasions, 'rolling' a homosexual and beating him to a point that required hospitalization, stealing property while answering an alarm at a burglary scene, and ransacking the

apartment at a death scene and stealing the property of the deceased."^[29]

Some employers use lie detection to weed out not only applicants who have engaged in criminal behavior on previous jobs but also persons who are thought to be potential troublemakers or union agitators. The following assessment of the polygraph was made in 1984 by a uniform dry cleaning chain in Buffalo, New York.

The polygraph very definitely has improved industrial relations at our facility and every other non-union facility where it is used properly. The simple reason is that with polygraph an employer tends to eliminate bad employees, those who are deep into drugs, dishonest, troublemakers, etc. . . . In a union facility, usually the bad employees are protected by the union bosses because they are strong union supporters and when there is polygraph involved these bad employees will do everything in their power to fight it. . . . Trade unions and civil rights organisations continually complain about polygraph, apparently because it promotes good relations between employer and employee and when you have these good relations you likely will not have employees voting a union in. . . . A refusal to take a polygraph test is taken into consideration along with other information at hand in making a decision to promote or to hire. Polygraph is the most valid aid in selecting staff known to man. . . . The polygraph, properly utilized, prevents labor disputes.^[30]

It has even been possible to exert the force of lie detection in the absence of actual tests. The application forms used by many companies included a question about whether the applicant would be willing to take lie detector tests prior to being hired or as an employee with the firm. Often companies did not actually give tests to job applicants because they are too expensive. But a fast-food chain proprietor told me that if a person answered "no" to that question, "unless the application is incredible , there is no way that we would consider that applicant further." The reason she gave is that "philosophical" problems with taking a lie detector test can signal an overly independent turn of mind that might lead to noncompliance with other company policies down the line.

The Test

Because the polygraph is a portable machine, a lie detector test can take place in almost any surroundings. Sometimes subjects are directed to go to the examiner's office for the test. Other examiners may visit the company or other locale where people are to be tested and set up shop in any available room or office. Some examiners prefer to bring their own office with them and work out of a trailer or camper in the parking lot. In general, the room in which the test is given should be reasonably plain so as not to distract the subject. Some polygraph examiners, in an effort to heighten subjects' perception of the test as a professional procedure, go so far as to wear a white coat, stethoscope dangling from the neck, and to spray the air of the examining room with ethyl alcohol.^[31] About the only piece of furniture specifically designed for lie detection is a straight-backed chair with concave armrests long enough to provide support for the subject's hands, where the fingertip clips are attached. This is not essential, however, for the test can be effectively conducted with the subject's arm resting on a table or on chair arms of normal length.

The typical lie detector test begins with a pretest interview. The examiner explains how the polygraph machine works and reviews the questions to be asked. While most polygraph examiners agree that the pretest interview is an extremely important part of the overall process because it sets the general ambience for the test, they are not of one mind as to precisely what that ambience should be. Some attempt to set the subject at ease, while others strive to increase nervous tension. In the latter case, the examiner's goal is often not so much to conduct a reliable polygraph test as it is to extract a confession. A police officer told me that occasionally the polygraph is used in this manner as a last resort in cases where the evidence against a suspect is not conclusive and the likelihood of a conviction is small. The suspect is told that things look very bad but that it might be possible to clear the record by means of a polygraph test. If the person can be induced to confess during the course of the test, charges will be filed (on the basis of the confession, not the polygraph test). If not, the suspect will

be released regardless of what the polygraph chart shows about innocence or guilt (the evidence of polygraph tests rarely being accepted in court).

The polygraph is an effective tool in the hands of a skilled interrogator, who can use it to help convince suspects that their lies are not fooling anyone. When the aim is confession, other interrogation techniques may be used in the pretest interview, such as the suggestion of one polygraph instructor that the questioner sit close to the subject and that there be no table or other obstacle between them. Any kind of obstacle gives the person being questioned a certain degree of relief and confidence. The questioner may start with his chair two or three feet away and move closer as the questioning proceeds, so that ultimately the knees are in close proximity. This physical invasion of the subject's territory by the questioner, the crowding in as he is questioned, has been found in practice to be extremely useful in breaking down a subject's resistance. When a person's territorial defenses are weakened or intruded on, his self-assurance tends to grow weaker.^[32]

Whether or not the examiner wishes to intimidate the subject, a ubiquitous aim of the pretest interview is to convince the subject that the polygraph really works. "The polygraphist . . . ," writes Abrams, "must engender enough of a feeling of confidence in the subject to relieve the anxiety of the innocent and at the same time increase the fear of the guilty."^[33] Fred Inbau and John Reid suggest that the examiner tell the subject quite emphatically, "if you're telling the truth this machine will show it; if you're not, the machine will show that, too."^[34] An examiner I interviewed habitually tells subjects just prior to the test, "Every story has three sides—your side, his side, and the truth. This machine is going to get the truth."

Lie detector tests are used not only to ascertain the subject's own improprieties but also to learn what one may know, or suspect, about the wrongdoings of others. The stage is often set for this during the pretest interview by convincing the subject that "divulgence of the suspicions is necessary for the subject's own test purposes."^[35] The polygraph, that is to say, is presented as a machine with rather mysterious properties that necessitate that a

person betray any suspicions about other employees or suspects to be found innocent oneself.

One common means of instilling respect for the machine is to run a "stim" (stimulation) test prior to the actual test.^[36] The examiner, saying that he is going to demonstrate the accuracy of the polygraph, hooks the subject up to the machine and directs her, in one type of stim test, to draw a card from a deck. The subject is told to sit still, look straight ahead, and, for the purposes of the stim test, answer "no" to all questions. The examiner proceeds to ask if it is any of a number of possible cards and then identifies the correct card on the basis of the polygraph chart readings. (Some polygraph examiners, it seems, cover their bets on the stim test by using a trick deck of cards.)^[37]

Actual examinations vary according to whether they are concerned with the subject's general honesty and history of wrongdoing (as in applicant screenings and periodic and random tests of current employees) or are part of the investigation of a specific crime. In general, however, the test consists of some ten to fifteen questions of three basic types. Irrelevant questions have to do with nonthreatening matters regarding which the subject can fully be expected to give honest answers: questions such as "Is today Thursday?" or "Do you live in Chicago?" or "Were you born in 1946?" The chart readings for these questions depict the subject's physiological profile when responding truthfully. Control questions are designed to be threatening and to evoke an untruthful response from anyone. These may vary a good deal with the particular sort of wrongdoing one is interested in uncovering and the particular history of the subject. For a person with a criminal record, a control question might be, "Did you ever commit a crime that was not found out by the police?" A person being investigated for assault might be asked, "Did you ever desire to hurt anyone?" An applicant in a preemployment screening might be asked, "Did you ever steal anything?" The chart readings for control questions show the physiological signs of anxiety connected with deception. Finally, the relevant questions (or "hot" questions, as they are often called in the trade) pertain to the particular issue under investigation. If this is a specific crime, the question focuses directly on it, such as, "Did you rape Judy Barnes

on July 17?" or "Do you know who stole $500 from the cash register two weeks ago?" Relevant questions in periodic tests of current employees or applicant screenings are perforce somewhat more general, such as, "Have you stolen any money from the company during the last six months?" or "Did you steal any merchandise from your previous employer?" or "Have you ever been fired for reasons of dishonesty?"

Analysis of the chart is basically a matter of comparing responses to the relevant questions with those to the irrelevant and control questions. If the subject is lying in responding to the relevant questions, the readings for them will resemble those for the control questions; if the subject is telling the truth, they will resemble the readings for the irrelevant questions. Or, phrased somewhat differently, a deceptive subject will show greater perturbations for the relevant questions than for the control questions, while a nondeceptive subject will react more strongly to the control questions. The reason is that the guilty individual is more threatened by the relevant questions than the control questions, while the innocent individual, having nothing to fear from the relevant questions, is more threatened by the control questions.^[38] Test results are usually reported as "DI" (deception indicated), "NDI" (no deception indicated), or "Inconclusive." The last is used when no clear pattern is discernible on the charts.

Polygraph examiners are interested in creating conditions in which the charts will be as "good" as possible; charts, that is to say, that lend themselves most unequivocally to an interpretation of either DI or NDI. Examiners may differ, however, on how to bring about these optimal conditions. According to Phillip Davis and Pamela McKenzie-Rundle (herself a former polygraph examiner), the subject who has been "pumped up" during the pretest interview is most likely to produce the sharply different responses to relevant, irrelevant, and control questions that are essential for "good" charts.^[39] However, a polygraph instructor told me that his main goal is to put subjects at ease during the pretest interview, partly to facilitate the production of "good" charts. An overly nervous subject, he explained, is likely to give erratic responses even to the irrelevant questions. This makes the chart as a whole much more difficult to interpret and produces a result of Incon-

clusive. Moreover, the subject who has been "pumped up" by the test situation may even be driven by the pressure to make a false confession.

A careful polygraph test involves running several charts, that is, going through the same set of questions three or more times, with periods of interview/interrogation in between. This provides additional opportunities for the subject to make a confession, or, conversely, for areas of apparent deception or guilt that showed up on the first chart to be resolved in the subject's favor. In either event, the charts and the overall result of the test are clarified with repetition.

One technique for such clarification, which seldom works to the benefit of the subject, is the following:

Once a test has been administered to a guilty individual it is extremely effective to display the records to him and point out the deception criteria—at the same time reminding the subject that the recordings represent his own heart beats, his own blood pressure changes, etc., and not those picked up by the machine out of thin air or placed there by the examiner.^[40]

A particularly powerful technique is to go through the test two or three more times, pointing out to the suspect how, with each successive chart, the indications of deception become more pronounced. Eventually the evidence from the polygraph becomes so self-evident that only the most intransigent subject can avoid confessing.

But, of course, the alternative explanation is not difficult to imagine. Subjects "hit" more and more decisively on the relevant question with repeated testing not necessarily because of guilt but because they are distressed about how the response to it appears on the previous chart and are increasingly apprehensive about it when the test is run again.^[41] This, incidentally, sheds additional light on the practice of reviewing the questions with subjects prior to administering the test. This is done, they are told, as an assurance that no surprise questions will be sprung while the chart is running. That is true enough, but the practice also has certain advantages for the test itself which are not so

immediately apparent. For one, a subject might be surprised by an unexpected question, and even if the person has nothing to hide on that question, the surprise itself could produce physiological responses that might be difficult to distinguish from those associated with deception.^[42] For another, to review all questions in advance alerts deceptive subjects to just when in the test a relevant question is coming. Their attention focuses on it, and they become increasingly apprehensive as it approaches and then relax after it has passed. This produces a characteristic response pattern known as "peak of tension," which is taken as particularly damning.

Is is possible, however, that the peak of tension might also characterize the responses of innocent individuals who go into lie detector tests knowing full well that they are suspected of certain misdeeds and who therefore are apprehensive about the relevant questions. This is obviated in another testing format, known as the Guilty Knowledge Test.^[43] Suitable only for investigations into specific acts of wrongdoing and not for general preemployment or periodical checkups, the Guilty Knowledge Test trades on information that only the guilty individual would know. The precise location of a rape, for example, or some characteristic of the clothes the victim was wearing might not have been made public. One could then construct a polygraph test with a series of alternatives, for example, she was wearing a red blouse, a blue blouse, a sweatshirt, a woolen sweater, and so on. Regardless of how much anxiety an innocent suspect might have about the test, he would not be likely to "hit" on the correct alternative because he simply does not know it. The guilty suspect, however, is much more likely to react. And if the possibilities and the order in which questions would be asked were reviewed in advance, it is reasonable to expect that the responses would manifest the typical peak of tension pattern.

Polygraph examiners I have interviewed enjoy telling stories of their most interesting cases, including their greatest triumphs. One of these was a classic use of the Guilty Knowledge Test and is interesting in addition because it demonstrates that the verbal answers given by the subject are really not an essential part of the test. A murder suspect agreed to be hooked up to a polygraph but

refused to answer any questions. "That's all right," said the examiner, "all you have to do is to sit there." He informed the subject that they were going to find out just where the body was hidden. He produced a map of the city, divided it into quadrants, and, pointing to each in turn, asked, "Did you hide the body in this section? In this section?" and so on. Although the subject sat mute, the chart showed a larger response for one of the quadrants than for the other three. The examiner divided that section into quadrants and repeated the questions. The narrowing process continued with, it can be imagined, the subject becoming increasingly apprehensive. Finally, a bit of territory the size of a house lot was specified. The police dug there and discovered the body.

Polygraph examiners may use ingenious—if on occasion remarkably simple—techniques to ascertain if someone is lying. Keeler, who also tried the technique of identifying the location of a body by means of pointing to quadrants on a map,^[44] was once asked to use the polygraph to determine if an individual who claimed to be blind was in fact so. Keeler did not find it necessary to ask any questions of the individual at all. He simply hooked him up to the polygraph and then held a picture of a nude pinup girl in front of him. The needles went wild, and they had their answer.^[45]

Polygraph subjects too have developed a set of techniques—some simple and some more ingenious—to "beat" lie detector tests. The technique that usually first springs to mind, especially among persons with little experience of the polygraph, is to maintain such rigid control over one's physiology that no telltale perturbations will disturb the polygraph when one lies. This is extremely difficult to accomplish, although in one case an enterprising individual may have made it work. A highly experienced examiner told me about a subject whom he had tested before and whose previous tests had indicated a great deal of deception. This time, however, the charts indicated no deception at all; they looked, indeed, too perfect. The examiner said to the subject, "This is too good to be true. What are you doing?" The subject, apparently prouder of his ruse than apprehensive about being discovered in an effort to beat the test, unbuttoned his shirt and

displayed his torso, completely wrapped in aluminum foil. In principle, this should have no effect whatsoever on the polygraph readings, but the examiner surmised that the trick gave the subject such confidence that he succeeded in muting the physiological responses that normally accompany deception.

Another technique is to use some substance prior to the test in an effort to mask one's responses. Typewriter correction fluid such as White-Out is believed by some to be effective for this purpose. (Does the rationale have to do with some supposed generic capacity of the liquid to cover things up?) Subjects have been known to paint their fingertips with it to thwart the galvanic skin response measure—surely a ruse that would not be difficult to detect. Alternatively, the subject can drink it. One individual who was told by a friend that he could beat the test with correction fluid "drank five bottles of White-Out, threw up during the pretest interview, and confessed."^[46]

The most effective way to thwart a lie detector test, however, is not to attempt to minimize one's reactions to the relevant questions but to maximize them on the irrelevant and control questions. Chart analysis rests on identifying differences among these three types of question. The assumptions are that all subjects will show little reaction to irrelevant questions, that an innocent individual will react more strongly to control questions than relevant questions, and that a guilty subject will show the reverse profile. Thus, a conclusive finding of deceptiveness is not possible if the responses to control questions are stronger than to relevant questions,^[47] while the entire test is thwarted if responses to irrelevant questions are stronger than those to relevant or control questions.

Subjects may resort to a variety of techniques if they wish to intensify their responses to irrelevant or control questions. Pain is effective for this, and one practice is to come into the examination room with a tack in one's shoe and to press the foot down on it when one wants to provide a heightened response. Somewhat simpler is to bite one's tongue; easier still is to tighten the sphincter muscle, which produces a minor perturbation in the blood pressure. Finally, it is easy for any subject to confound a lie detector test simply by refusing to sit still. Wriggling, coughing,

and intentionally varying the rate of one's breathing all have the effect of defeating the polygraph's physiological measures. A common method to distort the readings produced by the psychological stress evaluator, which measures voice patterns, is to wear a necktie and to press one's throat against its large Windsor knot while answering irrelevant or control questions.

Many countermeasures are not difficult for the examiner to detect. People with tacks in their shoes often limp painfully into the examination room. Some examiners have subjects sit on an air-inflated pillow that is connected to the polygraph machine in order to detect sphincter tensing. And, of course, subjects who deliberately cough and squirm are often not even trying to hide their refusal to cooperate.

A deceptive subject who uses subtle techniques that escape the notice of the examiner may achieve the false negative test result of NDI (no deception indicated). The examiner who detects efforts to defeat the test is likely to attempt by cajoling or by threats to convince the subject to desist from them and to cooperate fully with the test. If the subject will not do so, it will be impossible for the examiner to reach a conclusion of DI (deception indicated) on the basis of the charts. The only option is to report an inconclusive test result, although very possibly with a notation on the report that the subject's refusal to cooperate might in itself indicate deception.

The Examiner

Examiners vary greatly in their interest in and skill at detecting efforts to beat the test and in all other aspects of polygraph tests. Therefore, many experts in lie detection strongly advance the opinion that the examiner is the single most important factor in any lie detector test. Professional quality of examiners is a sore point in lie detection, for licensing regulations vary widely among states (and are completely absent in some), so it has been possible in many places for a high school graduate with less than six weeks of specialized training to hang out a shingle as a professional lie detector examiner.^[48] There is, moreover, considerable

incentive to do just that, for lie detection can be a fairly lucrative profession. The fee for preemployment and periodic tests varies from about $25 to $75 or more, while tests in specific criminal investigations, done in more elaborate circumstances with attorneys present, may cost more than $200. Businesses are understandably concerned to keep their costs down, so many of them opt for lie detector tests at the cheaper end of the scale. Some examiners accommodate this by offering low-cost tests, but then they attempt to maximize their income by increasing their volume. In 1972, for example, one examiner in Alexandria, Virginia, earned a handsome living by giving more than 2,000 lie detector tests annually (an average of 8 per day for 50 five-day weeks), although he was scarcely at the lower end of the cost scale because even at that time he charged $75 per test.^[49]

Examiners I interviewed frequently stated that the greatest threat to their profession is the presence of incompetent and/or unscrupulous individuals in their midst. They call them "chart rollers," and they accuse them of producing highly unreliable results through sloppy testing. It is essential for valid results, examiners told me, to ascertain whether the anxiety that accompanies the response to certain questions is produced by deception or by some other circumstance. This often involves running several charts and long interviews, in a process that may require two or more hours. The process is so mentally demanding on the conscientious examiner, one told me, that he is utterly exhausted if he does two tests in a day. Chart rollers, whose primary concern is to maximize the number of tests they give, are unwilling to devote the necessary time and care to this imperative. They do a perfunctory pretest interview, run a single chart, simply report "deception indicated" for the questions where stress is recorded, and move on without exploring the issue. Thus their rate of "false positives" (erroneous conclusions that the subject is lying) is high. A grocery store manager recounted an experience with a chart roller who polygraphed two cashiers for "sweetheart checking"—a procedure whereby the cashier charges the customer (a relative or friend) far less than the actual price, such as ringing up a ham as a pack of chewing gum. The polygraph results indicated deception by one of the checkers, and the examiner

reported that she had been giving merchandise to her brother, John. She was fired but then sued for wrongful termination, pointing out that she did not have a brother named John. The store settled out of court and decided it was time to get someone else to do their polygraph testing. One examiner said that the most unscrupulous chart rollers will run people through in about ten minutes, sometimes without even hooking them up to the machine, and then provide a fabricated report and charge the fee for a completed test.

The PSE has perhaps been especially attractive to would-be chart rollers because the training program is shorter still—only two weeks, as one PSE examiner told me. The PSE is also appealing to business because it often costs less than the polygraph. The cheapest rate I have come across is from a policeman trained as a PSE examiner, who told me that he used to moonlight by doing PSE tests for $8 each. Under his system, the employer would ask the questions, tape record the subject's responses, and send the tape to the examiner. He would analyze the tape on the PSE machine, identify the questions on which deception was indicated, and mail his report to the employer. The report would recommend that the employer discuss those questions with the applicant to determine if the stress that showed up on the chart stemmed from deception or some other cause, but he does not know if employers actually followed up on the recommendation. Certainly the PSE examiner did not do it because he never set eyes on the applicants. This seems to be a highly evolved form of chart rolling. When I asked him why he did it, he replied, "If some fool pays some other fool to do that, why not?"

Partly in an effort to achieve a more respectable image and to work toward establishing self-policing ethical and professional standards, polygraph examiners formed a professional society, the American Polygraph Association (APA). The APA publishes the journal, Polygraph , and attempts to present polygraph tests and polygraph examiners in the most favorable light possible to the outside world. The seal of the association is the blindfolded figure of Justice, holding a balance scale in her left hand. But in her right hand, instead of a sword, she holds a long polygraph

chart, one end of which trails on the ground near her feet. The motto "Dedicated to Truth" is printed beside her.

Another effort to police the profession was through state licensing of polygraph examiners. While this did not exist in all states, the concept came to be supported by many polygraph examiners as a means of rooting out chart rollers, giving them the aura of true professionals and fending off moves to curtail lie detection by legislation. The importance placed on state licensing is clear from the following passage by two polygraph practitioners.

State polygraph licensing boards began to crop up [in the early and middle 1960s] and make purposeful headway in the investigation of public complaints that alleged personal, embarrassing, or sexually oriented questions associated with polygraphy. The word spread quickly. A good number of examiners had their license to practice suspended or revoked. It was not long before that kind of complaint became a rarity. By the end of 1982, polygraph licensing boards were tougher than boot leather. As a result, strict licensing administration and regulation became a blessing to ethical examiners.^[50]

Legal Control of Lie Detection

The salutory promise of a professional association and state licensing turned out, however, to be wishful thinking. Public suspicion of lie detection persisted, and by the end of the 1970s, at least sixteen states had enacted laws designed to control or prohibit lie detector tests in the workplace.^[51] According to polygraph proponent Ferguson, who welcomes tough state licensing of polygraph examiners, such legislation was really a grotesque aberration of a dark time in the nation's history. It was because of the liberal-dominated 1960s, he explained, that several states "let witch hunts initiated by Mob controlled labor unions, and other rotten-stinking sources, cause 'elected' state representatives to enact ridiculous antipolygraph statutes of the flimsiest sort."^[52] But legislative threats to the polygraph were also emerg-

ing on the federal level. Polygraph control bills were proposed by Senator Sam Ervin (North Carolina) in 1971 and 1973 and by Senator Birch Bayh (Indiana) in 1977.^[53] These bills were not adopted, but in 1987, Representative Pat Williams (Montana) introduced another bill that successfully passed through the entire legislative process and became law. The Employee Polygraph Protection Act, which took effect on December 28, 1988, drastically curtailed the use of lie detection in the United States. In essence, this law prohibits most private sector employers from requiring prospective or current employees to submit to preemployment or periodic lie detector tests. An employer may still request an employee to submit to a lie detector test by polygraph (but not by PSE or other devices) if there is reason to suspect the employee of some specific wrongdoing. All local, state, and federal governmental agencies are exempt from the law and may therefore continue to use any form of lie detection for employment or any other purpose. A number of private firms are also exempt from the provisions of the law, notably those under contract for sensitive work for the Department of Defense, CIA, or FBI; those involved in the manufacture or distribution of controlled substances; and those in the security guard, armored car, or security alarm fields. These exemptions mean that lie detection will certainly not disappear from the American scene. Nevertheless, it will be dramatically reduced: some 80 percent of the two million lie detector tests given annually in the United States fall under the law's ban.^[54]

Those who supported the bill argued that lie detection violates constitutional and legal rights to privacy, to due process of law, and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.^[55] But perhaps the most important concern that led to the legislation had to do with the accuracy of lie detector tests. Especially disquieting is the problem of false positives: that lie detector tests label as dishonest some people who in fact are honest. The particular circumstances of lie detection in the employment setting produce a magnification effect with reference to false positives, such that even with an accuracy rate of 85 percent, the tests generate some alarming results. Representatives of the American Psychological Association explained it in testimony before the

House Subcommittee on Employment Opportunities in the following way:

Assume that polygraph tests are 85 percent accurate, a fair assumption based on the 1983 OTA report [on the validity of lie detector tests]. Consider, under such circumstances, what would happen in the case of screening 1,000 employees, 100 of whom (10 percent) were dishonest. In that situation, one would identity 85 of the dishonest employees, but at the cost of misidentifying 135 (15 percent) of the honest employees. As you can see, in this situation the polygraph tester identifies 220 "suspects," of whom 61 percent are completely innocent. It can be shown mathematically that if the validity of the test drops below 85 percent, then the misidentification rate increases. Similarly, if the base rate of dishonesty is less than 10 percent, and it most likely is, the misidentification rate increases. It is obvious that in the employment screening situation it is a mathematical given that the majority of identified "suspects" are in fact innocent!^[56]

Congress found it to be intolerable that preemployment screening by lie detector tests would reject more honest than dishonest applicants, especially when the stakes involve people's reputations, self-esteem, and opportunity to earn a living.

If lie detection is so drastically flawed, one wonders why the Employee Polygraph Protection Act has so many exceptions. Is it not hypocritical, as some members of the House Committee on Education and Labor registered in their dissenting views on the bill,^[57] to marshal such powerful arguments for outlawing lie detection in the private sector but then to place no impediment whatsoever on its continued use for any purpose in the public sector? Indeed, one journalist reports that lie detection has actually increased in the federal government since the bill went into effect late in the Reagan administration: "The Reagan and Bush administrations have vastly expanded the use of polygraphs in recent years, routinely administering them in the course of 'leak' and national security investigations."^[58] In the Conference Report that adjusted differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill, the exemption of public sector employees was explained as a matter of legislative committee jurisdiction:

By exempting public sector employers and private contractors engaged in intelligence and counterintelligence functions, the conferees recognize the functions performed by these employers are not within the jurisdiction of the committees which reported the legislation, and the policy decisions as to the proper or improper use of such tests are left to the committees of jurisdiction and expertise.^[59]

The Conference Report does not explain, however, why exemptions from the bill are also granted to private companies that operate armored cars, other security service firms, and companies that manufacture or dispense controlled drugs.^[60] Contradicting the arguments about polygraph inaccuracy on which the bill is supposedly based, continued use by the government and these private sector exemptions seem to betray a belief that lie detection really is an effective tool for identifying dishonest employees and applicants, even if certain excesses and imperfections compromise their civil rights. But, the thinking seems to go, that is justified for people charged with keeping political secrets or with special responsibilities in the war on drugs or the custody of money.

A similar ambivalence surfaced during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the sexual harassment charge raised against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in October 1991. Polygraph tests seem to have a special appeal in cases of sexual harassment, which by their nature tend to occur in private, with no disinterested witnesses available. If in past centuries disputes that came down to the word of one litigant against another recommended soliciting the opinion of God via trial by ordeal or battle, in our own time, a lie detector test promises to cut through efforts at dissimulation and get the answer directly from the principals themselves. Judge Thomas's accuser, Anita Hill, did in fact take, and pass, a polygraph test. Although all parties acknowledged difficulties with polygraph tests and their inadmissibility as legal evidence, this was perceived by some as speaking in her favor. Senator Paul Simon (Illinois) noted, "I don't find generally that people who are not telling the truth volunteer to take lie-detector tests,"^[61] while Senator Patrick Leahy (Vermont) said that the test result supported her credibility.^[62]

Curiously, although the test was mentioned by senators and members of the media many times during those tension-filled days of October (and roundly scorned by avid supporters of Judge Thomas such as Utah Senator Orrin Hatch), hardly anyone thought to point out that Congress itself had passed a law against lie detector tests just three years before.^[63]

Written Integrity Tests

Also not covered by the Employee Polygraph Protection Act are paper-and-pencil tests that purport to measure honesty, such as the Reid Report, the Personnel Selection Inventory, the Stanton Survey, and the Wilkerson Pre-Employment Audit. R. Michael O'Bannon, Linda Goldinger, and Gavis Appleby identify forty-six of these so-called honesty or integrity tests currently on the market.^[64] Most of them are designed for preemployment screening, although a few are for use with current employees. Many employers seem to be turning to them as a replacement for the now-banned polygraph. Test publishers report dramatic increases in sales since the antipolygraph act was passed. Approximately 2.5 million such tests are administered annually by an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 companies.^[65] This is already a considerable increase above the two million polygraph tests administered in the United States in 1987, well before the antipolygraph law went into effect.^[66] Budget-conscious employers might have reason to prefer them to polygraph tests because they are considerably cheaper. They cost from $4 to $35, with most tests clustering in the $6 to $15 range.^[67]

Questions are of two basic types. Some solicit outright admission of previous wrongdoings, while others explore attitudes and personality characteristics that may be correlated with honesty of dishonesty. The former ask whether, during the last few years, the subject has shoplifted, broken into a home or business, stolen from an employer, used an alias, driven while intoxicated, written a bad check, had a friend who steals, and so on. Attitude-probing questions might ask the subject to respond with "agree," "disagree," or "undecided" to a broad series of propositions, such

as that it is acceptable to break unjust laws, that people are usually not what they seem to be, that a store employee should not be fired for taking pens and pencils, that it is necessary to have laws governing morals, that smoking a marijuana cigarette is no worse than drinking a Coca-Cola, that employers should not be concerned about drug or alcohol use so long as the employee performs well on the job, that a thief deserves a second chance, that most people cheat on their income tax, that the subject has occasionally felt like breaking something, would never lie, sometimes feels sorry for oneself, has wild daydreams, likes to create excitement, has not had many lucky breaks, would prefer to talk to an interesting person at a social gathering, sometimes goes to places where it would not be good to be seen by an acquaintance.

Integrity tests and scoring techniques come in a variety of formats. In some cases, an answer key and instructions for scoring are included with the packet of tests. In others, written answer sheets may be mailed to the test publishing company for scoring, or the employer may have the result immediately by calling the company and reading the answers over the telephone. Still other tests are taken on a computer and scored automatically.^[68] Telescreen, Inc., markets a test that is taken by means of a touch-tone telephone. The subject listens to questions on the telephone and has three seconds to punch keys signifying "yes," "no," or "not applicable."^[69]

Integrity tests have been developed outside the mainstream of psychological testing, often by polygraphers and always by companies interested in marketing them. Nearly all research on their validity and reliability has been conducted by persons associated with those companies rather than by independent scholars and is unpublished or appears in reports issued by the test publishers rather than in peer-reviewed journals.^[70] Although most of that research reflects favorably on integrity tests, one reviewer has been quoted as saying, "As an analogy, would we consider it good science to publish a review of research on the effects of smoking on health when almost every study was supported by the Tobacco Institute?"^[71]

Even the research on integrity tests conducted by interested parties raises grave suspicion as to their value. The Office of

Technology Assessment identified five studies, all conducted by the publishers of the tests under study, where applicants in retail enterprises were tested and hired regardless of the test result. Their work records were scrutinized to determine how many of those identified as dishonest by the test were found to engage in theft or other dishonest behavior on the job. Study results are summarized in table 1. The briefest examination of these figures indicates that something is seriously wrong with integrity testing. It is, of course, unlikely that all dishonest employees will be apprehended, but it is alarming that (except for Study 4, with its small sample size) those labeled dishonest by integrity tests outnumber those who are actually caught in dishonest behavior by between ten and twenty to one. In four of the five studies (again Study 4 is the odd one out), over 40 percent of those who took integrity tests failed them, and in two of the studies (including Study 2, with by far the largest sample), the dishonest ones represent large majorities. If we are to believe the testimony from representatives of the American Psychological Association that

10 percent or less of workers are dishonest, it is obvious that staggering numbers of honest individuals are branded as dishonest by integrity tests. Reversing the principle of the American justice system that it is better to acquit several guilty individuals than to convict a single innocent one, integrity tests seem to be more akin to the philosophy that "if you hang 'em all, you'll be sure to get the guilty ones."

The Office of Technology Assessment report is a carefully researched document that finds inadequate evidence to confirm or deny the claim that integrity tests predict dishonest behavior^[72] but nevertheless identifies sufficient problems with them to reach the final conclusion that "the potentially harmful effects of systematic misclassification, possible impacts on protected groups, and privacy implications of integrity tests combine to warrant further governmental attention."^[73] Another report on integrity testing, prepared by a special task force of the American Psychological Association, is also critical of integrity tests at numerous points. Many tests have cutoff scores that mark the point between passing and failing or that define zones such as high, medium, and low risk. But information about how test publishers have determined the proper location of cutoff points is insufficient or absent. (The data in table 1 concerning how many pass and fail integrity tests dramatize the cogency of this criticism.) The report also chides some publishers for promoting their tests with fraudulent claims and complains that research and evaluation of test reliability and validity are seriously hampered by the fact that test publishers often conceal the necessary information under a cloak of proprietary interests. Test results could well be affected by insufficient attention to linguistic and cultural variables when tests are translated into other languages such as Spanish.^[74] Curiously, however, and especially in light of the strongly negative testimony from representatives of the American Psychological Association in the congressional hearings on polygraph tests, this report is equivocal. In tenor, it tilts toward employers' needs to curtail theft and promote productivity as against the interests of employees in privacy and personal dignity. Among the assumptions that guided the investigation, the one they identify as "perhaps of the greatest importance" is the

highly pragmatic consideration that if integrity tests were not available, employees would subjected to something worse.^[75] Hence the bottom line:

Despite all our reservations about honesty tests, however, we do not believe that there is any sound basis for prohibiting their development and use; indeed, to do so would only invite alternative forms of preemployment screening that would be less open, scientific, and controllable.^[76]

The OTA report was commissioned by the House Committee on Education and Labor. It is likely that the request was made as a step toward considering legislation to control integrity testing. A similar OTA report on the polygraph was requested and used as an important basis for the development of the Employee Polygraph Protection Act. In earlier forms, the bill that eventually became that law included written and oral as well as mechanical tests, although references to the written and oral forms were deleted in committee pending further study.^[77] Those inclined toward legal control may find integrity testing to be more elusive than polygraph testing. For one thing, the OTA report representing the further study on integrity testing desired by Congress is not nearly so decisively negative as the earlier report concerning the polygraph. Thus Rep. Pat Williams, the Democrat of Montana who requested the OTA report, indicated that he would not sponsor legislation until still more research has been completed. Moreover, efforts to establish legal control of integrity tests might encounter problems in stating exactly what they are. This is relatively straightforward with the polygraph because such a test may be unambiguously defined in terms of the use of a machine that measures physiological responses. To define a written or oral integrity test is much more difficult.^[78] It could scarcely be by label, because publishers could (and often already do) call them "inventories" or "surveys" rather than "tests." Nor would it seem prudent or practical to forbid all employer inquiries into applicants' theft, vandalism, absenteeism, or other problematic behavior in previous jobs. Therefore, potential legislation controlling integrity tests might prove to be considerably more

complicated to write and to enforce than was the case with polygraph and other mechanical tests.^[79]

These issues aside, it is nevertheless possible to criticize the sheer logic that grounds the concept, design, and scoring of honesty tests. In the first place, these tests are intended to measure "honesty," but a single character trait corresponding to that designation may not exist. In a classic study in social psychology, Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May conducted experimental tests of lying, cheating, and stealing among 11,000 children aged 8 to 16 and found little evidence that these behaviors clustered in the same individuals. Someone who might lie is not particularly disposed to steal, a child who might steal could not therefore be expected to cheat, and those who might cheat on one kind of test might not cheat on another. Their conclusion:

Neither deceit nor its opposite, "honesty," are unified character traits, but rather specific functions of life situations. . . . There is no evidence for supposing that children who are more likely to resort to deceptive methods than others would not use honorable methods with equal satisfaction if the situation in which dishonesty is practiced were sufficiently controlled by those who are responsible for their behavior.^[80]

Hartshorne and May's conclusions are not unequivocally accepted. J. Philippe Rushton argues forcefully that their own data, when examined from a different statistical perspective, suggest that lying, cheating, and stealing do tend to cluster (together with selfishness and a few other qualities) in certain people. He concludes that a general personality trait of morality does exist and is more characteristic of some individuals than others.^[81] The issue is not finally resolved, but no one seems to question that one important determinant of whether people will behave honestly or not is the specific situation in which they are placed. This would imply that employers should pay at least as much attention to creating conditions in the workplace that discourage stealing and other undesirable activities and to rewarding honest behavior as they do to tests that claim to categorize some people as honest and others as dishonest in any and all situations.

Again, questions on integrity tests that pertain to past activities are based on the assumption that people who have stolen from employers or engaged in other dishonest behavior in the past are likely to do so again in the future. This is probably correct (within the limits of the situational considerations mentioned above), and about 25 percent of those who take integrity tests do admit to delinquencies of various kinds.^[82] But, of course, it does not follow that only those who admit to past misdeeds have performed them. Surely the group of those who deny previous dishonest behavior contains some wrongdoers who perpetuate their dishonesty by concealing it on the test. These people would be at least as likely to be dishonest employees as those who made admissions on the test. Following the convention of considering a positive result to be an indication of dishonesty and a negative result to be no such indication, these questions are susceptible to false negative results. That is, they may well identify certain persons as not being dishonest who in fact are.

Certainly it is a primary purpose of the attitude-probing questions to smoke out those false negatives, but again there are logical problems. It is not always possible to know precisely how the tests are scored because testing companies often protect this information as proprietary.^[83] This is another factor that complicates research on the tests. Nevertheless, David Lykken reports that highest marks on attitudinal questions go to those who favor harsh punishment for infractions (e.g., that an employee who steals a few dollars each week should be fired) and who assume a high degree of honesty in everyone (e.g., a belief that very few people cheat on their income tax). "The rationale for such scoring," he writes "is that a thief will be unlikely to recommend harsh punishment for acts he might himself commit and he will probably contend that most people are as dishonest as he is."^[84] True enough, but this net catches many more than moral degenerates because, as Lykken points out, "the logic does not work in both directions."^[85] Even if all thieves oppose harsh punishment, it is likely that many who are not thieves also oppose it. Even if all scoundrels believe that people in general are not much good, many who are not themselves scoundrels may share that dark assessment of human nature. Therefore, these questions

have the reverse flaw of those that inquire into past wrongdoing. Now the problem is false positive results: attitudinal questions are likely to label as dishonest a number of people who in fact are honest.

Given these difficulties, the most effective strategy when confronting an honesty test may be to throw honesty to the winds—to learn the kinds of considerations that go into the scoring and to answer the questions accordingly, without regard for truth. One experiment with college students found that a group told to fake the most honest results they could on an integrity test scored a full standard deviation higher on attitudinal questions and half a standard deviation higher on admissions of past misdeeds than a group that was instructed to answer all questions completely honestly.^[86] As for the alternative: "If the questions are to be answered honestly, then what is required [to score well on the test] is a punitive, authoritarian personality combined with a worldview like that of the three monkeys who hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil."^[87] Or, as I was told in earthier language by the proprietor of a fast-food chain in Texas, "We used written honesty tests for a while, but quit when we found that the people we were hiring were just too weird ."

A strategy of beating the test by giving the preferred answers may not always work, because on occasion the rationale behind preferring one answer to another may not be possible to perceive. It may, in fact, not exist. Consider the following two questions, from a Stanton honesty test:

1. Do you think people who steal do it because they always have?

2. Do you agree with this: once a thief . . . always a thief?

According to scoring expectations, honest people will answer "yes" to the first of these questions and "no" to the second.^[88] It is possible, however, that many people—some of them honest and true—may be able to discern little, if any, difference between the questions. While this scoring strategy might foil efforts to beat the test, it is scarcely conducive to confidence in its validity.

To end on an ironic note, honesty tests are not always entirely honest themselves.^[89] In some tests, the questions about previous

wrongdoings are labeled optional, and the directions state that they may be left blank if the subject does not wish to answer. But the instructions to the test administrator advise that anyone who does not answer them should be viewed as probably having something to hide. Again, interviewers may be encouraged to lure test subjects into making damning revelations. In one test, a section to be completed by interview includes a question about the applicant's attendance in school. The instructions to the interviewer, stressing that school attendance record is a highly significant indicator of the likelihood of success at work, recommend minimizing its importance by posing the issue with a wink and a smile, such as, "John, when I was in school I often found that going to class was a waste of time. How about you?"

4
No Sanctuary

O Lord, thou has searched me and known me! thou discernest my thoughts from afar. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Search me, oh God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Psalm 139

Of the two main theses this book aims to establish—that tests frequently create the personal characteristics they purport to measure and that testing is a means of exercising power—lie detection, a technique for surveillance and control, is obviously most relevant to the second. Using the largely descriptive account of chapter 3 as a foundation, here we investigate how lie detector tests exert power and domination over those who take them. The

analysis leads to the conclusion that lie detection represents an important advance in what Foucault has called the "disciplinary technology of power."^[1]

Communing/Communicating with the Polygraph

When administered with care by experienced and proficient interrogator-examiners, polygraph tests are potent instruments for bringing information to light which people wish to keep hidden. Their power to elicit confessions and revelations may be analyzed in terms of the framework of communication established by the test. A polygraph test replaces the normal pattern of dialogue between two persons with a matrix of communication involving four parties: the polygraph machine, the examiner, and the subject, who is bisected, Cartesian-like, into physical and mental substance, body and mind. The synapse of information transfer occurs between the two physical objects or machines: on the one side, the polygraph, and on the other, the subject as body, a bundle of physiological functions. Standing somewhat to the side are the two mental objects or persons: the polygraph examiner and the subject again, but this time as a volitional and moral agent.

The two machines commune together as the polygraph reaches out to embrace the subject's body with bands, tubes, and clips. The body responds loverlike to the touch, whispering secrets to the polygraph in tiny squeezes, twinges, thrills, and nudges. But both machines are treacherous. The body, seduced by the polygraph's embrace, thoughtlessly prattles the confidences it shares with the subject's mind. The polygraph, a false and uncaring confidant, publishes the secrets it has learned on a chart for all to read. The subject as mind, powerless to chaperone the affair, watches helplessly as the carnal entwining of machines produces its undoing.

Even as he sat in the polygraph examining room chair and watched Dee Wheeler secure the instrument's attachments to his body, he joked and laughed, confident he would leave the room a free man. But his smile faded when the instrument's slender recording pens

spelled out the killer's escape route and pinpointed the spot where he buried the murder weapon.^[2]

But when his brain and autonomic nervous system put deception criteria on the polygrams, Abrose broke down and confessed.^[3]

C. B. Hanscom bore down. His question formulations became exacting and precise. Aaron's autonomic nervous system, in a manner of speaking, blew its control fuse. Hanscom backed off, then began a delicate and deliberate interrogation. It wasn't long before Aaron had confessed not only to the burglary in question but also to the murder.^[4]

Advocates of the psychological stress evaluator (a machine that produces a sound wave chart from a tape recording of the subject's voice) point to the absence of physical connections as an advantage, but in fact the reverse is true. The physical grip of the polygraph contributes to the subject's sense of impotence before the machine, and this is one reason why the polygraph is more effective than the PSE and other lie detection devices in breaking through subject resistance to provoke confessions.

We will return to the subject as mind in a moment, but first we need to acknowledge the fourth figure in the communication matrix: the polygraph examiner. If this person is an incompetent amateur or an unscrupulous chart roller, the test does not approach its potential. The full power of the polygraph is realized only when manipulated by a determined and skilled examiner. Profiles of such individuals are uncommon; it is conceivable that Ferguson, who on occasion refers to them as "champions of justice," goes a little overboard with his:

Who and what may be termed a "competent polygraph examiner"? We might simply describe him as a rare breed, dedicated to the welfare of his country, confident of his ability, well trained and educated; he is an experienced interrogator with a profound knowledge of the psychology of human behavior, thoroughly versed in law and physiology, compassionate and understanding, fair and impartial, ethically oriented. He has been around. He has lived.^[5]

The effective examiner plays two distinct roles in a polygraph test. First he^[6] is the expert technician. He affixes the polygraph's sensors to various parts of the subject's body, calibrates the machine before the test begins in earnest, carefully instructs the subject to relax and to sit completely still while the machine is running, asks the questions in an even monotone, and interprets the charts. In this role, he umpires the tryst between the two machines; he is detached and objective, the consummate scientist. "The primary function of the polygraphist," explains examiner and polygraph theoretician Sylvestro F. Reali, "is to allow the subject to physiologically show the polygraphist the truth from within the subject himself. Allowing for no input to that end from the examiner."^[7]

The second role reveals the human side of the examiner. He seems genuinely to like the subject, to be pulling for the subject to "pass" the test. If deception is indicated on some of the questions, the examiner spares no effort to identify extraneous issues that might be responsible for it, and his greatest satisfaction is to prove the subject not guilty. He seems to understand the feeling of helplessness experienced by the subject in the face of a lie detector test and to sympathize. He wants to assist in any way he can. But the examiner is frustrated in these benevolent intentions unless the subject allows him to help. It is necessary that the subject place complete confidence in the examiner and cooperate fully so that, together, they might bring the test to a happy conclusion.

This, of course, is a role that examiners sometimes adopt treacherously, with the intention of cajoling the subject into a confession. But many examiners are sincere in this posture, and their most satisfying cases are those where they managed, after hard and creative effort, to clear an innocent individual suspected of a crime. One examiner told me of a young man he was called to test, who was accused of stealing stereo equipment from the store where he worked. On the first polygraph chart, the subject's responses to the relevant questions about the theft indicated deception. The polygraph examiner, however, was not convinced of the suspect's guilt. Following the first chart, he interviewed the subject at great length to ascertain whether some extraneous issue

might be causing the anxiety that appeared on the chart. Finally, taking the examiner into his confidence, the young man confessed that some ten years before he had been involved in a homosexual encounter. He was afraid that if his employer ever found out, it would cost him his job. The examiner assured him that this matter was irrelevant to the issue of the stolen equipment and that the secret was safe with him. This reassured the subject, and the examiner then turned on the polygraph and ran a second chart. No deception was indicated on the relevant questions about the theft, and the young man was cleared.

Polygraph examiners frequently report that "spillover" from anxiety about extraneous issues, as in this case, is a major cause of "false positives" (charts that indicate deception although the subject is actually innocent) in lie detector tests. Efforts are made to minimize this possibility by trying to put the subject at ease during a pretest interview, a process that normally includes reviewing all the questions that will be asked on the test. Often an "outside issue" question—one that asks if the subject is afraid that the examiner might probe into some issue that has not been discussed previously—is included on the test. The rationale is that a subject who is convinced that such outside issues will not be raised will be more relaxed during the test. Alternatively, as happened in the case of the homosexual encounter described above, the catharsis of confessing to an outside issue may relieve tension that could produce a false positive result. In either event, so the theory goes, anxiety stemming from extraneous matters is reduced and is therefore unlikely to produce charts that falsely indicate deception.

One method that helpful examiners use to avoid false positive results is through further inquiry into the control question (to which any subject is expected to respond deceptively and which is used as a point for comparison with responses to the relevant questions). If the initial chart indicates deception on a relevant question, Inbau and Reid recommend that the examiner pursue the source of deception by telling the subject that the charts indicate lies but that probably the deception is spilling over from the response to the control question (which in their system is, "Did you ever steal anything in your life?").^[8] The examiner goes on to

say that to clear the charts, it is necessary to be entirely honest on the control question. This is presented as a minor inconvenience to satisfy the peculiarities of the polygraph but of no real consequence because past thefts are not relevant to the present investigation. The subject is then invited to confess all past thefts, after which another chart is run, this time with the control question rephrased as, "Other than what you have already told me, have you stolen anything in your life?" This process may continue through several more charts, the examiner explaining that deception is still indicated and urging the subject to reveal any additional past wrongdoings. Ultimately, the subject is utterly purged of secrets about the past, the charts are clear of any indication of deception, and the polygraph examiner has fulfilled the professional obligation to preserve the innocent from false accusations.

A well-conducted polygraph test has an uncanny capacity to convince the subject that one's most private thoughts cannot be defended against intrusion. One is maneuvered into a position where the only option available seems to be confession. A young woman explained it this way:

You come in feeling like an honest, decent person and then he starts telling you that you're showing a reaction to some question about drugs or stealing and you try to think of a reason, things you've done, maybe years ago. You get to feeling as if the all-important thing is to get the machine to say that you're all right. You feel as if the thing can almost read your mind but not really accurately, it exaggerates, gets things mixed up. And you feel that if you tell the man everything you can think of, everything you've ever done that you might feel guilty about, why then finally it might come out with a clean record.^[9]

An examiner told me that one of his subjects marveled, "You know more about me than my husband does," and polygraph specialist John Reid claimed, "We get better results than a priest does."^[10] The lengths people go to bare their souls before the polygraph would be funny if so much pathos were not involved. Among employees polygraphed in a fast-food restaurant in Florida, one neatly wrote on the consent form, "I owe 99 cents for soft drinks.

I also owe 30 cents or more for small sundae," and appended her initials. Another confessed, "I have taken coffee and the inside of onion rings without paying," and a third divulged, that "Since I have been employed, I have given ice away with water."

Confessions, of course, are not always innocuous. It may be that the subject really is guilty of the malfeasance under investigation—a circumstance that the thorough polygraph test is, of course, designed to ascertain. And occasionally the extraneous information that is revealed is of much weightier import than the matter being investigated. One examiner told me that he has even gotten confessions of murder in routine preemployment screenings.

The impotence of the subject as mind in the lie detector situation sometimes impels people to lose confidence in their own convictions and to become abjectly dependent on the examiner. Then they may offer to confess to the delict under investigation even if they are innocent. Examiners I have interviewed report that it has sometimes been necessary to tell subjects, very carefully, not to confess unless they actually committed the crime. Working on the basis of a strong police presumption that a woman was guilty of a certain crime, an examiner succeeded in extracting a confession after about forty-five minutes of work with the polygraph. He then discovered, however, that she was unable to supply certain factual details about the case that the perpetrator would surely know. He concluded that she was in fact innocent, but it took him hours to convince her of that and to persuade her to retract the confession.

The experience of confessing before the lie detector may remain an uncomfortable memory for years. During a preemployment polygraph screening, a meat cutter I interviewed was asked if he had done anything for which he could be sent to jail. Although the examiner assured him he was only interested in the previous six or seven years, the urge to confess stimulated by the test resulted in an admission of something he had done some fifteen years before. He got the job, but his experience with the polygraph has rankled ever since. "They've got something that's mine," he told me. He worries that this information, which he considers to have been stolen from him, appears on his employment record.

Nor is such a concern necessarily misplaced. I asked several polygraph and PSE examiners what they do with confessions that are unrelated to the matter they have been charged to investigate. One said he never passes it on, but others answered that they write the information down and include it in their reports. Therefore, it is not always in the subject's interest to extend the trust that the accomplished polygraph examiner courts so ardently. It has been explained how police might encourage a suspect to submit to a polygraph test when their evidence is not strong enough for an indictment. The suspect is told that the test represents the best chance to clear oneself, but in reality, it is a last-ditch effort to obtain a confession, without which the case will be dropped. The police officer who explained this is convinced that when the department uses lie detector tests on its own personnel in internal investigations, the same game is being played. "They tell you they want to clear you of this," he said, "but really they're trying to hang it on you."

Asymmetry and the Power of Lie Detection

Our definition of a test includes the notion that it is an information-obtaining device applied by an agency to an individual. It is obvious that the individual to whom a lie detector test is applied enters the test situation alone and essentially defenseless. The test giver, in contrast, is an agent who comes to the test armed with technological apparatus and the official authority of the sponsoring organization. It is an utterly asymmetrical situation that pits the solitary subject against the full weight and resources of the organization. Even when the purpose of the test has to do with some possible benefit for the subject, such as screening for a job, the asymmetry of the situation is in the forefront. The test giver asks the questions, and the subject answers them, with full recognition by everyone concerned that the organization will evaluate the answers and use the resulting information to decide what to do about the subject. These observations apply to written integrity tests as well as polygraph tests. In fact, they apply to essentially all types of tests, and they highlight an important

aspect of the power that characterizes testing in general. Information still flows essentially one way from subject to test givers, that information is extracted and processed according to an agenda and technological apparatus controlled by the test givers, and it is still used by the test-giving organization to make decisions about the individual test taker. The sense of impotence may be exaggerated in the case of a polygraph test, when the subject is literally in the clutches of the machine's sensing apparatus, but takers of other kinds of tests are also held in the grasp—now metaphorical but no less meaningful—of test-giving organizations. As with preindustrial authenticity tests such as trial by ordeal, the asymmetry that places a scrutinizing organization on one side and a scrutinized individual on the other is a relation of power. If we are to understand the social consequences of lie detection, it is essential to know how that power works.

On occasion, it works so well that it literally creates what it purports to measure rather than identifying something that was previously there. I am referring to cases where people, disoriented by the circumstances of a polygraph test, come to distrust their own memories and confess to crimes they did not commit. Confessions can be created in the crucible of polygraph tests with much less expenditure of violence and energy than was visited on those unfortunates of four or five centuries ago who, utterly broken by torture, would come to believe that they were, indeed, witches. A particularly effective technique is for the polygraph examiner to run a chart and pin it to the wall. He then points to the response monitored for the relevant or "hot" question and asks why the subject "hit" on it. (In fact, the response may indicate deception only very slightly, if at all. But subjects normally have no knowledge of how to read polygraph charts and so have no way to interpret what they are shown apart from what the examiner says.) The examiner then leaves the room, allowing the subject to study the chart and stew about the response. The examiner returns and runs another chart, asking the same questions in the same order. The subject knows full well when the hot question is coming and is worried that the chart might again indicate deception on it, a worry that subsides after the question has been asked and answered. The new chart is pinned on the wall, and,

sure enough, the subject did "hit" on the relevant question again, even more this time, and a distinctive "peak of tension" pattern (responses building up over a few questions prior to the hot one, climaxing on it, and then relaxing on subsequent questions) starts to appear. The subject is again left alone to ponder the chart, after which the examiner returns and runs yet another chart—same questions, same order. The subject is increasingly nervous about the course that events are taking, and when this chart is pinned on the wall, the peak of tension pattern is unmistakable, even to untrained eyes. Confused and bewildered by a pattern of physiological responses that objective, scientific measures make obvious, ultimately the subject concludes that his or her own memory must be blotted out or playing tricks and confesses. What else could one do? After all, the subject is there alone, a single person relying on memory that, as everyone knows, can be fallible. How much can that count against the growing suspicion of a trained examiner and the scientific evidence of a precise machine, recorded so obviously that even the increasingly distraught subject can see it more clearly with each new chart?

The preceding scenario is likelier to occur in polygraph than in written integrity tests, primarily because the polygraph is used for meticulous interrogations in connection with particular crimes while written tests are used for brief and general checks of the honesty of job applicants who are not under suspicion for any specific misdeed. The following observations concerning the power of lie detection pertain, however, with at least equal force to written integrity tests as to the polygraph.

A Matter of Trust

One ingenious technique to identify a guilty party, reported from India, is to bring all those suspected of a crime together before a tent. They are told that inside is a magic donkey that will bray if a guilty individual pulls its tail but will make no sound if the one administering the tug is innocent. The suspects are then sent into the pitch dark tent one at a time and told to pull the donkey's tail. They are not told that the tail (which is actually attached to no

donkey at all) had been liberally smeared with lampblack. After the last one emerges from the tent, they are reassembled and ordered to show their hands. The one with clean hands is judged to be the guilty party.^[11]

Setting aside the obvious point that this technique could not be used very often because the word would quickly get around, consideration of it reveals one of the prime characteristics of the asymmetrically skewed logic of lie detection. This can be brought out by the question: why should it be expected that only one of the suspects would emerge with clean hands? Any reasonably prudent individual, innocent or guilty, would probably refrain from pulling the tail. After all, why should one trust an ass, no matter how reputedly magic or sage, not to make a mistake? If any suspect should in fact emerge with dirty hands, that person might be judged innocent by the investigators but would also have shown oneself to be a fool.^[12]

This vignette reveals a core assumption in the asymmetrical logic of lie detection: innocent or honest test takers are expected to behave completely ingenuously in the test, but the street is one way because the test itself is disingenuous. It is, in this case, a trick based on the lie that the object to be pulled is a genuine donkey's tail. Equivalents of a fake donkey's tail are found everywhere in modern lie detection. One is the interviewer who cajoles an applicant into destructive admissions by framing questions in the spirit of a friendly conspiracy, such as, "You know, Jack, when I have something better to do than go to work, I just call in sick. How about you?" Another is the police who tell a suspect that the case looks very bad and the only way to clear oneself is to take a polygraph test, when in fact the case is so flimsy that the polygraph is used in a final effort to get a confession before dropping the charges. Stanley Abrams, a lie detector advocate, proudly notes that polygraph examiner training schools require students to take a polygraph test to assure that they are of "good moral caliber"^[13] and, in the same book, urges these morally straight examiners to deceive subjects (if often for their own good) about the import of test results to make the test sufficiently "meaningful" to them that their responses will not be muted by nonchalance.^[14]

Asymmetrical expectations concerning truth are matched or exceeded by asymmetrical expectations about trust. While I have stressed that specific information in these tests flows in one direction only, from test taker to test giver, the very fact that a test is given conveys one unmistakable message in the opposite direction—that the organizations giving the tests do not trust the individuals who must take them. Takers of polygraph or integrity tests, in contrast, are expected to respond to test givers with complete trust and openness. Theoreticians of lie detector tests depict honest persons as peoplewho hold nothing back from public inspection; who, having done nothing wrong, have nothing to hide.^[15] They are trusting souls, fully convinced both of the efficacy of modern science (as represented by the polygraph or integrity tests) and of the essential goodwill of others, including (perhaps especially) the test givers.

This belief that the innocent have in the accuracy of the lie-detector, and that they will be exonerated, is usually shown by their attitude. This attitude is one of genuine confidence in both the machine and the examiner. Because of this confidence they regard the examination as an experience they will want to relate to their family and friends. . . . [They are] at ease, light-hearted, and talkative. However, they are very sincere and their straight-forwardness is displayed when they discuss the case during the interview.^[16]

Comments on a questionnaire administered to 220 individuals immediately after taking a routine polygraph test indicated that a number of them left the test with increased respect and confidence in the polygraph, and that they "found the test new, interesting, and enjoyable."^[17] The asymmetry is again painfully obvious: these depictions do not explain why honest applicants and employees should extend such confidence to the very persons and organizations that, by requiring a polygraph test, obviously have no confidence in them.

In the minds of test givers, people who do not manifest the total openness in the foregoing profile of the honest individual are suspect from the start. One polygraph examiner told me, quite vehemently, that the only people who complain about lie detector

tests are those who have something to hide and that the notion that polygraph tests represent an invasion of privacy is "a bunch of bull brought up by people who can't pass the polygraph." Interviewers are instructed to beware of certain "weasel" words that indicate dishonesty, such as an applicant evasively explaining the departure from a previous job in terms of "personal reasons," "personality conflict," or "I was laid off."

Experienced polygraph examiners often express confidence in their ability to identify guilty subjects quite apart from the test itself. Usually the telltale signs of guilt pertain to deviance from the above depiction of fully frank individuals who, with nothing to hide, compliantly welcome any and all intrusions into their private lives.

Muscular flexing, or a shifting or lifting of the cuff arm, during the early part of the test questioning, which is ordinarily accompanied by the subject's complaint that the cuff is hurting his arm, is usually indicative of deception. The innocent subject will almost always reserve any such movement or complaint until the latter part or end of the test.^[18]

Guilty subjects tend to be late for their test appointments, they appear quite nervous, they will not look the examiner in the eye, they frequently try to convince the examiner that they are deeply religious, they complain that the test is taking too long, and they want to get away as soon as possible, claiming to have another appointment; "when leaving they often quickly shake the examiner's hand and hurry out of the laboratory."^[19]

Warren Holmes, one of the most celebrated interrogators and polygraph examiners in the United States, explains some of the intricacies involved in distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty as follows:

The guilty tell their story in general terms without any specific details. . . . The innocent offer infinite details, and tell their story in such an animated way that you say to yourself, "Damn, nobody could make that up." When you listen to an innocent person, you can sense that he is reliving an actual experience. The innocent sound and look like they're telling the truth.^[20]

One wonders if it is quite that simple, however, especially on learning that the general/specific distinction is flatly contradicted by another polygraph expert. For Travis Patterson, it is the liar who refers to specifics, while "the innocent will be general in his remarks."^[21]

The notion that honest people gladly take lie detector tests is not easy to establish, because it runs counter to the widespread opinion that people—innocent as well as guilty—are fearful of such tests and do not wish to submit to them. Therefore, to convince both others and themselves, proponents of lie detection devote a good deal of imagination to advancing the proposition that the tests are voluntary. One simple expedient is to tell applicants that a polygraph or written integrity test is a prerequisite for the job and then ask if they are willing to take it. The overwhelming agreement by job applicants to do so is then presented as evidence for the voluntary nature of the test. A protest that applicants agree to take the test only because otherwise they will be dropped from consideration for the job is usually dismissed with the response that the individual is under no compulsion to apply for the job in the first place.

Ratiocinations regarding current employees are similar. My research revealed that if an officer in a metropolitan police department refuses to take a lie detector test in the course of an internal investigation, the chief of police issues a direct order to submit to the test. At that point, the officer who persists in refusing is terminated. It is still maintained that the polygraph test is voluntary, however, because the reason for termination is cited as insubordination to the chief's order, not refusal to take the test.

The zenith of the theory that honest people happily bare themselves to lie detection is represented by a few polygraph examiners and employers who have managed to convince themselves that employees, far from viewing lie detection as a weapon deployed against them, welcome it as promoting their own security and morale. One polygraph examiner explained it to me as follows. Workers in relatively large establishments often do not know each other personally. If the polygraph is used in preemployment screenings, that proves to people that their fellow employees are "decent people." A manager from Zale Corporation, a

large jewelry chain that used the polygraph extensively, said, "We explain very carefully to the employee that the best way we know how to make sure the persons working around him are honest, and not stealing, is through polygraphy. . . . Ten percent of our profits, before taxes, goes into an employee profit-sharing plan. It isn't hard to convince the employee that dishonesty costs him personally. Our employees don't want dishonest co-workers around."^[22] More than that, the polygraph is transformed into a bulwark of protection for the innocent employee. Each employee of Zale Corporation is told "that if he ever should be suspected or accused of any wrong doing, the polygraph is instantly available as a means of clearing himself."^[23]

By now we have disappeared completely into the magic wood, where fake donkey tails hang from every tree. The very instrument of the employer's abiding mistrust of employees is promoted as something not just to be tolerated by those against whom it is directed but actually to be welcomed by them as a boost to their morale. The machine—a literal objectification of mistrust—is held up to employees as a certification of their trust in each other. More, the polygraph is redefined as an instrument of solace for those unlucky enough to fall under the shadow of false suspicion, whether in employment or criminal circumstances. Lie detection becomes a helping profession, a fortress for the protection of the innocent. This ideal is enshrined in the Statement of Purpose of the American Polygraph Association:

Fortunate is he who, being accused or suspected of misconduct, is able to produce credible witnesses to attest to his innocence. Now therefore, and be it known henceforth, it shall be the primary responsibility of the American Polygraph Association to foster and to perpetuate an accurate, reliable and scientific means for the protection of the innocent. To verify the truth—fairly, impartially and objectively—shall be our purpose.^[24]

As a step toward putting this principle into practice, in 1960, the APA offered a polygraph test to anyone who claimed wrongful conviction of a capital crime.^[25]

Polygraph supporters recognize that these general claims about the positive attitude that honest and innocent subjects

adopt toward the test need to be bolstered with empirical evidence. To that end, a number of surveys have been conducted to ask people who have taken polygraph tests if they found them to invade their privacy or to be humiliating or offensive in any other way. Some of these demonstrate a certain concern for objectivity, but others belong to that part of the spectrum far beyond the point where credibility has been strained to the breaking point and snapped. A marvelous example of the latter is the survey conducted in 1978 by the Washoe County Sheriff's Department in Reno, Nevada. Deputy Sheriff and polygraph examiner Richard Putnam resolved to get at the truth of the common accusation that lie detector tests violate people's privacy by conducting a survey among 85 applicants for positions in the Sheriff's Department. The survey document is remarkable and deserves to be reproduced in full.^[26]

SURVEY

I, _____________, submitted myself to polygraph examination on _______________ at the Washoe County Sheriff's Department, after being advised of my constitutional rights and the fact that the examination was voluntary.

No promise or reward was made to me for answering the following questions:

1. Were you in any manner embarrassed, humiliated, or degraded by any part of the polygraph examination process?

Yes or No ___

2. In your opinion, was there any objectionable or unwarranted invasion of your privacy during the conduct of the polygraph examination?

Yes or No ___

3. Should you be hired, do you believe you will be more secure and comfortable in your work environment knowing that polygraph is used to assist in personnel evaluation?

Yes or No ___

I have answered these questions of my own free will and hereby authorize the release of my answers to these questions to any person or parties having an interest in them.

Signature of Person Examined: ______________________

Examiner's Signature: __________________________

Putnam reports with satisfaction that all 85 applicants completed the affidavit even though they were assured that participation in the survey was voluntary. The results were equally gratifying: subjects unanimously affirmed, on question 2, that their privacy had not been violated by the test; 83 of them answered yes to the third question, I answered no, and 1 had no opinion. A hint of trouble appeared when 6 applicants responded yes to the first question. But, Putnam hastens to assure us, "five of the six indicated their answer was based solely upon embarrassment caused by information they provided to the examiner which had not been directly solicited by the questions asked."^[27] This absolves the examiner from any suspicion of impropriety (while incidentally providing further evidence of the polygraph's capacity to elicit confessions) and cleans up the only place in the survey where the rave reviews of the polygraph drop below 97 percent.

The way in which the questionnaire was administered severely compromises Putnam's survey results. Because they want to be hired, job applicants are highly interested parties in the circumstances of this research. Their primary consideration in completing a questionnaire is not to say what they really think but to say what they think the employer wants to hear and, above all, to avoid saying anything that might dispose the employer against them. Therefore, if research based on a questionnaire is to be credible in these circumstances, it is essential that subjects be convinced that it is impossible to identify who completed what questionnaires. In this case, the form's official-looking stipulations, the required signatures of both subject and examiner, and the authorization of release of the answers to any interested party reduce the whole "study" to a travesty of research. The only surprise is that results were not 100 percent on all three questions.

A survey that initially appears to have been more sensitive to methodological considerations was conducted in 1980 by Toronto polygraph examiner Ben A. Silverberg. He collected questionnaires from 102 job applicants and 118 current employees immediately after they had taken routine polygraph tests. To protect anonymity, subjects were left alone to complete their questionnaires, which they then deposited in a sealed container. The polygraph again passed with flying colors. Responses to ques-

tions about fairness of the test, invasion of privacy, willingness to take it on a regular basis, and so on, ranged from 89 to 100 percent favorable to the test.^[28]

Silverberg's is one of several surveys, all of which show similar results. As Frank Horvath generalized the results of seven surveys of attitudes of those who have taken preemployment polygraph tests,

between 85 and 95 percent of the persons who have experienced polygraph examinations said that their examinations were not offensive, objectionable, or an invasion of their privacy. In addition, the overwhelming majority of these people expressed a willingness to take polygraph tests in the future should the situation require it.^[29]

A methodological difficulty with these studies, however, is that subjects were asked to complete questionnaires immediately after taking the polygraph test, while still in the examiner's office, and, therefore, before the result of their job application was known. It is possible that they felt their anonymity might not be respected and that their responses might jeopardize their chances of being hired.^[30] Further consideration of the Silverberg study suggests that its strategy of leaving subjects alone to complete their questionnaires and drop them in a sealed container was not sufficient to assure anonymity. For one thing, respondents might have realized that their questionnaires could be removed from the container immediately after they left and thus easily linked to them. Further, "each questionnaire instructed the subject to complete a short biographical sketch."^[31] It would not be difficult to connect the biographical sketches with information on application forms or employment records to identify respondents to particular questionnaires. Subjects who were concerned about these possibilities had good reason to be, because Silverberg did in fact subvert the ostensible anonymity of the study. One of his tables breaks down the responses to the eight questions according to the 185 subjects who were recommended for hiring or retention, the 14 who were given a qualified recommendation, and the 21 who were not recommended.^[32] How could he have done that unless he knew who filled out what questionnaires?

To avoid some of these problems, Frank Horvath and Richard Phannenstill conducted a survey in which questionnaires were mailed to respondents well after hiring decisions had been made. Questionnaires were mailed to 596 individuals who had taken preemployment polygraph tests in Milwaukee between 1983 and 1985, and 218 responses were received. Responses were generally positive toward polygraph tests, although less enthusiastically than in the other studies: 72 percent found the test they had taken to be fair, 82 percent said the questions were not objectionable, and 73 percent would take a polygraph test in connection with another job application.^[33] A methodological problem may also be detected in this study, however, because "although no identifying information was requested from respondents, each questionnaire was conspicuously identified with a code number."^[34] This enabled the researchers to correlate questionnaire responses about attitudes toward the test with information such as admissions of wrongdoing that the individual might have made during the test and whether or not test results warranted recommendation for employment. Research procedures were established which prevented identification of the respondents. Nevertheless, the conspicuous code number on each questionnaire may well have aroused their suspicion that the researchers intended to connect returned questionnaires with the names of individuals to whom they had been sent, and that could have had an effect on the answers.

On the other side of the issue, Lawrence White's psychological experiments and interviews suggest that applicants respond to preemployment polygraph screenings with lowered self-esteem, diminished satisfaction with the job, and increased inclination to steal from the employer.^[35] This indicates that lie detection might actually exacerbate the very conditions it aims to curtail. I conducted extended interviews with eight individuals who have taken polygraph tests as preemployment, periodic, or specific investigatory tests. Although my sample is very small, the results correspond much more closely to White's findings than to the studies that report positive attitudes toward polygraph tests on the part of those who take them. Nearly all of my subjects expressed resentment that the sheer circumstances of the test

placed them under suspicion of wrongdoing. They judged the test to be embarrassing or uncomfortable and an invasion of their privacy. The test was a particularly unpleasant experience for three of my subjects. One of them, who worked for a janitorial service, was tested under suspicion of theft by what seems to have been an unscrupulous chart roller, who even demanded that she pay for the test herself. She lost her job as a result of the test. Another subject was tested in connection with missing money at the retail store where she worked. She was so humiliated by being suspected and required to take the test that she intended to quit her job as soon as the actual culprit was identified. (She planned to remain until then because she did not want to give the impression that she was quitting because she was guilty.) The third individual was subjected to questions pertaining to her sexual activity and induced to admit to lesbian encounters, although this issue was irrelevant to the ostensible purpose of the test. Nevertheless, this woman took the position that, for all their problems, the tests are still warranted because they contribute to controlling serious social problems such as employee theft and drug use.

Lie Detection and the Disciplinary Technology of Power

A common reaction to lie detector tests is to despise them as unwarranted and humiliating invasions of privacy that, particularly in light of their questionable accuracy, may work a great deal of harm on helpless and innocent people. Certainly, the discussion of the asymmetry of power and trust entailed by lie detection is conducive to a conclusion of this sort. But to reach that conclusion and leave the matter there does not generate a satisfying analysis of lie detection. It does not explain, for example, why some people (certainly fewer than the figures suggested by polygraph proponents but probably a significant number nonetheless) quite willingly submit themselves to lie detector tests. Nor does it encourage exploration of what lie detection can reveal about the nature of contemporary society. A more instruc-

tive path is one that delays judgment of lie detection and investigates further the asymmetry that lie detection establishes between potent test givers and impotent test takers, asking what kind of social system it is that succeeds in placing people in such a vulnerable position vis-à-vis the organizations that demand to test them.

The genius of the polygraph test is its promised road to exoneration, which, however, frequently requires the subject to reveal much extraneous information along the way. The examiner may tell the subject that deception is indicated on a relevant question but then suggests that the reason is probably knowledge of the wrongdoing of someone else or spillover from anxiety about some unrelated issue. To clear oneself of suspicion, it then becomes necessary to locate the cause of the problem. Captured by the imperative to get the charts to look right, one may end up pouring out every private, embarrassing, or incriminating fact that memory can locate about oneself or others, until the subject is utterly drained and the chart, finally, runs clear, purged of all indications of deception. And all of this happens because it is time for a periodic test, or the subject happens to work in a department where a crime may have been committed, or is, in all innocence, simply applying for a job.

The necessity to divulge extraneous information is, polygraph examiners insist, just a by-product of the peculiar technology of polygraph tests. It is instructive, however, to imagine that it is not an epiphenomenon at all but the point of the whole process. Then investigations of wrongdoing, periodic checks on employees, and the screening of job applicants emerge as pretexts for getting people into a situation where they are forced to reveal a wide range of potentially damaging information about themselves. From this perspective, lie detection expands immensely in significance to become a technique for maintaining surveillance over people's departures from social norms for some quite general purpose. But what might that purpose be?

A theoretical context in terms of which this expanded view of lie detection makes sense has been developed by social historian and philosopher Michel Foucault. His book, Discipline and Punish ,^[36] is an analysis of the evolution of power in Western

civilization. Until about the eighteenth century, power was applied by means of a veritable orgy of violence, examples of which we have encountered in the ordeal and trial by battle. Foucault describes how the bodies of those found guilty of defying the king's justice and power were burned, broken, crushed, cut, or torn asunder in public spectacles of torture and execution designed to terrorize all who might contemplate challenging the established order. In the end, it was, however, an inefficient strategy. Power was applied in sporadic explosions of excess rather than in regular and measured doses. The agony of the victim might attract the crowd's sympathy rather than focusing their attention on the intended lesson that if they did not mind their own behavior, they could well come to a similarly sticky end. If the executioners bungled their job, the ostensibly omnipotent and terrible justice of the king would look foolish and the people might be tempted to confront the king's violence with rebellious violence of their own.^[37]

For a brief period at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the principles of the Enlightenment were applied to the exercise of power and punishment when efforts were made to base conformity to social rules on people's rationality. Criminals had broken the social contract, placing themselves beyond the bounds of society. Punishments should dramatize their status as social exiles and vary appropriately to the specific crimes by which they had defied the social order. Prisons would be open to the public, for the edification of schoolchildren and others, who would observe and learn the inexorably rational connection between breaking the law and paying for it.^[38] The appeal to reason seems not to have been an effective means of social control, however, and it was not long before the application of power took yet another form. It shifted toward the development of subjects who were disciplined to embody—automatically and unthinkingly—all the proper habits for following authority. This is the disciplinary technology of power, which Foucault describes in terms of the military dream of society:

Historians of ideas usually attribute the dream of a perfect society to the philosophers and jurists of the eighteenth century; but there

was also a military dream of society; its fundamental reference was not to the state of nature, but to the meticulously subordinated cogs of a machine, not to the primal social contract, but to permanent coercions, not to fundamental rights, but to indefinitely progressive forms of training, not to the general will but to automatic docility.^[39]

Such a system is especially well suited to the special requirements of industrial and postindustrial society, where individuals must be trained to perform highly specialized tasks and where they must perform them regularly and reliably so as to maintain the proper coordination of the mutually dependent components of the economy and other parts of society.

The disciplinary technology of power requires that people be kept under regular surveillance, in order that deviations from proper behavior might be rapidly detected and immediately redressed. This allows corrective power to be applied sparingly, for small doses are sufficient to curtail small strayings. One instrument designed to facilitate surveillance was Jeremy Bentham's panopticon.^[40] Here was an arrangement whereby inmates could be isolated from each other in individual cells and conveniently observed from a central tower. A peculiar advantage of the panopticon in terms of efficient utilization of resources was that as the inmates could not see into the observation tower, an observer did not actually have to be present at all times. Never knowing when they were being observed, inmates would have to behave as if the surveillance were constant. Although Bentham's architectural device has been used primarily in the construction of prisons, the full title of his book makes it clear that he by no means intended it to be limited to penal institutions: "Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House, Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to any Sort of Establishment, in Which Persons of any Description are to be Kept Under Inspection: and in Particular to Penitentiary-Houses, Prisons, Houses of Industry, Work-Houses, Poor-Houses, Manufactories, Mad-Houses, Lazarettos, Hospitals, and Schools . . ."

A different technique of surveillance was tried for a time by the Ford Motor Company when Henry Ford, concerned by the effect

of high turnover rates on productivity, resolved to attract and keep good workers by making them an offer they could not refuse. In 1914, when the going wage for unskilled labor was $2.34 per day, Ford began paying his laborers the unheard-of sum of $5 per day. Ford's primary conditions were that workers justify this munificent wage by "proper living" and that their new affluence neither increase their cupidity nor make them slothful. A "Sociological Department" was formed at Ford to maintain surveillance over employee behavior off the job as well as on it. Its investigators (at the peak of the program, there were 100 of them) would visit employees' homes unannounced to certify that they did not engage in excessive drinking or improper sexual behavior, that no boarders were taken in, and that their houses were kept neat and clean. Employees whose comportment fell short of company standards dropped back to the $2.34 per day wage for a probationary period, but if they mended their ways, they could be reinstated to the $5 day.

Ford's scheme, one of the most dramatic efforts ever adopted by an American company to intervene in the overall lives of its employees, was short-lived. The Sociological Department's surveillance was unpopular, and Ford himself came to hold the opinion that it was better to reward employees for productivity on the job and length of service than for proper living at home. The cost of the program may have contributed to Ford's second thoughts about it. Salaries for the one hundred investigators and other expenses connected with the Sociological Department must have amounted to a considerable sum. And to maintain the premium wage at double the standard wage would require raising the former at twice the rate of the latter, a practice that could become very expensive indeed. As it happened, the daily $5 was not adjusted to keep pace with inflation, so in the years following 1914, it looked less and less extraordinary. Despite its spectacular beginning, the experiment of luring people to hard work and proper living with the inducement of uncommonly high wages faded away after only six years.^[41]

If we look at lie detection from the perspective of Foucault's analysis, it may be readily understood as yet another device for surveillance, one that represents a major advance in convenience

and economy over both the panopticon and Ford's $5 day. The leap forward achieved by lie detection by polygraph is that it has succeeded in enlisting people as their own watchmen. The central power need simply collect occasional reports of self-surveillance by means of lie detector tests. As the personnel director of the Zale Corporation remarked, "We feel the best place to go to find out the background of a person is to the person himself, and the polygraph is the best way to do this."^[42]

The information gathered in this manner should be unrivaled in detail and completeness. Far beyond what can be observed from a central tower or gleaned in occasional visits by company investigators, lie detection achieves the ultimate in surveillance because it taps the constant and undivided attention that constitutes self-awareness—an awareness not only of overt deeds but also of intentions, desires, impulses, and other "inner" phenomena that, but for the test's probing, may never become public. Moreover, lie detector tests operate to control behavior as well as to report on it. The strategic assumption, at any rate, is that people will be deterred from disapproved activities (such as stealing from one's employer) by fear that it will be found out in the next test.

Polygraph tests also represent an advance in the efficiency with which power is applied. Conducted in private, testing avoids the massive expenditure of energy and resources required for public spectacles of torture and execution in the monarchial system of power. Polygraph tests also achieve surveillance over more people more cheaply and conveniently than is possible by means of primitive instruments of a disciplinary technology of power such as the panopticon or Ford's $5 day. Scarcely an hour in duration and requiring only a portable machine and a quiet room, the tests obviate the architectural, construction, and maintenance costs connected with the panopticon, as well as the expense and inconvenience of assembling and confining people for extended periods within its precincts. Ford tried to control employees' behavior with doubled wages and surprise visits by members of the Sociological Department, strategies that required a major financial outlay by the company. Lie detection controls behavior by threatening people with losing the wages they have, and that costs

the company very little. Employers seldom go to the trouble and expense of prosecuting those identified by lie detector tests as deceptive or dishonest. Applicants who test deceptive in preemployment tests are not hired; current employees in that unhappy situation may be terminated. This necessitates no legal apparatus to investigate and try cases, nor prisons to hold the offenders. Undesirables are simply excluded from employment. If the measure of efficiency in the application of power is maximum impact at minimum cost, the ratio achieved by lie detection is overwhelming. A procedure requiring small outlay by test givers places test takers at the large risk of not getting, or losing, a job. To the extent that numerous employers apply lie detection, and results of different tests hold constant, some individuals will suffer the cumulative and devastating consequences of losing their ability to earn a livelihood.

The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 may be thought to have stymied the perfection of this aspect of the disciplinary technology of power when it outlawed mechanical lie detector tests for most purposes in the private sector. Perhaps so, but the antipolygraph law is stimulating phenomenal growth of written integrity tests, and these may prove to be as effective tools of the disciplinary technology of power as the polygraph ever was. To be sure, written tests cannot equal the polygraph's capacity to elicit confessions of past misdeeds of any and all descriptions, and thus they cannot achieve the same meticulous degree of individual surveillance. But since they do not require one-on-one administration, they are considerably cheaper than polgyraph tests, and they may conveniently be given to a much larger proportion of the population. Therefore, it may be that the disciplinary technology of power has not in fact retreated before the antipolygraph law but has made a lateral shift preparatory to further growth. What individual surveillance may lose in depth of fine-grained detail it will gain in breadth of application.

Foucault also suggests that the disciplinary technology of power reordered the concept of the individual. Earlier periods of history were marked by what might be termed "ascending individualization": the persons who were known as distinctive individuals were those at the center of power, and/or those who were

exalted as heroes or vilified as execrable villains. Information about these exemplary figures flowed to the anonymous beings who composed the masses. There the stories about famous central figures inspired awe (thus helping to maintain the rulers in power) and provided role models for desirable unacceptable behavior. Foucault continues:

In a disciplinary regime, on the other hand, individualization is "descending": as power becomes more anonymous and more functional, those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized; it is exercised by surveillance rather than ceremonies, by observation rather than commemorative accounts.^[43]

That is to say, information no longer passes from focal figures to anonymous masses but in the reverse direction: the people who are controlled are known, while those who hold power are anonymous. The asymmetrical, one-way flow of information from those who take lie detector tests to those who give them is an outstanding example of Foucault's descending individualization. But, of course, the examiners who give the tests are not themselves in power. They are only agents of the real power centers. And those centers are so depersonalized that they are likelier to be organizations than persons—corporations, the government, and, ultimately, the total sociocultural system.

The efficient communication of specific information about named and identifiable individuals to anonymous centers of power is accomplished not just by lie detection but by testing of all sorts. An outstanding and very recent addition to the rapidly accumulating set of examples in the contemporary United States is DNA testing or "genetic fingerprinting" of prison inmates. Given a recidivism rate as high as 80 to 90 percent for murder and sex-crime parolees, current inmates are tested and their genetic profiles stored so that they may be readily identified from any body tissue, hair, blood, semen, or saliva that they might leave at the scene of some future crime. By the end of 1991, fifteen states had laws mandating DNA testing of inmates convicted for certain kinds of offenses. Leaders in toughness are Virginia, which tests all felons and which had deposited some 30,000 samples in its

data bank in a period of about eighteen months, and South Dakota, where just being arrested leads to DNA testing.^[44] With the accelerating development of new technologies and new tests derived from them, Foucault's insights about testing gain in relevance and importance with the passage of time: "The examination is the technique by which power, instead of emitting the signs of its potency, instead of imposing its mark on its subjects, holds them in a mechanism of objectification. . . . We are entering the age of the infinite examination and of compulsory objectification."^[45]

There is more. In addition to displaying and fixing the individual as an object of knowledge for the purposes of subjugation, Foucault suggests that the role of testing in bringing about a shift from ascending to descending individualization has contributed to a fundamental redefinition of what the individual is:

Thanks to the whole apparatus of writing [and now we would add, most emphatically, computer data banks] that accompanied it, the examination opened up . . . the constitution of the individual as a describable, analysable object, not in order to reduce him to "specific" features [those characteristic of the species generally], as did the naturalists in relation to living beings, but in order to maintain him in his individual features, in his particular evolution, in his own aptitudes or abilities, under the gaze of a permanent corpus of knowledge.^[46]

Far from being the primal, irreducible, and invariable atom of human society, then, this argument holds that the individual as currently known and conceptualized is a relatively recent invention, an invention generated in large measure by the procedures of testing and serving the disciplinary technology of power.^[47] We may not wish to follow Foucault's dark genius to the point of agreeing that the individual was created just in order to be controlled and dominated. Nevertheless, he leads us to the compelling if paradoxical conclusion that the concept of the individual, on which is erected our civilization's particular construction of human freedom and dignity, is itself partly built on testing—perhaps the most pervasive and efficient technique for the appli-

cation of power and domination to have evolved so far. Lie detection has served as a lens that reveals certain features of testing with great clarity by magnifying or distorting them to the point of caricature. In the following chapters, many of those same characteristics will surface again in other sorts of testing. Their further analysis, and that of numerous other features of testing yet to be analyzed, will afford a better view of the new kind of social order that has evolved over the last two centuries or so and the new kind of individual that has developed with it.

5
Testing and the War on Drugs

Let's test these people, to see if we have a problem.
Candidate for governor of Kansas, 1986,
speaking of all state employees

The New York Times of October 31, 1988, reported a subway accident in the city in which a woman had been dragged by a train. In line with the transit authority's normal procedures following accidents, a spokesperson said that "the train involved was taken out of service for inspection and that the driver and conductor will be tested for drugs." So it happens repeatedly in our testing society: when a unit malfunctions, mechanical or human, the response is to remove it from service and test it. The purpose of the test, of course, is to determine if the unit is defective in order that, if so, it might be repaired or replaced. This may be termed the reparative response of testing, the action taken when something goes wrong. As is evident from what happened to the subway driver and conductor, today the most common reparative response to human malfunction is a drug test.

Testing also has an exploratory or preventive side, which takes the form of testing units that have not malfunctioned to discover if they have weaknesses that might cause future failures. Repairing or replacing defective units before they break down is a rel-

atively inexpensive way to prevent major problems. General inspection may reveal signs of stress in certain units, and they are then tested to determine the precise problem. Erratic behavior or excessive absenteeism constitute such signs in employees, and they often lead to drug testing. Again, all units may be routinely tested before being placed in service for the first time, or some method may be adopted to test periodically those units currently in service in the search for defects that have not yet manifested themselves but might cause future problems. These preventive strategies are represented in the world of drug testing by preemployment, periodic, and random tests.

In recent years, proposals for preventive drug testing have reached near-epic proportions. Following 1991 police raids that found drugs in three University of Virginia fraternity houses, Governor Douglas Wilder suggested that all public university students in the state be subject to random drug testing.^[1] In 1986, a candidate for governor of Kansas recommended that all state employees be tested for drugs to determine "if we have a problem." Then, if a problem existed, something could be done about it. Attorney General Edwin Meese took much the same attitude when he announced plans to subject government workers to random drug tests in 1987. The aim, explained Meese, was not to fire anyone. Instead, it was to determine the extent of the problem of drug use in the federal work force, to identify who had the problem, and to rehabilitate them.^[2] The intention to repair defective units rather than replace them is comforting, but the ultimate sanction of firing those who do not respond successfully to treatment lurks in the background.

But something more is going on here than simply using tests to locate defective parts for the purpose of repairs or preventive maintenance. If that were the entire story, people would be examined for a wide array of physical and emotional problems that could have a negative effect on their job performance. At the present moment in our history, however, the assumption prevails that performance failures of human beings are to be attributed primarily to drug abuse. Hence we test not for a full range of debilitating possibilities but for drugs. So, for example, after a USAir jet skidded into the East River on an aborted takeoff from

LaGuardia Airport in September 1989, one of the first criticisms to be voiced was that the pilot and copilot did not present themselves immediately after the accident for drug and alcohol tests.^[3]

Drug abuse, it seems, currently plays a role in American thinking similar to witchcraft a few centuries ago: it is insidious, pervasive, but not easily recognizable, an evil that infuses social life and is responsible for many of the ills that beset us. At the end of the 1980s, before many Americans had even heard of Saddam Hussein, the big war in America was the war on drugs. Drugs were a major issue in the presidential election of 1988. A New York Times /CBS News poll in late 1989 found that some 65 percent of Americans considered drugs to be the number one problem facing the nation. Excepting only a time in early 1991 when just over 25 percent pointed to the economy, this is more than triple the number who, in polls taken between 1985 and late 1991, identified any other single issue as America's greatest problem.^[4] News reports and public policy debate were preoccupied with the issue. For example, on August 31, 1989—the day that these lines were written in first draft form—of the six items in the 8:00 A.M. news summary on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition," the leading three all dealt with drugs. The first two were "supply side" stories about the drug cartel in Colombia and U.S. accusations against Panama's Manuel Noriega for drug running; the third, on the demand side, reported accusations against the mayor of Washington, D.C., for using crack cocaine. To add some local color, one of the top stories of the summer in my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, was a proposal that the five elected city commissioners, the city manager, and other top city officials voluntarily present themselves for drug tests. This would have the effect, it was argued, of proclaiming to the world that Lawrence is irrevocably committed to being a drug-free city. Moreover, the public proof that civic leaders are clean would establish them as role models and inspirations to our youth and other ordinary citizens who might be tempted to experiment with drugs. The proposal was defeated by a 3-2 vote, partly because of questions about how "voluntary" a test could be in the light of the suspicion that would probably be directed against those who might choose not to take it. And indeed, those questions were promptly justified

by editorial musings in the local newspaper about the motives of those city commissioners who voted against the proposal.^[5]

Testing is a major tactic in the war on drugs, and because (as was also the case with witchcraft) one cannot tell if someone is infected with the evil of drug abuse just by looking, much of that testing is of persons who have given no reason to suspect that they use drugs. If the tendency to subject the American people to ever-increasing numbers and types of tests has suffered a setback with the recent restrictions on lie detector tests, its most impressive advance at present lies in the spectacular growth of drug testing. That growth occurred almost entirely during the 1980s, especially in the latter half of the decade.

The first organization to go in for large-scale drug testing was the Department of Defense, particularly the U.S. Navy. In 1981, several developments evoked concern about widespread drug use in the armed services. One survey reported that over half of navy personnel admitted using marijuana weekly or more frequently, while laboratory tests of 160,000 navy personnel, conducted anonymously, revealed traces of marijuana in the urine of 47.8 percent of those tested. On May 26, 1981, an aircraft crashed while attempting a night landing on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz , killing fourteen and wounding forty-two others. Autopsies revealed cannabis in nine of the crew members working on the flight deck.^[6] The military decided it was necessary to mount a major campaign against drug use, and, by good fortune, the technological means to undertake large-scale drug testing conveniently and economically became available at just this time, when the Syva Corporation developed a portable kit for urinalysis by a technique known as EMIT.^[7] The navy began testing in earnest in 1982, with the highly ambitious intention of subjecting everyone in the navy to unannounced, random tests three times per year. By 1985, the navy was giving nearly 1.5 million tests annually, and the figure rose to over 1.9 million in 1986.^[8]

Several wide-circulation magazines and newspapers ran major stories on drugs in the workplace in 1983 and 1984, and many companies began to explore the possibilities of testing programs. By 1985, such programs were being established by large corporations such as GM, IBM, Mobil, and Exxon.^[9] The federal gov-

ernment soon became involved. President Ronald Reagan issued the Executive Order on a Drug-Free Federal Workplace in September 1986, mandating drug testing of federal employees in sensitive positions and authorizing testing for applicants and employees connected with accidents or unsafe practices or who are reasonably suspected of using drugs. New U.S. Department of Transportation regulations requiring drug tests of workers in the transportation industry went into effect in December 1989. The rules apply to some four million private sector workers and cost the companies tens of millions of dollars annually. The most controversial aspect of these regulations is that they require random testing at a rate such that each worker has a 50 percent chance of being tested each year. This raises important issues of privacy, for a random selection process subjects workers to testing in the absence of any suspicion that they have used illegal drugs.^[10]

The growth of drug testing in the workplace since 1985 amounts to a virtual explosion. Twenty-one percent of 1,090 companies responding to an American Management Association survey in November 1986 reported that they test applicants and/or current employees, and 90 percent of them instituted their programs in 1985 or 1986.^[11] Another survey was conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics during summer 1988, using a sample of some 7,500 private, nonagricultural business establishments. It revealed that the presence of drug testing programs varies immensely according to establishment size: only about 2 percent of those with fewer than 50 employees have programs, and the incidence of drug testing programs increases steadily with company size, up to 43 percent of the establishments with more than 1,000 employees. Since small businesses vastly outnumber large ones, the proportion of all American companies with drug testing programs is only 3 percent, but they employ some 21 percent of all workers. The survey also found that about 4 percent of all employers without a drug testing program were considering implementing one within the next twelve months.^[12] Notice that this figure is larger than the total number of establishments with testing programs currently in place—further testimony to the recent rush toward drug testing programs in the United States.

An April 1987 survey of 2,000 companies by Business and Legal Reports found that 15 percent of responding companies had programs in place for testing current employees and/or applicants, 5 percent intended to implement a program within one year, and an additional 39 percent had a program under consideration.^[13] Business and Legal Reports did a followup survey in November 1988, this time receiving 3,192 responses. The growth of drug testing was phenomenal. In the period of just eighteen months between the surveys, the number of companies testing applicants increased from 15 to 25 percent, while those testing current employees more than doubled, from 9 to 19 percent.^[14] I conducted a study in 1987–88 of eleven Midwestern organizations with drug testing programs and found that six of the programs had been in force for less than six months.

A curious and fascinating aspect of workplace drug testing is that it seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon. As a visiting professor in Paris in 1989, I found that while an American company (Abbott Laboratories) was attempting to generate interest in drug testing, very few French firms had implemented programs. And a 1988 survey conducted by the Conference Board found that while many companies that test are multinational firms, very few drug testing programs extend outside the United States.^[15]

Drug testing programs are now also commonplace in athletics, and they too have experienced spectacular growth, especially in the latter 1980s. The original concern in sport was, however, quite different: to prevent the use of performance-enhancing drugs, particularly anabolic steroids. The death of a European cyclist at the 1960 Olympics who had used amphetamines first drew attention to the problem of drug use in sports. The International Olympic Committee introduced testing in a preliminary way at the 1968 Olympics and then tested comprehensively at the Munich games four years later. It was only at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, however, that technology became available to test for anabolic steroids. Steroids attracted widespread publicity in the United States in 1983, when a number of athletes were disqualified at the Pan American Games in Caracas and when several members of the U.S. team departed before they had competed and

could be tested.^[16] And, of course, immense international publicity was generated when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of a gold medal at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul because of a positive test for steroids.

At the collegiate level, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) began drug tests at championship events and football bowl games in 1986. Unlike the International Olympic Committee's exclusive focus on performance-enhancing drugs, the NCAA also tests for street drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. This is true also of the testing programs that many colleges and universities have instituted for athletes on their campuses. In fact, of the nearly one hundred such programs surveyed by the NCAA in 1984, all of them were testing student athletes for street drugs, but only one in four was testing for anabolic steroids. Eric Zemper believes this is done to convince the public that decisive steps are being taken to control drug use by athletes, even though there is no evidence that athletes use street drugs more than others of the same age group. Nevertheless, public anxieties on that score were certainly fueled in 1986 by the cocaine-related deaths, a few days apart, of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias and Cleveland Browns football safety Don Rogers.^[17]

Evolving public attitudes toward drug tests may be glimpsed in responses to a rare but interesting arena for testing: school-children. In 1985, it was proposed that all students in a small high school in New Jersey be subjected to drug tests. The issue stimulated great controversy, and the plan was immediately challenged in the state courts, which ruled it to be unconstitutional.^[18] Five years later, a parochial school in Chicago, St. Sabina Academy, began a program of random drug testing for students in the sixth through eighth grades. Unlike the reception that greeted the earlier proposal in New Jersey, a St. Sabina official told me that the response of parents and others connected with their school was overwhelmingly favorable.

Response to the St. Sabina program seems representative of general public attitudes. Popular support for testing has increased as testing programs themselves have mushroomed during the 1980s. According to a 1986 opinion poll, approval rates for testing people in various categories were very high: 85 percent for

police, 84 percent for airline pilots, 72 percent for professional athletes, 72 percent for government workers, 64 percent for high school teachers, 60 percent for high school students, 52 percent for entertainment stars, and 50 percent for all other employed persons.^[19] Comparable figures from a California poll taken in 1989 showed rates of approval for random testing to be even higher: 89 percent for police and fire fighters, 92 percent for airline pilots, 75 percent for professional athletes, and 78 percent for public school teachers. The California poll also indicated that 83 percent of respondents would be willing to submit to random drug tests themselves, an increase of 6 percent from responses to the same question in a poll taken two years before.^[20]

How Drug Testing Works

Numerous techniques are in use for drug testing, and some of them are quite wonderful. One of the latest is an Israeli product known as Drug Alert. It is a spray that anyone can use, and the SherTest Corporation markets it as a way for parents to check up on their children. One simply wipes a piece of white paper on "a surface" (presumably the surface of a child) and then sprays the paper with the product. The color produced on the paper reveals whether the individual on whom it has been wiped has been using drugs. SherTest's Sidney Klein promotes the spray test as a way of enhancing the love and care that should prevail in the family. "It's about breaking down barriers of denial between parent and child," he said.^[21]

The National Drug Awareness and Detection Agency of Houston has sensed a potential for profit in the process of breaking down those barriers. The company sends postcards that state, "We have been informed that your children may be using ILLEGAL DRUGS. . . . Please call us IMMEDIATELY [sic ]." Some recipients of the card in Lawrence, Kansas, expressed curiosity about how the word on their children made it all the way to Houston, particularly one woman who received the warning and who has no children. Those who call the number on the card are given a lengthy presentation about the dangers of drugs. They are

then urged to send $99.95 to purchase a kit that claims to detect drug use by measuring the pupil of a suspect's eye with a "pupilometer."^[22]

Setting aside such offbeat techniques, by far the most respectable and common form of drug testing is to look for traces of drugs in an individual's body fluids, and the fluid of overwhelming choice is urine. Of the variety of procedures that have been used, one is gaining acceptance as best satisfying both the concern of containing the cost of testing and the imperative of highly accurate results. Under this procedure, a urine sample is subject to two separate tests. The first of these is called screening, and it is generally conducted by immunoassay (such as EMIT) or thin layer chromatography. Those samples that test negative in the screen (drugs absent or at levels below the designated cutoff point) are not tested further. Samples identified as positive in the screen are subjected to a confirming test by a different method known as GC/MS (gas chromatography/mass spectrometry). This test is extremely sensitive and accurate. Only those samples that are confirmed as positive by this second test are reported back as indicating drug use, and the drug that has been detected is specified. When this procedure is properly applied, the chance that an individual will be mistakenly identified as a drug user is nearly eliminated.^[23] Such false positive results are, understandably, a common source of anxiety among those who are subject to testing. The possibility of a false negative result (drugs are actually in the urine but not detected by the test) is greater, because samples that (rightly or wrongly) test negative in the initial screen are not subjected to the more accurate confirming test.

The initial screening test costs about $15, while confirmation by GC/MS, is considerably more expensive, from $40 to $50. However, overall cost is held down because only those samples that test positive on the screen are subject to confirmation. Usually laboratories provide testing for a set fee per sample. The amount depends largely on the anticipated percentage of positive results in the screen, which determines how many of the more expensive confirmation tests will have to be run. Thus, CompuChem Laboratories has a contract to test for the U.S. Department of Transportation at a cost (in 1987) of $26 per urine sample.^[24]

Drug testing policies in various organizations stipulate tests in one or a combination of five circumstances. Passing a preemployment drug test may be a condition of employment for job applicants. Periodic tests are given at set intervals, such as part of regular physical examinations or whenever an employee returns to work from a leave of absence. All individuals who have any connection with an accident that exceeds some specified level of damage may be required to take a postaccident test as part of the investigation. For-cause tests may be demanded of individuals whose behavior leads supervisors or medical personnel to the reasonable suspicion that they are under the influence of some substance. Finally, random tests are given to personnel whenever they are targeted in a drawing or computerized random selection procedure.

A problem with drug testing by urinalysis is that traces of cocaine, heroin, and most other street drugs are detectable for only one to three days following use.^[25] This means that drug users (other than hard-core addicts) are often able to survive the testing procedure undetected simply by curtailing their usage for several days prior to the test. This applies, of course, to those situations in which the individual has advance knowledge of the test, most notably, preemployment and periodic tests. Indeed, one argument for random testing is that it closes the loophole provided to users by advance notice. Despite this advantage, random testing is the least common in the workplace, while preemployment testing, although easily defeated because of advance notice, is the most frequent. This is because preemployment testing poses the fewest legal problems and occurs before employees are protected by collective bargaining, while random testing of current employees raises the most serious questions about invasion of privacy and other personal rights and meets the stiffest resistance from unions. (Random testing is more common in athletic organizations, however, as will be discussed below.)

An ironic twist in the detection of drug use by urinalysis pertains to marijuana. Because its active ingredient is stored in body fat, marijuana clears the system much more slowly than other drugs. Precise times depend on amount of use and other indi-

vidual variables, but marijuana has been detected by urinalysis for as long as one or two months after use, far longer than other drugs.^[26] Therefore, the tactic of escaping detection by curtailing use prior to a drug test is much less likely to be successful for marijuana than for other drugs. And there is the irony: the drug that is generally considered to be the least dangerous of the controlled substances is the one that is most likely to show up in drug tests. Combined with the fact that marijuana is the most popular drug, its persistence in the system means that the great majority of positive drug test results are for marijuana. In a study of over 2,500 newly hired employees in the Postal Service in Boston,^[27] within the overall rate of 12.2 percent positive drug tests, 7.8 percent were for marijuana alone, and an additional 2.2 percent were for a combination of drugs (and certainly marijuana was often present in the mix). It has been estimated that marijuana may account for up to 90 percent of positive test results.^[28]

Beating the Test

Workers and others who must submit urine for drug tests have devised a wide range of techniques to foil them. Abstinence for a few days prior to the test is effective for most drugs, although not for marijuana. Another ploy is substitution: a simple method is to scoop up some water from the toilet bowl and submit that as one's urine sample. Alternatively, one might submit someone else's clean urine in lieu of one's own. It might come from a friend or relative, or, if one is uncertain as to their habits, one can turn to the marketplace. A mini-industry, in fact, is developing for the provision of drug-free urine. Byrd Laboratories of Austin, Texas, advertises clean urine (originating from a senior citizens' home) for mail-order sale at $49.95 per sample. After an unsatisfactory flirtation with freeze-drying, the company developed a dehydration process that reduces the product to a powder for more efficient mailing and handling. According to the instructions, "just add water."^[29] The bargain

conscious can purchase four ounces of urine guaranteed to be drug- and alcohol-free from The Bladder Man company in Arizona for just $25.^[30]

Some people adulterate their urine samples with salt, detergent, or some other substance in an effort to mask drugs. Others try to achieve the masking effect on urine still in the body, attempting to dilute it by drinking huge quantities of water or taking diuretics before being tested or by ingesting various substances that are reputed to mask drugs in the system. In one scheme, no less bizarre than drinking White-Out to confound a lie detector test (see chap. 3), a student athlete I interviewed said that football players from another university apparently acted on the notion that drinking the urine of a pregnant woman would foil the discovery of drugs in their own.

Authorities have adopted various measures to parry such tactics, trying to prevent cheating while attempting to retain some respect for privacy and good taste. Bluing may be added to the toilet bowl water, or samples might be collected in a room where no water is available. The temperature of the sample may be checked, and some organizations also check specific gravity and/or pH (to be sure the sample is acidic). Subjects may be required to strip down to their underwear or completely to prevent them from taking adulterating substances or other people's urine into the stall. The subject may be required to produce the sample under direct observation, a procedure that can occasion considerable embarrassment and resentment. One male athlete described to me how disconcerting it can be when the observer positions his face right next to one's hip, so as to get a close and unobstructed view of the process. Even with such close surveillance, some ploys are extremely difficult to detect. One feminine technique that simultaneously solves problems of stripping, temperature, and anything but the closest observation is to smuggle clean urine (reconstituted, perhaps, from a dehydrated packet purchased from Byrd Laboratories) into the collection room in a balloon or condom inserted into the vagina. This may be opened at the proper time with a sharpened fingernail or a pin.^[31] A more radical procedure, available to either sex, is to inject clean urine into one's bladder by means of a catheter and

then deposit it in the specimen collection bottle in the normal way.^[32]

Possible Futures

Although at present, urine is overwhelmingly the substance of choice for drug testing, other possibilities exist. Some 25 percent of the testing programs in business firms surveyed by the Conference Board in 1988 utilize something else: blood, saliva, or hair.^[33] Testing hair has immense potential to open the window of access to drug use considerably wider than is presently possible with urinalysis. Drug molecules are introduced into the blood following use, and as the blood nourishes the hair "roots" or follicles, some drug molecules become permanently trapped among the tightly packed protein strings that form the hair shaft. Thus, a person's hair contains a record of drug use over the entire period that it has been growing: the type of drugs ingested, when, and how much.^[34] Werner Baumgartner, who developed the technique of radioimmunoassay of hair (RIAH—which, as he happily notes, is HAIR spelled backward), points out that the possibility of testing hair extends even beyond a lifetime. Thus, a test of the hair of John Keats 165 years after he died revealed that the poet had used opiates, presumably laudanum, to ease the pain of the terminal stages of tuberculosis. And since hair begins growing before birth, testing the hair of newborn infants could reveal the types and amounts of drugs to which they have been exposed while in the uterus.^[35]

Although Edward Cone identifies some technical problems that require solution before complete confidence can be placed in testing of hair and its findings will be fully acceptable as scientific evidence in law courts, both he and (especially) Baumgartner extol its potential advantages over urinalysis. The latter test catches only those who have used drugs within a matter of days (or, for marijuana, weeks) prior to the test, and users who have some advance warning can easily escape detection by abstention. Not so with hair testing: a single test every six months to a year would be sufficient to provide a complete record of the

subject's substance abuse during that entire period. Hair can be collected, under close supervision, with less intrusion of privacy and embarrassment than urine. More thorough verification is possible because an additional sample pertaining to the same period can easily be obtained by cutting more hair, while urine samples taken even a few days apart are not comparable. Those aiming to beat urinalysis can often do so by acquiring and substituting someone else's "clean" urine or by adulterating their own urine in some way. Substitution would not be possible when the test technician cuts a sample of hair from the subject's head or body. Moreover, before being dissolved for testing, samples are thoroughly washed to remove any chemicals on the surface of hair. This is intended to ensure that only drug molecules trapped in the interior of the hair shaft during growth will be identified by the test. In principle, this would avoid false positive results from traces of drugs that may have been picked up by the hair from someone else's smoke, and it might also foil efforts to avoid detection by chemical treatment of the hair. Absolute control over environmental contamination remains, however, one of the technological issues yet to be resolved in hair testing.^[36] Finally, anyone who attempts to foil the test by totally shearing all head and body hair may still not escape, because it is also possible to detect traces of drugs in shavings taken from the nails.^[37] In this regard, it is intriguing to recall that for millennia, in societies all over the globe, black magic has been practiced by working spells on the hair and nail clippings of intended victims. Now science can work its own kind of magic on those same substances, penetrating more surely than ever the black magician could to the soul of the targeted individual.

Perhaps partly because it is more difficult to defeat, hair testing results in fewer false negatives—individuals who actually use drugs but are not identified by the test—than urinalysis. Thus, in one study of probationers and parolees, hair analysis detected more drug use than did urinalysis, although unannounced, random urine tests were done on the subjects as often as five times per month.^[38] And questions of whether a sample actually comes from a given subject (occasionally a matter of dispute in urinalysis) promise to be definitively resolvable, because DNA finger-

printing techniques hold out the possibility of identifying the owner of even a single strand of hair.

Attitudes toward Drug Testing

Although several surveys have been taken to determine how many companies conduct drug tests and in what circumstances,^[39] very little research has been done on the opinions about drug tests held by the people who have to take them. In 1988, I undertook an investigation in an effort to fill this gap.^[40] I conducted interviews of managers and workers in eleven organizations that have drug testing policies. In addition, a questionnaire was distributed in three of the organizations. The largest of these was one of the nation's major railroads. The questionnaire was distributed by the company's medical department in August 1988 to 995 engineers, switchmen, brakemen, conductors, and firemen. Letters from me and from the company's medical director explained the purpose of the study. Questionnaires were completed anonymously and mailed, in business reply envelopes with no identifying return address, directly to me at the University of Kansas. Three hundred thirty-three completed questionnaires were returned, a response rate of just over one-third. Space was provided on the questionnaire for additional written comments, and no fewer than 52 percent of the respondents took advantage of this opportunity. The following discussion makes reference to these comments as well as to the statistical results derived from the questionnaire.

Under regulations operative at the time of the survey, the trainmen could be tested in a number of circumstances. The Federal Railroad Administration requires that all crew members and other employees directly connected with any accident exceeding a certain level of damage be tested for drugs. In addition, the company's policy is to include a drug test in all medical examinations. These are required when an employee returns to work after having been placed on leave of absence for any reason and also at periodic intervals of every two years for employees under age 50, annually for employees between 50 and 65, and every six

months for those over 65. The company's drug testing policy went into effect at the beginning of 1987 and some 12,000 tests had been given by the time of the study.

Of the 333 respondents, 27 percent reported that they had never been tested for drugs. (Possibly these are individuals who have not had periodic physical exams since the policy went into effect. In some cases, an employee may not have heeded company announcements about drug testing and might not realize that the urine sample taken during a physical exam would be tested for drugs.) Forty-two percent reported being tested once, 19 percent twice, and the remaining 12 percent three or more times. Six percent reported that they were tested in a postaccident situation, while the great bulk of employees (93% of those who had been tested) indicated tests in connection with periodic or return-to-work physical examinations, as mandated by company policy.

How Serious is the Drug Problem in Industry?

Reports of positive results from drug tests in the workplace vary widely. In a survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, establishments that conduct drug tests reported rates of 12 percent positive for applicants and 9 percent positive for current employees.^[41] But positive results in some organizations are far lower: some 3,946 New York City police officers were tested in 1988 in connection with promotions or for suspicion of drug use, with less than 1 percent positive results. An additional 8,818 recruits and police academy cadets were tested, yielding a positive rate of about 2 percent.^[42]

Of the organizations I studied, the frequency of positives in the seven companies that had administered 200 or more tests ranged from quite high to negligible. Highest was an automobile assembly plant, where 20 percent of the applicants during a large-scale hiring for assembly line jobs had positive test results. An electronic components manufacturer and a transportation company found 14 to 16 percent positives in preemployment testing. The remaining companies had very low positive rates: 2 percent or less in a chemical factory that tests current employees randomly and in a public utility that conducts preemployment testing,

while an aviation organization found no positives at all in some 600 preemployment tests and annual tests of current employees.^[43] The railroad from which I gathered questionnaires had a 3.5 percent positive rate in its periodic and postaccident tests. This is lower than the 5.6 percent positive rate for current employees reported by transportation industry establishments represented in a recent survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.^[44]

The questionnaire asked about the respondent's own drug use, with possible responses of (1) never, (2) occasionally (e.g., recreational use on days off only), and (3) more than two times per week, on workdays as well as days off. Only one person in the entire set of 333 responses marked the third possibility. The second option of occasional use was marked by 13 trainmen, representing just under 4 percent of the total, with all other responses being "never." It is interesting that the 4 percent self-reported level of drug use is close to the 3.5 percent positive rate on drug tests. Of course, neither the tests nor a questionnaire (albeit an anonymous one) are likely to identify all drug users in the company, so it is probable that actual drug use is somewhat higher than the 4 percent self-reported rate.

Ten of the 174 trainmen who wrote comments stated that alcohol poses a problem as serious as, probably more serious than, drug abuse. This view is shared by most of the personnel managers, EAP (Employee Assistance Program) officials, and union representatives whom I have interviewed from many different organizations.

No clear consensus exists among employees about the effectiveness of testing programs in controlling drug use. Thirty-four percent of the respondents think the program is effective, 23 percent think it is not, and 43 percent do not know. The large number in the "don't know" category may be related to the fact that the program had been in operation for only two years by the time of the study.

When Do Employees Think Drug Testing is Justified?

Drug tests are typically conducted in the workplace in one or a combination of the following circumstances: preemployment

tests, periodic tests, postaccident tests, for-cause tests, and random tests. The questionnaire asked if employees think the tests are justified in each of these circumstances. To provide a wider spectrum of opinion, in addition to data from the trainmen, the following discussion takes account of data from 92 workers from a Midwestern chemical plant who also completed the questionnaire (of 216 to whom it was distributed). In contrasting the responses, it is important to realize that the chemical workers had much less experience with drug testing. At the time of the survey, the chemical company conducted only preemployment testing, in a program that was instituted after most of the respondents were hired. Thus, only 17 percent of these workers reported ever having been tested for drugs, while the corresponding figure for trainmen, who are subject to periodic and postaccident tests, is 73 percent.

Statistical results of the questions about when drug tests are justified are reported in the Appendix, table 1. The only forms that are considered justified by the majority of trainmen and chemical workers are preemployment and for-cause testing. The largest discrepancy between the two groups pertains to random testing, which is considered justifiable by 42 percent of the chemical workers but only 16 percent of the trainmen. After my survey was completed, however, the chemical plant expanded its testing program to include random testing of current employees. While it is difficult to say with any precision how that might affect the attitudes expressed in the table, both management and union officials told me that employees were responding quite negatively to the new policy. It is perhaps significant in itself that when I suggested distributing the same questionnaire to the employees again, with the aim of ascertaining what effect the policy change had had on employee attitudes, management responded that they would prefer to wait until the situation calmed down.

The comments that 174 trainmen and 27 chemical workers added to their questionnaires are especially helpful in understanding why drug tests are approved in some circumstances but not others. A general summary of the comments will be given before we undertake a closer examination of attitudes toward drug testing in various circumstances. Fifty-seven comments ex-

pressed support for testing, all for reasons pertaining to safety. The remaining 144 comments were critical of testing. Thirty-nine respondents questioned the accuracy of tests, 38 found tests to be an opportunity for management to harass workers, 38 charged that tests invade privacy and violate constitutional rights, 28 accused testing programs of being discriminatory and demanded that management be tested too, 21 called for tests to be limited to employees who exhibit impaired performance while at work, 17 claimed that urinalysis is humiliating and weakens employee morale, 15 specifically criticized random testing, 13 claimed that alcohol abuse (for which tests are seldom given) is a more serious problem than drug abuse, 9 argued that drug tests are not an effective deterrent because they can be beaten in various ways, and smaller numbers of respondents made still other critical remarks. (These figures add up to more than the total number of commenters because some of them made two or more of the above points.)

Majority approval of both preemployment and for-cause drug testing seems to be rooted primarily in safety considerations. The railroad and chemical employees represented in this study work under conditions of potential danger. As the ones most likely to get hurt in accidents, they are no less concerned about safety than is management. One commenter wrote, "In a hazardous chemical plant I do not want to work with someone who uses drugs." A trainman explained, "We, the people in the operating department, need to be very alert at all times because we are in charge of thousands of tons of equipment and a few tenths of a second of reaction time might save someone's life, maybe their own." Another trainman summed it up bluntly, "I do not work with dopeheads and I approve of tests. . . . Stamp out drugs!!!"

Turning specifically to preemployment testing, reasons for its majority approval do not emerge from the questionnaires because very few respondents specifically addressed this issue in their comments. In a number of interviews I conducted with managers, workers, and union officials from several different industries, however, two points were made frequently. The more substantial one was that workers acknowledge a company's right to demand evidence that an employee will not pose a safety hazard because

of drug use. As will become clear in a moment, employees resent drug tests when other means—especially a long record of problem-free employment—are available for this purpose. But they do tend to accept the use of tests in the case of new hires, who have no track record with the company. The other point, more procedural in nature, was that preemployment testing is not a matter for collective bargaining in many companies because union benefits are not available to new employees until the completion of a probationary period.

So far as testing current employees is concerned, safety considerations motivate some people to embrace testing of any and all sorts. (In his questionnaire comments, for example, one trainman advocated random tests monthly or more often for all employees, including supervisors). However, the statistical data, comments on questionnaires, and interviews with workers and human resources managers all indicate that most employees think drug testing of current employees is justified only in cases where there is good reason to believe that a particular employee is under the influence of drugs, and thus poses a safety risk while at work.

Important to the majority opposition to periodic, postaccident, and random testing is that, in these circumstances, the safety issue is not clearly defined. Employees are well aware that drug tests of urine tell only that a substance has been ingested within a certain time prior to the test, varying from two or three days for cocaine or opiates to up to a month or even more for marijuana. Therefore, a worker who has never been under the influence of drugs during working hours—and who therefore is not a hazard on the job—may still have a positive test result from drugs used on weekends or vacation. The results could be destructive: disciplinary action, damage to reputation, and loss of job. Although very few admit to any drug use at all, this characteristic of drug tests violates the principle—fiercely expressed by many employees—that what they do on their own time is none of the company's business.

Postaccident testing is more closely related to safety than periodic or random testing. Although relatively little was said specifically about it in comments and interviews, they did indicate

that resentment against these tests is especially strong when the rule is applied so woodenly that those connected with an accident are tested even when the cause obviously lies elsewhere, such as equipment failure. (An example would be testing the crew of the airplane that lost part of its fuselage in flight over Hawaii a few years ago.) A union official I interviewed suggested that a policy of postaccident testing might actually backfire so far as safety is concerned. People in critical jobs such as airplane maintenance might not report an accident because they would then have to take a drug test. The reason might be not that they are on drugs but that they fear a false positive result, or want to avoid the inconvenience of the test and the embarrassment of providing a urine sample under direct observation. The net result, however, is that an accident with potentially hazardous consequences may go unreported.

The most important element of employees' opposition to postaccident, periodic, and random testing has to do with human considerations such as loyalty and trust. These were expressed especially in comments by trainmen. The railroad has done very little hiring in recent years, and all of the respondents save one have worked for the company for seven or more years—two-thirds of them, in fact, for fifteen years or more. Many of them take a great deal of pride in their long and loyal service to the railroad. They want the railroad to reciprocate with equal loyalty and pride in them. Periodic, random, and some cases of postaccident testing are done in the absence of any reason to suspect drug use. Employees resent being subjected to tests in these conditions, where their record of service counts for little beside the demeaning and dehumanizing requirement to provide their urine for chemical analysis. Wrote one,

I have worked for the railroad for over thirty years. They have never had reason to bitch about my performance. Now suddenly I'm not trusted to run my own life. Yes I am angry about their intrusion into my private life!

According to another,

I am a faithful and loyal employee. I felt like a common criminal and I didn't even do anything wrong. . . . I happen to have bashful

kidneys. The first time I took a drug test it took me almost 3 hours of water & coffee drinking before I could give a sample. . . . Also I felt as if I was being scrutinized by the nursing staff (they looked at me like I was a criminal). Needless to say I was upset, angry, humiliated, defensive, etc. I HATE DRUG TESTING!

Workers consider drug tests done without reasonable suspicion of drug abuse to be an invasion of privacy that infringes their rights as American citizens. The resentment grows when they perceive the tests to be discriminatory—required of employees in some jobs but not of other workers, supervisors, and management. One trainman commented,

Many men and women have died defending our constitution and now it's being threatened from within by people who are not required to go through this humiliating experience. My feeling can best be described by a quote from Ben Franklin: "Those of us who give up freedom for safety deserve neither freedom nor safety."

Another asserted his determination to fight back: "I, for one, will not hesitate to consult with a lawyer before and after any such test and will not hesitate to sue [the company's] butt off if any test shows positive."

Numerous trainmen reported the conviction that the railroad is trying to diminish its work force (or "skinny down," as one of them put it). This produces anxiety about jobs, and in that climate, the present policy of postaccident and periodic drug tests—plus the possibility of future random testing—contributes significantly to low employee morale. The most frequent comment from trainmen, specified by 38 of the 174 who made comments, is suspicion that the company's real interest in drug testing is as a means to harass workers and to fire them.

Evaluations

In chapter 6, the proposition will be developed that drug testing has far broader social significance than just testing for drugs. Any final assessment of the value of testing programs must take

those wider considerations into account. It might be useful at this point, however, to consider the relative value of various types of testing programs strictly in the context of the specific goals they are intended to achieve. These have to do primarily with productivity and safety in the workplace. We have shown that there are serious questions about the effectiveness of drug testing by urinalysis as a means to these ends. Both productivity and safety pertain to an individual's on-the-job condition. Drug tests determine only that a substance has been ingested within a certain period of time and provide no information about whether the subject's behavior is currently impaired by it. Probably the vast majority of individuals who test positive are not under the influence of the drug at work, at the time they are tested. And even if one should be under the influence at that moment, the test is of no immediate help. After providing a urine sample, the employee is sent back to work in an impaired condition, and the test result will not be known until a few days later when the report comes back from the laboratory. Moreover, as the following comments from a trainman make clear, urinalysis is unlikely to catch the most serious problems.

I think it's a waste of time. The frequent users will discover ways to bypass the test, use fresh or clean urine from a clean source. The occasional user will be the only one caught. He will not be as concerned as the frequent user and therefore will not seek expensive or troublesome solutions to hide his recreational use. Therefore the real problem, the frequent users and users of hard drugs, will go undetected while the occasional pot smokers will be the ones that are caught. The result will be that [the railroad] loses a valuable employee, the valuable employee loses his job and reputation, while the real problem continues on endangering everyone.

These considerations indicate that, among the drug testing policies presently in use, the most effective is to limit testing to employees whose behavior arouses reasonable suspicion that they are under the influence of drugs while at work. This policy has the least damaging effect on employee morale because (as is

clear from the Appendix, table 1) workers approve of such forcause testing far more than other types of testing of current employees. To include periodic or random testing in the policy is likely to do more harm than good. It will not ferret out many more drug users, it is costly in terms of the increased number of tests (contracts with laboratories are in the neighborhood of $25 to $35 per test), and it is costlier still in diminished employee morale and the termination of valuable employees who have occasionally used marijuana on their own time. Testing of new hires is less harmful. It might screen out a few addicts who cannot refrain from using cocaine or heroin for even a few days. Since employees tend to think it is justified, such preemployment testing would not seriously depress morale, and it could enhance the company's public image as a good soldier in the war on drugs. It is expensive, however, and it might prevent the hiring of certain people who have used marijuana on occasion but who would have become loyal and efficient employees.

A further advantage of for-cause programs to the employer is their relevance to more problems than just drugs. An employee whose behavior is erratic, whose work is substandard, or who has an inordinately high rate of absenteeism would be sent to the medical department or employee assistance program for evaluation. There the decision would be made to test for drugs or alcohol or to explore the possibility of physical or mental illness, temporary emotional stress, or any other situation that may be adversely affecting work and behavior.

For-cause programs normally rely on the observation of supervisors to determine when an employee should be sent for evaluation. Some companies may not find this to be a workable or desirable arrangement. An alternative would be performance testing: a brief set of tasks done by hand or on a computer to demonstrate that the employee's coordination and reaction times are within the expected range.^[45] If they are not, that would constitute cause to send the employee to the medical department for further evaluation. Any form of testing has potential dangers; in the case of performance testing, the outstanding imperatives would be to assure that the tasks demanded on the test are truly representative of the tasks required on the job and to prevent them

from being used so frequently that they become a nuisance or harassment to employees and an unreasonable expense for employers. If those requirements were met, then performance testing would be preferable to drug testing by urinalysis as currently practiced. It would be less detrimental to employee morale because it is specifically focused on what virtually everyone, including workers, agrees is the employer's legitimate concern: the ability of employees on the job to perform their assigned duties competently and safely. If given periodically or randomly at the same rates now used for drug testing, performance tests would be less expensive, less time-consuming, and less intrusive than urinalysis. The results would be available immediately, so that if action is necessary, it can be taken when it has definite preventive value—before setting a perfprmance-impaired employee to work.

Athletes and Drug Testing

Drug tests have become an integral part of organized athletics at every level. Most professional sports have testing programs, as do the Olympics and other international amateur athletic events. The NCAA tests student athletes who compete in bowl games, basketball tournaments, and other NCAA-sponsored events. It is now commonplace for colleges and universities to test members of all their intercollegiate athletic teams for drugs, and testing programs for high school athletes (and, in some cases, cheerleaders as well) are begining to appear.

Drug testing of athletes raises issues and problems quite distinct from those in play in the workplace. One major difference is that safe working conditions and the prevention of accidents—the most frequently cited reasons for testing workers—are only marginally relevant to athletics. One of the few comments pertaining to accident prevention in athletics that I have come across was from a baseball player, who told me that he would not want to bat against a pitcher who throws erratically due to the influence of drugs. Another concern that should probably be classified under safe working conditions is that certain drugs taken by football

players are reputed to make them more aggressive, thus raising the risk of injury to themselves and others.

A more popular concern is that athletes who abuse street drugs threaten the integrity of their sport. If they become addicted, a desperate need for drugs may induce them to throw games for bribes, blackmail, or payoffs. Moreover, athletes are often in the public eye, and they are important role models for young people. They therefore have special responsibilities to abide by the law and to maintain untarnished images so as not to disillusion the youth who strive to emulate them or to embarrass the school, team, or city they represent.

Perhaps most important, performance-enhancing drugs are not an issue in employment-related tests, but they are of central importance in athletic drug testing. One such drug is erythropoietin, or EPO, which athletes use for what is known as blood doping. Developed for kidney patients, EPO stimulates the production of red blood cells. This effect materially enhances athletic performance, raising aerobic capacity by an average of 8 percent. However, it may have lethal effects. Since athletes already have a normal red blood cell count, EPO's production of still more red blood cells thickens the blood to the point where, as one hematologist put it, it literally turns to mud. This greatly increases the risk of clotting and strokes, and EPO is suspected in the coronary-related deaths of no fewer than eighteen European cyclists over the last foyr years. At the present time, no test is capable of detecting EPO.^[46]

Blood doping may also be achieved without taking any drugs at all. A pint of blood is taken from the athlete, frozen for storage, and then reintroduced into the veins several weeks later, immediately before competition. During the interval, the body will have replaced the blood that was removed, so introducing the extra blood will provide a surplus of red blood cells, enabling the athlete to experience the same aerobic advantages that accrue from taking EPO.^[47]

The best-known performance-enhancing drugs are anabolic steroids. These natural or synthetic derivatives of the male hormone testosterone promote the growth of muscles and may speed their recuperation after strenuous exercise. They are also thought

to have the psychological effect of increasing aggressiveness. Many athletes are tempted to use anabolic steroids in their training programs, for any and all of these results may improve performance in athletic events. Although their detrimental impact on health is less clear and immediate than is the case with EPO, steroids may have long-term effects on growth and reproductive capacity and lead to psychoses and kidney and liver disease, including cancer. Steroids may also contribute to heart disease by increasing blood pressure and raising the level of undesirable cholesterol.^[48] Using steroids is widely recognized to constitute an unfair advantage over athletes who do not use them. They are banned in athletic competitions, and testing by urinalysis is commonly undertaken to detect them.

To avoid detection, athletes often cycle steroids—using them during training but stopping long enough before a competitive event that they will not be perceptible in the urine when tests are done at the event. Countering that practice, recent developments in the technology of testing have extended the period during which anabolic steroids may be identified. Traditionally, the steroid stanozolol has been difficult to detect, leading athletes to use it up to a few weeks or even days before competition with little fear of drug tests. In 1985, however, it was found that preparing the urine with certain chemicals enables the GC/MS test to identify the drug for up to four weeks after last use. Never used in the Olympics before 1988, this procedure was followed in the test that resulted in Ben Johnson being stripped of his Olympic gold medal when stanozolol was detected in his urine following the 100-meter race. Had this new technique not been used, it is likely that Johnson would not have been undone.^[49] It should be added that testing of athletes at the Olympics, at about $200 per urine sample, is much more elaborate and many times more expensive than the techniques used in the workplace.^[50]

Steroid-using athletes, however, are not without stratagems of their own. According to a January 16, 1991, report on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition," some athletes escape detection by using testosterone, the naturally occurring male hormone that testers do not consider to constitute a violation until it reaches concentrations of six times the normal level in the urine. It is also

likely that testers are not aware of all the performance-enhancing drugs that athletes are using, and some slip through unnoticed. Robert Voy, chief medical officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said,

The athletes are ahead of us and have stuff we don't even know about; I know that for a fact. We are not deterring use at all, as far as anabolic steroids are concerned. We have to come up with better analytical programs and with better technology. We have to catch up and find out what drugs they are using.^[51]

As part of my research on attitudes toward drug testing, in 1988, I conducted several interviews and distributed a questionnaire similar to the one used for the railroad and the chemical plant to both men and women from the baseball, swimming, track, and football teams of a large Midwestern university. Questionnaires were completed and returned by 176 student athletes. Twenty-nine of these had not yet taken their first drug test, while the remaining 147 had been tested from one to more than fifteen times. As the high side of these figures indicates, student athletes are subjected to a much more intensive regime of testing than is found in any of the business organizations I have investigated. They are tested at least twice during the school year under a combination of administrative decision (not announced in advance) as to when all members of certain teams will be tested and selection of individuals at random. Given the random component of the program, some individuals may be tested three or more times before everyone is tested twice, giving a total of about 1,100 tests for the 450 student athletes in the program. From 1987 to 1989, the rate of positive results (mostly for marijuana) was about 2 percent. In addition to university-mandated tests, those who participate in bowl games, national tournaments, or other championship events may take additional drug tests mandated by the NCAA.

Of the thirty or so student athletes who responded to my questionnaire's invitation to write additional comments, nine of the ten respondents who identified particular drugs in their comments specified steroids (the tenth specified alcohol). Beyond a

rather cynical comment that "nobody cares if they're busted for steroids," all of those who specifically mentioned steroids, and all but three of the other commenters expressed their approval of drug testing. That amounts to an approval rate of about 90 percent of those who commented (as contrasted with 28% of the trainmen and chemical workers who commented). If anything, these student athletes want more and better testing. Eight commenters complained that people are getting away with drug use because the tests are too easy to beat, and several of these called for more rigorous and frequent drug tests. A member of the women's track team wrote, "I think drug testing is very beneficial to those athletes who participate without the use of steroids. If there was no drug testing athletes would be able to use drugs to enhance their performance and if this happened the true meaning of athletics would be lost." The dilemmas and pressures that face those who would compete at the highest level were articulated by a member of the men's track team, who claimed that it is "necessary to prevent steroid abuse on an international level. Competing against those who do use 'roids is unfair, and some feel to keep up is possible only with 'roids."

Two male swimmers distinguished between steroids and other drugs. As one of them put it, "I think testing for steroids is a good idea, but I think testing for drugs that do not directly enhance performance is wrong and an invasion of privacy." This position was also espoused by a member of the men's track team in one of the seven extended interviews I conducted with student athletes, but the others adopted more stringent views. Most approve of random testing; one urged that the programs begin with high school athletes. Others commented that there is no reason to object to testing if one has nothing to hide. One track team member complained in an interview that he is often accused of using steroids because of his build. He said he has seriously thought of wearing a T-shirt to meets which displays the dates of his drug tests and bears the legend, "Give me the cup!"

Continuing to bear in mind that the present comments are limited to the immediate purposes of drug testing, without reference to broader social issues to be developed later, the particular nature of steroids leads us to adopt a position on their

detection by urinalysis quite different from that we have recommended for other drugs. Traces of street drugs can be detected in the urine after their behavioral effects have disappeared (in the case of marijuana, several weeks after). Therefore, it is likely that most of those who test positive for such drugs (especially marijuana) on random, periodic, or preemployment tests are not under their influence at the time of the test. Since most positive test results are indeed for marijuana, it follows that, apart from situations where a reasonable suspicion of current impairment exists, urinalysis is not an effective means to identify workers whose on-the-job performance is influenced by drugs. In the case of steroids, however, their effects on body development and athletic performance persist longer than the period during which it is possible to detect them in the urine. Therefore, unannounced and random testing done at any time during training appears to be one of the few effective measures available to prevent athletes from cycling steroid use in such a way that they can realize their advantages while avoiding the risk of detection in preannounced tests done at the time of competition.^[52] The problem of steroid use is serious enough in terms of the competitive edge gained by those who use them and their possible long-term detrimental effects on health that a convincing argument in favor of such programs of drug testing of amateur and professional athletes for anabolic steroids can be made.

6
From Drug Control to Mind Control

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
Carl Jung,
Memories, Dreams, Reflections

The explanation that one is most likely to hear for the dramatic increase in the frequency of drug testing since about 1985 is straightforward: drug abuse is increasing in America to an alarming extent and at great social cost, war must be waged on drugs to eradicate them from our society, and testing is an important strategy in that war. While no one would dispute that drugs are responsible for a great deal of personal and social harm, the rest of this explanation does not hold up under scrutiny. Far from growing, drug use is actually decreasing in the United States and has been on a downward trend for more than a decade. A series of household surveys undertaken by the National Institute on Drug Abuse at intervals of from one to three years between 1971 and 1991 demonstrates that, for all age groups, drug abuse peaked around 1979 and has been declining ever since. In fact, between 1985 and 1991 the number of current drug users among

Americans aged 12 and over (determined by those surveyed who acknowledged using an illicit drug at least once within the last thirty days) decreased by half.^[1] These figures indicate that the explosion in drug testing cannot legitimately be explained as a response to increasing drug abuse. Here I propose the alternative explanation that, as with lie detection, drug testing contributes to more pervasive and efficient surveillance and control of individuals in a disciplinary technology of power.

Testing Athletes

The NIDA household surveys do not address the issue of athletes using anabolic steroids to enhance performance. Therefore, it may be the case that in athletics at least, the increase in drug testing in recent years has come about in an effort to curb increased use of steroids. As with other drugs, however, the evidence indicates that the use of steroids may well have been exaggerated and that if anything it is decreasing rather than increasing.

Estimates of how many athletes use steroids are wildly inconsistent. For example, opinions as to the number of participants in the 1988 Seoul Olympics who used performance-enhancing drugs ranged from 10 to 99.9 percent, with most estimating half or more.^[2] It must be stressed, however, that these are educated guesses and not the result of any survey. Those studies that have been done (not, however, of Olympic athletes) indicate a much lower rate. A 1984 questionnaire survey commissioned by the NCAA found that 4 percent of the 2,039 college athletes who responded acknowledged ever using steroids,^[3] and a follow-up survey conducted by the same researchers in 1988 found the figure to be 5 percent of 2,282 respondents.^[4] A 1985 Big 10 Conference survey was in general agreement, setting steroid use at from 2 to 7 percent.^[5] Of the 87 football players at a large Midwestern university who responded to my anonymous questionnaire in 1988, none admitted using steroids, although 7 individuals acknowledged occasional, recreational use of other drugs.

When athletes are tested, the positive results are lower than the findings of these surveys. The Associated Press reported on Au-

gust 30, 1989, that preseason drug testing for steroids throughout the National Football League (which has about 1,300 players) resulted in just thirteen suspensions (1%), with two additional players suspended for testing positive a second time for other drugs. In 1990, only three individuals were found positive for steroids in preseason testing, and a weekly program of random testing throughout the 1990–91 season identified no steroid users among professional football players.^[6] Even with refined techniques that allow the detection of steroids in the urine for up to four weeks after last use, only about thirty urine tests taken at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul were positive, and, of those, just ten were judged unequivocal enough to justify disqualification.^[7] Frank Uryasz, Director of Sports Sciences for the NCAA, told me that, as of 1991, the NCAA conducted a total of about 14,000 tests annually. Positive results for all drugs, including marijuana and other street drugs as well as steroids, are less than 1 percent. This represents a significant drop from earlier years. For example, tests at the home campus of each team prior to the 1987 season football bowl games produced 2.8 percent positive results, while later tests conducted on four teams, shortly before the game and at the bowl site, showed a positive rate of 9.4 percent. Uryasz attributes this higher figure to the fact that players did not expect that tests would be given at the bowl sites.

These figures are sharply at odds with the fears expressed by some that steroid use among athletes approaches epidemic proportions. Of course, it is possible that many athletes who use steroids will not acknowledge it even on anonymous surveys and that a number of users who cycle their use carefully or take other evasive tactics are likely to fall through the net of drug testing. Nevertheless, the figures of 2 to 7 percent from survey data—and current positive test results below 1 percent—put a heavy strain on the credibility of estimates that 50 percent or more of Olympic-level athletes use steroids. Perhaps what Gene Upshaw, Executive Director of the NFL Players Association, said about professional football applies to all sports: "The fact that so few players have been suspended for alleged steroid use indicates that the public perception of the steroid problem in the NFL is greatly exaggerated."^[8]

If the statistics on declining positive test results in professional football and the NCAA indicate that steroid use has in fact been decreasing rather than increasing over the last few years, an important reason may be that the intended effect of testing programs to deter steroid use is working. If so, that is welcome news. However, the implication of the statistics presented above that levels of steroid use were never very high and have become extremely low recently suggests that deterrence is not sufficient as a complete explanation for the high frequency of drug testing in athletics. An additional component in full account would pertain to public relations. A few highly visible cases have focused intense public attention on drugs in sports. These include the cocaine-related death in 1986 of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, and the banning of Washington Redskins defensive end Dexter Manley from professional football in 1989 after a third positive drug test for cocaine. Two famous cases involving steroids are the disqualification of Oklahoma All-American linebacker Brian Bosworth from the Orange Bowl and the stripping of an Olympic gold medal from Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson. Keen apprehension has been voiced about the integrity of sports and the effect of drug use by athlete role models on the attitudes and behavior of young people. In the face of these pressures, it is likely that many universities and amateur and professional sports organizations have instituted tough drug testing programs partly as a public relations tactic to convince people that they view the drug problem in sports as a serious one and are taking decisive steps toward its solution.^[9]

Testing Employees

Although the NIDA household surveys indicate that drug use is declining in the United States, that fact has yet to impress itself on public opinion.^[10] For example, officials I interviewed from eleven organizations that conduct drug tests all agreed with the general proposition that drug use is a serious—and growing—problem in the American workplace. Interestingly, however, only one of them rated it as a problem in his own organization and then not as a serious problem. This is consistent with some odd sta-

tistics in the 1987 Business and Legal Reports survey. Although 59 percent of the approximately 2,000 companies represented already did drug testing, were planning to implement it with a year, or had it under consideration, hardly one in five of them (13% of the total) identified drug abuse as a serious problem in their own company.^[11] Again, 68 percent of respondents to the same survey indicated the assumption that the drug problem in other organizations was more serious in 1987 than it was five years previously, but only 36 percent stated that it was more serious in their own organization.^[12] All of these facts point to an apparently widespread assumption that drugs constitute a bigger social problem than one's personal experience indicates.

The common perception that drug abuse is on the rise is probably a result of the immense publicity that has been devoted to it by the media and by politicians using it as a major campaign issue. These perceptions might then stimulate organizations to establish drug testing programs in the interests of prevention, even when drug abuse is not a serious problem for them. For example, the New York City Police Department instituted random testing of all police officers in September 1989, despite the rate of only 1 to 2 percent positive results found in previous tests. The rationale: the police force is clean now, and the new program is intended to keep it that way.^[13] We might anticipate the claim to be made some years hence that testing is responsible for the low incidence of drug abuse in the department, when very possibly the level would have remained the same whether they tested or not.

If you ask organizations that test workers for drugs why they do so, the most common reason you will be given is safety. A famous accident with possible drug connections occurred in January 1987, when a Conrail freight train driven by an engineer with marijuana in his system went through a switch and collided with an Amtrak passenger train, killing 16 people and injuring 176. A year later, a commuter airliner crashed in Colorado killing 9, and the accident may have been related to cocaine use by the pilot. These events stimulated many companies—particularly those dealing with hazardous equipment or materials—to consider or implement drug testing programs as a means to lessen the probability of accidents. In some cases, the decision is not left up to

the companies: the Department of Transportation, the Federal Railroad Administration, and other government agencies mandate drug testing in various circumstances.

Another frequently expressed motive has to do with productivity. Reports have circulated that drug-using employees are more likely to be disciplinary problems and to take more sick leave (as much as sixteen times more) than other employees.^[14] A recent study of these matters was conducted in the U.S. Postal Service.^[15] Over 2,500 newly hired employees in Boston were tested for drugs, with test results kept secret from postal service authorities for purposes of the study. Some 12 percent tested positive: 7.8 percent for marijuana, 2.2 percent for cocaine, and 2.2 percent for other drugs or combinations of drugs. The study followed the performance of the entire group for over a year. It did reveal some differences in productivity and behavior between those with negative and positive test results. Absentee rates were 7.1 percent for those who had tested positive for marijuana and 9.8 percent for those who tested positive for cocaine, as contrasted with 4 percent for employees whose drug tests were negative. Of those with negative test results, 6.4 percent were fired, while the corresponding figures for those testing positive for marijuana and cocaine are 13.6 and 7.3 percent, respectively (the difference in termination rates between those who tested negative and those who tested positive for cocaine is not statistically significant). Those testing positive for either drug are somewhat more likely to have a compensable accident, and those testing positive for marijuana have slightly higher accident and discipline rates, but a statistically significant difference in these areas was not found between those testing positive and those testing negative for cocaine.^[16] Although certain measurable differences in productivity and safety were identified, they are nothing like the vast discrepancies that have been claimed. As the authors conclude, "The findings of this study suggest that many of the claims cited to justify pre-employment drug screening have been exaggerated."^[17]

This study, incidentally, was reported in the Wall Street Journal under the headline, "Study May Spur Job-Applicant Drug Screening," and with a lead paragraph that reads:

Companies that think their pre-employment drug screening programs are cost-effective will draw comfort from a new study published today. And others may be encouraged to adopt such screening.^[18]

This is quite the reverse of the conclusion of the study; only late in the Wall Street Journal article, on an inside page, is there reference to a statement by the study's senior author that the findings were less striking than expected. The spin on this story is indicative of the hyperbole that often characterizes media depictions of drug abuse and drug testing. That may partly explain why the American public does not seem to grasp the fact that drug use has been declining in this country for some time, and perhaps also why drug testing programs have been increasing in the workplace.

In the climate of our times, to suggest that drugs are anything other Public Enemy #1 seems irresponsible, even unpatriotic. Nevertheless, a few studies in addition to the one just cited should be noted. Stephen Levy indicates that addicts "not only . . . hold down a wide variety of jobs, but that their drug use goes undetected for long periods of time."^[19] David Caplovitz refutes the stereotype of drug use as so debilitating as to make it difficult to lead a normal life.^[20] His study of working addicts (mostly heroin users) revealed that even when they took drugs at work, they could successfully accomplish their jobs. While-collar addicts tended to have lower-level jobs than nonaddicts, but the blue-collar addicts he studied tended to have better jobs than nonaddicts.^[21] And a Harvard Medical School experiment found that smoking up to three marijuana cigarettes per day has no detrimental effect on one's capacity or motivation to work.^[22]

My purpose in mentioning these studies is certainly not to condone drug abuse. Instead, when they are combined with the facts that drug use in general is decreasing and that its detrimental effect on worker productivity, while measurable, is not so massive as commonly thought, these studies engender the strong suspicion that there is something more behind the prevalence and growth of drug testing than just a response to drug abuse.

The Business of Drug Testing

Drug testing generates positive feedback, such that the very existence of testing programs spawns still more of them. This is related, in part, to potential liability. Whatever the reality, the perception is widespread that drugs are a major threat to safety. As more companies conduct drug testing, those who do not may feel pressured to adopt it because failure to test may render them vulnerable to accusations of neglecting to take common, prudent measures to ensure a safe workplace. Moreover, companies that do not test may fear that they will become magnets for unproductive and accident-prone drug users. As this reasoning was expressed by the personnel manager of Lawrence (Kansas) Memorial Hospital in explaining their adoption of a drug testing program, "As it [testing] becomes widespread, drug users may flock to hospitals and other employers that they know don't do testing. Just by not testing, we may be attracting undesirable candidates."^[23]

Another aspect of the tendency of testing to spawn more testing has to do with its institutionalization. Drug testing has become a big business. Chemical research and development are necessary to devise and improve the tests; company medical departments are charged with collecting and packing the urine samples; courier firms are engaged to transport them; commercial laboratories contract to evaluate the samples and report the results. One plant I studied which was hiring several thousand workers found it necessary to set up a special telephone line dedicated solely to transmitting test results from the laboratory. In addition to the administration of tests themselves, anxiety about drug abuse and implementation of testing programs have contributed to the development of employee assistance programs to provide preliminary diagnosis and counseling pertaining to drug-related and other problems. Rehabilitation centers have sprung up for outpatient or inpatient treatment of those identified by the tests as drug users. And finally there are the lawyers: lawyers to write drug testing policies, lawyers to review the policies that other lawyers have written, lawyers to represent employees in grievance proceedings stemming from drug tests, and lawyers to defend

companies against those grievances. Thus, many wheels are in motion to maintain drug testing; many organizations and individuals derive their business and livelihood from it. They compete for contracts, disseminate information, and sponsor workshops concerning the problem of drugs in the workplace and how testing contributes to its solution. The momentum provided by the institutions that have sprouted to implement drug testing must be counted among the major reasons for its remarkable growth.^[24]

Another reason for the growth of drug testing is that some organizations may be interested in fostering an image of themselves as public-spirited citizens who are concerned about the drug problem in America and are taking decisive steps to combat it. I believe this is a major impetus to drug testing in athletic organizations. But in the workplace, I suspect it is essentially cosmetic. In my interviews with human resources executives, at any rate, an altruistic determination to fight on the front lines of society's war on drugs was conspicuously absent. At most, managers expressed the intention to keep their own establishments as free from drugs as possible. Of course, if this attitude is adopted by a great many companies, it will have a general impact on the national situation, but from the point of view of businessmen, that would seem to be only a by-product of more parochial concerns. When I raised this issue specifically with a personnel official from a utility company, he expressed the opinion that while their preemployment testing policy might curtail drug use among their own employees, it could have little effect on the problem in society at large other than shifting it from one social sector to others.

Drug Testing and Social Control

An anthropologist, asked to consider drug testing from the vantage point of a broad, comparative familiarity with human cultures, would identify it as a "mechanism of social control." That term refers to the many customs and practices that operate to direct people toward behavior that is socially acceptable and deflect them from activities that are not. The sanctions that give

force to mechanisms of social control may be either positive or negative. Examples of the former are raising salaries or bestowing honorary degrees on estimable employees and citizens; examples of the latter are imprisonment of miscreants by governmental authorities or illness and other misfortunes sent by God, witches, malicious demons, or angry ancestors. Sanctions may also be distinguished according to whether they are public or private. Public sanctions include the presentation of the Nobel Prize and the execution of a criminal in the town square; a letter from one's bank in an unmarked envelope giving notice that a penalty fee is being assessed for bouncing a check belongs to the category of private sanctions.

As with all mechanisms of social control, drug testing carries sanctions. These come in all combinations of positive and negative, public and private, although some of them (especially negative and private) are much more prevalent than others. The rarest form of sanction that I have encountered in drug testing is positive and private. I know of only one example. Princeton Diagnostic Laboratories, Inc., is a firm that conducts biochemical testing of all sorts, including the urinalysis work for the drug testing programs of a number of companies. Speaking at a Columbia University Law School forum on drug testing in October 1988, President and Chief Executive Officer Carlton Turner said that the laboratory subjects its own employees to random drug testing. A unique twist is that each employee who tests drug free under this program is given a cash bonus of $20. Turner reported that this private, positive sanction has made their drug testing program hugely popular with employees, who rejoice in the opportunity to provide urine samples when their numbers come up. (The corresponding, negative sanction is that any employee whose test reveals the presence of drugs is summarily fired.)

Sanctions that are positive and public are also rare in drug testing. Again, Turner (who had been former President Reagan's special advisor on drug policy) mentioned one of the most intriguing of them at the Columbia forum. When the White House drug testing program was established, it was announced that President Reagan would be the first to be tested, followed by

Vice-President Bush and "senior White House staff." This caused employees to tumble over each other in their hopes to be tested early, for this distinction became a badge that marked inclusion in the charmed circle of "senior staff" at the White House.

As a mechanism of social control, drug testing employs negative sanctions far more frequently than positive ones. Public, negative sanctions tend to be most common in athletics. The National Football League tested all players prior to the 1989–90 season and published the names of those players found to have used drugs. Testing at competitive events inevitably leads to public disclosure because those identified by tests as drug users are disqualified. The publicity may become no less than sensational when medals that had been awarded immediately after an event are taken away a day or two later when drug test results become known, as happened to Ben Johnson in the 1988 Olympics. Bringing glasnost into athletics, drug-using Russian athletes discovered under a program of unannounced drug testing conducted jointly with the United States are publicly identified by name, stripped of their medals, and suspended from competition. The Russians, indeed, make findings in this program more public than do their American counterparts.^[25]

By far the most common form of sanctions brought on by drug testing, however, is negative and private. Indeed, many drug testing policies lay great stress on the strict confidentiality that surrounds the results of tests and actions taken in response to them. From the perspective of mechanisms of social control worldwide, this is odd. The force behind sanctions is normally supplied by social disapproval, ridicule, and shame, and these can be brought to bear only in public circumstances. On reflection, however, it is quickly apparent that drug testing stings in one of a person's more private parts—the pocketbook. The sanction is severe indeed, because drug testing directly impinges on what in our society is essential for the reasonable satisfaction of one's material needs: the ability to get and keep a job. Moreover, while the results of drug tests and actions taken in response to them are kept strictly confidential, they may nonetheless ultimately have an effect on one's public life. Employment is important to social standing in American society, so it is difficult to establish

or maintain public respect (not to mention self-esteem) while unemployed.

The simplest and most common device in drug testing's inventory of negative, private sanctions is denial of employment to job applicants. Most preemployment testing policies specify that securing a job depends on a drug test, and those whose test results reveal drug use are not hired. The whole process is shrouded in confidentiality. Organizations virtually never make it public that certain, named individuals were not hired because of a drug test. Unless specifically asked, often they do not even tell the applicants themselves.

A few organizations apply an equally simple sanction to current employees: they are fired for a single positive drug test. This is the down side to Princeton Diagnostic Laboratories' incentive of a $20 bonus for each negative test result. Immediate termination on the first positive drug test is also the policy of the New York City Police Department.^[26] While this policy may appear to be decisive, it may not be economical because it often costs more to locate and train a new employee (especially in a specialized position) than to rehabilitate a current one. In any event, immediate termination is a blunt and ineffective instrument of social control so far as the larger society is concerned. The point of social control, after all, is to induce people to follow acceptable lines of behavior. The most effective forms of social control include provisions for modifying the behavior of those who stray, and termination at the first sign of deviance is not an efficient means to that end.

Most organizations that test current members have adopted a posture that is both more forgiving and more effective in modifying deviant behavior. Its form may be described as "test-intervene-retest." A positive result on a drug test does not immediately provoke termination, but it does act as a signal that behavior modification is required. In response to this signal, the organization begins to intervene in the individual's life. At the beginning, intervention may be relatively mild, such as a single session with a drug counselor for the person who tests positive for the first time. Regardless of the severity of the initial intervention, however, a positive test result usually licenses the employer or other

authority to conduct further tests of the individual at will and without warning. Retesting of this sort is normally authorized for a certain period of time, such as a year. If the test results are uniformly negative, at the end of the specified period, the individual returns to the pool of people who are subject only to the normal provisions of the testing policy. But if a positive result is found in the period of retesting, the individual faces more stringent interventions, such as formal rehabilitation on an outpatient or inpatient basis and/or for student athletes, disqualification from participation in games or meets for a certain period. If positive test results persist, the individual is ultimately dropped from the team or terminated from employment.

The regime of test-intervene-retest gets its teeth from the "job jeopardy model." This means that an employee's job (or, similarly, a student athlete's place on the team and, often, retention of a scholarship) is held hostage to successful rehabilitation. "To be totally effective," writes an expert on employee assistance programs, "'job discipline' and 'constructive confrontation' procedures should be an integral function of the program. This approach imposes penalties that ultimately lead to termination if the chemical-dependent employee refuses, discontinues, or does not respond to the EAP's efforts, and fails to maintain a satisfactory job-performance level."^[27]

When backed by the sanction of the job jeopardy model, drug testing is a potent mechanism of social control. It assures that, one way or another, the organization will rid itself of the drug use that testing has detected. Either the habit is expunged from the individual's behavior, or, if that should fail, the individual is expunged from the organization. The former solution is the preferred one, partly because it is more humane to the employee, partly because rehabilitating a current employee is often less expensive than hiring and training a new one, and partly because it achieves the general aim of social control to reform deviant behavior. The opportunity for treatment available to current employees under the job jeopardy model is also a more constructive sanction than punishment or ridicule, in that it offers the possibility to overcome dependency on drugs without loss of face or employment.^[28]

Drug Testing in the Disciplinary Technology of Power

The economic sanction of job jeopardy is only part of a larger answer to the question of how drug testing, relying as it does on negative, private sanctions, can be an effective mechanism of social control. The subtler but more fundamental part of the answer pertains to Foucault's theory of the disciplinary technology of power, a method of social domination that relies on constant surveillance to detect individual deviations from expected standards of behavior at an early stage, when they may be quickly and easily rectified. The surveillance is part of "descending individualization," Foucault's term for the general set of circumstances in which increasingly sophisticated techniques allow detailed and comprehensive information about each member of society to be gathered, stored, and easily retrieved.^[29] As is true of lie detection, drug testing also constitutes an advance in surveillance techniques over primitive forms such as the panopticon. Particularly with random testing, there is no need to keep people under constant surveillance. They must conform their behavior to expectations even when no one is watching, because they know that they may be called on at any time to provide a urine sample that will reveal what they have been doing.

Drug testing is particularly relevant to Foucault's ideas about how, over the last few centuries, the power to control and coerce people's behavior has operated in collusion with knowledge.^[30] Science—especially medicine—has generated immense amounts of knowledge about physical and mental disease, growth and development, deviance, and other human conditions previously known only dimly, if at all. This knowledge took the form of rich new discourse about these conditions: definitions of what they are, methods for identifying them, theories about what produces them, proposals for what might be done about them. In some cases, such as female hysteria and child sexuality, it is likely that the conditions or pathologies did not even exist prior to discourse about their diagnosis and treatment produced by expanding knowledge.^[31] Knowledge about human normalities and pathologies enables power to intrude more intimately into people's lives.

It establishes standards or norms for physical, mental, and behavioral conditions of all sorts. It encourages frequent examination of individuals to ascertain if, where, and how they deviate from those norms. It licenses interventions in the individual's body, mind, and behavior for the purpose of maintaining and enhancing those aspects that are decreed to be normal and for treating those that are identified as disorders. These interventions are done to people for their own good, it is claimed, but nevertheless they constitute the exercise of power over them.

Drug testing fits this pattern perfectly. Urinalysis has been developed as a practicable means for gaining knowledge about individuals' drug use habits (and the future promises even better methods, such as testing hair). Drug use has been identified as a serious disorder for the individual and for society—with ample testimony of ruined lives and the violence of criminal drug distribution networks to prove it. This is used to justify the inspection of individuals by means of drug tests and interventions in the form of prevention and treatment (or failing that, exclusion) in the lives of those who test positive. One example is a bill, introduced into the 1992 Kansas legislature, aimed at reducing the number of "crack babies." The bill would require a woman convicted of a felony drug offense to be implanted with a Norplant contraceptive device as a condition of probation. The device would not be removed until random drug tests certified that she had not used drugs for a period of a year. The exercise of power in this particular plan is too blatant for most tastes: critics labeled the bill unconstitutional, discriminatory against women, and ethically repugnant, and it was turned down unanimously in committee.^[32] It signals, nonetheless, a possible future.

More successful applications of disciplinary power come in less obviously punitive packages. Foucault stresses that many deviations (mental illness, sexual maladjustment, juvenile delinquency, etc.) are viewed as disorders deserving treatment rather than crimes demanding punishment. He goes on to discuss how the forms of treatment are considered to be helpful interventions that provide individuals with the opportunity to extinguish deviant behaviors that are deleterious to themselves as well as society. Only after strenuous efforts at treatment have failed are

incorrigibles excluded from normal society, often by incarceration in an insane asylum or prison.^[33]

These attitudes and practices are readily apparent in drug testing programs. Corporate policies (I will quote from one) often stress the company's "caring attitude" toward the well-being of its employees, its "sincere interest in making the workplace as safe as possible and to assist employees to rid themselves of dependency problems." The test-intervene-retest regime is designed to achieve those goals, and officials in employee assistance programs work hard to ensure that the indicated treatment is available and that the troubled employee takes advantage of it. It is also true, however, that drug testing may eventually result in exclusion. Under the job jeopardy model, as discussed already, drug-using employees or athletes who fail at rehabilitation (as demonstrated by a positive drug test after returning to work) are likely to be fired or dropped from the team, and those with positive preemployment test results are not hired. Although each instance of exclusion is from a single organization, it is in principle possible that a drug user might experience a series of rejections based on drug tests from different organizations and eventually be excluded from the employed, self-sufficient sector of society altogether.

Although drug testing displays many of the features that Foucault identifies with the disciplinary technology of power, it appears to deviate in one respect. According to Foucault, the disciplinary technology achieves greater efficiency and economy in the application of power than any previous regime. This is true enough when drug testing is compared with a crude mechanism of surveillance such as the panopticon, but the efficiency of drug testing appears nevertheless to leave much to be desired. Massive numbers are tested, but the rate of positive results hovers around 4 percent. That means that for every individual who faces some sort of action or treatment because of a drug test, some twenty-four others test negative and nothing is done with reference to them. Testing twenty-five to locate one is anything but efficient. Nor is it economical. If an organization with a 4 percent positive rate contracts for drug testing at the rate of, say, $26 per test, the cost per positive test result comes to $650.^[34]

But this reasoning stems from the assumption that drug testing is exclusively concerned to identify people who use drugs. In fact, there is much more to it than that. Consider a "for-cause" testing policy (under which individuals are tested if their behavior suggests that they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol). To apply a for-cause policy effectively, it is necessary that supervisors notice abnormal behavior. To this end, they are trained to recognize signs of drug-impaired behavior and admonished to observe workers under their supervision. But such observation extends beyond drug-related issues, because the alert supervisor is likely to notice a variety of deviations from mandated behavior in addition to those possibly caused by drugs. Figure 4, which details how supervisors should proceed in deciding whether to take disciplinary action in any circumstance, is an outstanding example of the emphasis placed on general surveillance in the workplace. Note how the "default mode" of the system is "observe employee behavior." The process begins in that mode, and at every point, whether disciplinary action is taken or not, the system returns to it.

In actuality, employees normally respond more positively to a for-cause testing policy than to periodic or random testing, because it limits testing to situations where the employee's on-the-job behavior provokes reasonable suspicion that something is amiss. I myself endorsed it as the most acceptable form of drug testing, for the same reason: managers and fellow employees certainly have the right to expect that workers will show up for work in a condition to do their jobs competently, especially when considerations of safety are involved. Nevertheless, the stepped-up observation procedures connected with a for-cause policy of drug testing also serve to extend the general surveillance so essential in a disciplinary technology of power. This is one of several examples of how, in testing, discipline and control are ingeniously packaged in forms made palatable to those brought under their sway—and where even an analyst who is generally critical of the expansion of disciplinary power, such as myself, is constrained to condone it.

There is more. Although the low rate of positive results appears to render drug testing an inefficient means of exerting power,

Figure 4.
Steps in the disciplinary process. From McAfee and Chadwick.
"Evaluating an Organization's Disciplinary System," Human
Resource Management 1 (1981):33. Reprinted by permission of
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

there may be another way of looking at it. If we attempt something akin to figure-ground reversal, we could imagine drug testing to be oriented as much toward the negatives as the positives. That is to say, drug testing might achieve some important result for the 96 percent whose tests do not indicate drug use. If that were the case, our assessment of its efficiency and economy would soar. But what might that result be? It seems that nothing much happens to those with negative test results. If the intention was to hire them, they are hired; if they are already employed, they return to their jobs. Yet I argue that so far as its overall social consequences are concerned, the effect of drug testing is at least as important for those who test negative as for those who test positive.

It has already been indicated that drug testing (particularly random testing) serves to control people's behavior even when they are not under direct surveillance. The possibility that they might be tested at any time is sufficient to prevent some people from using drugs. Therefore, drug testing has a significant impact on them, even when test results show them to be drug-free. More than deterrence is at issue, however, for certainly most people who test negative do not refrain from drug use out of fear that they will be caught by a test. They simply do not want to use drugs and would refrain from using them whether they were subjected to drug tests or not. Does drug testing have any important effect on them?

I think that it does. The reasoning is grounded in Foucault's contention that the disciplinary technology of power produces individuals characterized by "automatic docility." Disciplinary training operates by drill. People are induced to perform specific acts repeatedly, until they do them automatically, by second nature. No effort is made to get them to see the overall picture, to understand the rationale for what they are trained to do. They are conditioned to perform the minute particulars correctly, unthinkingly. If they do that, the resulting totality will come right whether the participants envision it or not. More generally, this type of training develops individuals who are ready to submit without question to new drills that may be handed down. The disciplinary technology of power, that is to say, tends to develop people who are conditioned or disciplined to be automatically docile.^[35]

My hypothesis is that drug testing is a disciplinary drill and that those who readily acquiesce—even approve of it—are conditioned to automatic docility. This hypothesis may be applicable to student athletes. It has already been discussed, in chapter 4, how athletes state that they are willing to submit to drug tests because they see it as a means to prevent others from gaining unfair competitive advantage from performance-ehancing drugs. When I discussed possible reasons for the high rate of acceptance of testing among student athletes with a university athletic department official, however, he added another dimension to the issue. He said that coaches make it clear that they must undergo drug testing, and he continued that student athletes do not usually question what they are told to do by their coaches and others in authority. Applying Foucault's terminology, we might say that one reason why student athletes readily accept drug testing is because they have already developed a measure of docility (probably from long experience obeying the commands of coaches in high school, junior high school, little league, etc.). Empirical support for the hypothesis is provided by data from my questionnaire, particularly in the contrasting attitudes expressed by student athletes and trainmen. One question inquired into reactions to one's most recent drug test, the respondent being asked to check possibilities such as "unconcern," "worry," "embarrassment," and "anger." People who submit to drug testing with automatic docility would manifest rather bland attitudes about it; on this question, they would be expected to mark "unconcern" more than the other possibilities. The difference between student athletes and trainmen was considerable: 77 percent of the former reported an attitude of unconcern as opposed to 33 percent of the latter, while the latter much more commonly indicated negative responses such as worry about the possibility of a false positive result (51%, compared with 6% for student athletes) and anger at the distrust implied by testing (trainmen 33%, student athletes 7%). (For full results, see Appendix, table 3). Again, people who are conditioned to submitting to drug testing with automatic docility are likely to express little opposition to the prospect of being tested in the future. The questionnaire asked if experience in an organization that conducts drug tests (as both the railroad

and the university do) would make one more opposed, less opposed, or have no effect on one's attitude toward taking future drug tests. The responses again revealed a marked contrast between trainmen and student athletes. Of those who have taken one or more tests, 22 percent of the trainmen but only 4 percent of the student athletes indicated that they would be more opposed to taking future tests, while only 13 percent of the trainmen but 49 percent of the student athletes stated they would be less opposed (see Appendix, tables 6 and 7).^[36]

While drug testing acts to reinforce the automatic docility people already have, it can also, more important, be understood as a drill that develops automatic docility. The optimally disciplined and docile population will submit to any demand or directive without seeking to know a rationale or justification for it. Those forms of drug testing that are done in the absence of reasonable suspicion of drug use constitute good training for this. Random testing is particularly apt because its demands are entirely arbitrary: the essence of randomness is that there simply is no rationale for why one number should come up rather than another. In one chemical plant I studied, when the randomizing computer program produces a number, the employee corresponding to it is immediately summoned. The worker is expected to go dutifully to the medical department, and immediately to produce a urine sample. Given the randomness of the system, some employees have been tested several times, while others have yet to be called. This apparent disparity has provoked complaints, but management anticipates that these will subside as people become accustomed to the system. If and when that should occur—if people come to provide a urine sample for testing at the summons of an arbitrary, random selection procedure as readily and unreflectively as they now reveal date of birth and social security number to almost anyone who asks—the development of automatic docility will have taken a great step forward.

In an effort to test this aspect of the hypothesis, the question about attitudes toward drug tests appeared twice in the questionnaire. Subjects were asked to mark any of several responses describing their reactions to their first drug test, and the next question (directed to those who had been tested more than once)

was identical except that it referred to the most recent drug test. The hypothesis that drug testing is a means of developing automatic docility would predict that attitudes toward the most recent test would be less intense (more "unconcern" and less "worry," "embarrassment," "anger," or "satisfaction") than those toward the first test. The data from these questions (set out fully in the Appendix, tables 4 and 5) support the hypothesis. For example, although trainmen manifest considerably less docility in the matter of drug testing than do student athletes, a shift in that direction is evident among trainmen as they are tested more frequently. Of the trainmen who have taken three or more drug tests, 25 percent remember facing their first test with unconcern, while those unconcerned about their most recent test swelled to 34 percent; fully half of them were worried about a false positive result when they took their first test, but just 38 percent of them continued to worry about that in their most recent test; 44 percent reacted to their first test with anger that drug tests invade their privacy, while those reporting that feeling at their most recent test dropped to 34 percent. However, the question that asked if the experience of belonging to an organization that conducts drug tests would make one more or less opposed to taking them in the future produced ambiguous results for the hypothesis that repeated testing increases automatic docility (see Appendix, tables 6 and 7).^[37]

Interestingly, so far as its contribution to the development of automatic docility is concerned, drug testing has nothing to do with drugs. The important thing is to train people to submit readily to being tested; just what is being tested and the results are beside the point.

The application of disciplinary power increases in economy and efficiency with automatic docility because the more docile the populace, the less the resistance to power. If we examine them from this perspective, certain initially curious drug testing programs and proposals become more intelligible. A case in point is Chicago's St. Sabina Academy, a Catholic school that began random drug testing of all children in grades six through eight in 1990. In an interview, an official of St. Sabina parish told me that drug abuse is not presently a problem in the school. However, it

is a serious problem in the neighborhood and church, and community members have been active in their opposition. They have exposed drug dealers in the parks and crack houses in the neighborhood, disrupted business in stores that sell drug paraphernalia, organized marches, and in general have taken any grassroots action they can think of to rid their community of drugs.

The individual I interviewed is convinced that drug dealers are beginning to target children as young as eight to eleven, and he is convinced that steps must be taken to help the children resist the temptation. His opinion is that children need clearly defined expectations in terms of which to structure their behavior, and the drug testing program at St. Sabina Academy is intended to convey the unequivocal message that drugs will not be tolerated in the school. Under the program, some 20 to 25 students are selected at random and tested by urinalysis every quarter. At this rate, about one-third of the students in grades six through eight will be tested every year. The testing is intended primarily as a deterrent: not so much to identify students who currently use drugs (there are few, if any, at present) as to establish a strongly anti-drug climate in the school that will help children to say no if or when they are invited to try drugs. The proposal enjoys strong support in the St. Sabina community. A letter that introduced the program and requested reaction was sent home to some 350 school families. It drew 210 responses in favor and only 4 against. Among the most frequent comments from parents was that the program should not be limited to grades six through eight but begin in kindergarten.

One can certainly appreciate the concern of the St. Sabina community to protect their children from drugs. Nevertheless, it does seem to be a rather extreme move to institute random drug tests of young children in the school when the evidence is that they are not using drugs. If drug testing is also understood as a technique for instilling automatic docility, however, the St. Sabina program makes better sense. People who become habituated to random drug testing as children are likely to continue to submit to it without opposition as adults, and they will be conditioned to accept unquestioningly other disciplinary drills that may from time to time be imposed on them. In that sense, a program such

as this one diminishes resistance to power and thus contributes to the efficiency and economy of its operation.

Certainly the leaders of the St. Sabina community do not intend this. It was obvious from my interview that they are exclusively motivated by concern for the safety and well-being of their community, especially its children. Nevertheless, institutions have a logic of their own, quite apart from the purposes of the people connected with them. Part of the genius of the disciplinary technology of power is that programs that include among their less obvious consequences the extension and perfection of power also have more visible aspects that people perceive to be in their best interest, and these motivate them to bring those programs into being. Such, I suggest, is the case with the random drug testing program at St. Sabina Academy.

Another remarkably successful tactic of drug testing for lessening resistance to the exercise of power is to generate the pressure to submit to tests from within, from the very people who are to be tested, rather than imposing it from the outside. Such internal motivation is sometimes achieved by offering rewards ("positive reinforcement," in the language of operant conditioning) for taking drug tests. Two examples, discussed already, are the $20 bonus given by Princeton Diagnostic Laboratories to employees for every negative test result and the scramble of officials in Reagan's White House to be among the first tested because that constituted a sign of their inclusion in the select group of "senior White House staff." As with the St. Sabina program, in both of these cases, people are motivated to go along with drug testing because they perceive it to be in their own interest to do so. It is similar with those athletes who are willing and anxious to submit to random testing themselves to prevent others from gaining an unfair competitive advantage through use of steroids.

Again, disciplinary power may ingratiate itself among those under its sway by adopting a friendly face. In addition to urinalysis, the massive antidrug program begun by the navy in 1982 included dogs trained to detect drugs. These would be stationed at gangplanks where they would sniff sailors and their possessions when they returned from shore leave, and they were used to search ships for hidden drug caches. The navy found it most

effective to use small dogs for this purpose. Unlike large breeds commonly associated with law enforcement, such as alsatians and dobermans, beagles and other small dogs could more easily investigate cramped places, and their handlers could conveniently hold them aloft to sniff among ceiling pipes. And there were psychological advantages: they "were preferred because they avoided a 'gestapo' image, and . . . the dogs became mascots that the crew protected from mischief or harm."^[38] Disciplinary power achieves a high degree of sophistication indeed when its instruments of surveillance and accusation are cute pets that are cuddled and protected by the very population they are used to control.

Peer pressure is another powerful force that moves people to submit to disciplinary techniques such as drug tests. In this case, the motivation may be external to the individual, but it is still internal to the group that is to be tested. As an example, high school students in Bennington, Oklahoma, decided to prove that their school is 100 percent drug-free by having the entire student body of seventy-five voluntarily take drug tests.^[39] Of course, the sense of the term "voluntary" is quickly distorted by any formal effort, such as this one, to mandate such tests. A voluntary act is one that may or may not be done, with no external pressure in either direction. Any policy encouraging "voluntary" tests constitutes pressure to take them, and thus they are not voluntary. The pressure can be powerful indeed. In the case of Bennington High School, all seventy-five members of the student body "volunteered" to be tested. The unanimity is not difficult to understand: imagine the kind of suspicion that would have been aroused if one or two students had declined.

Any doubts about the power of community pressure to force people to volunteer for a drug test should be eliminated by a brief dip into the local politics of Lawrence, Kansas. During summer 1989, the fire department was called to rescue a man who had fallen through the hole of an outhouse at a park on the outskirts of town. Apparently the wretch accidentally dropped some money into the offal and fell in while trying to retrieve it. The rumor quickly circulated, however, that it was a member of the City Commission who had been placed in that unfortunate position during the course of a failed drug deal. Although the commis-

sioner in question was in Spain at the time of the incident, the suspicion became sufficiently intense that he took a drug test and eventually had the results published in the local newspaper.^[40]

Authenticity Testing and Disciplinary Power

A hallmark of authenticity testing is asymmetry. Whether a test for witchcraft, trial by ordeal or by battle, lie detection, or drug testing, the circumstances of a test provide for information to pass from the test taker to the test giver but never in the opposite direction. Moreover, the test taker has little control over what information is acquired by the test or how it is extracted. The entire situation is set up to enable test givers to exercise power over test takers.

If we raise the analysis one level, however, a somewhat different picture emerges. Here the direction of communication is reversed, because the sheer fact that authenticity tests are given sends a metamessage from test givers to test takers. The significance of that message for power remains the same, however, for it reinforces the dominance of test givers. Regardless of the particular issue in question—commission of a crime, the veracity of what one has set down on a job application form, drug use, suspicion of witchcraft—this message reads: "We don't trust what you say, and we demand that you prove it by taking a test."

On occasion, the distrust embedded in that message is so acute that it departs from the unspoken level of metamessages and becomes an explicit component of the relationship. The following is a passage from Tally's Corner , Elliot Liebow's well-known study of urban blacks in Washington, D.C..

Owners of small retail establishments and other employers frequently anticipate employee stealing and adjust the wage rate accordingly. Tonk's employer explained why he was paying Tonk $35 for a 55–60 hour workweek. These men will all steal, he said. Although he keeps close watch on Tonk, he estimates that Tonk steals from $35 to $40 a week. What he steals, when added to his regular earnings, brings his take-home pay to $70 or $75 per week.

The employer said he did not mind this because Tonk is worth that much to the business.^[41]

Tonk's own estimate of what he steals corresponds with his employer's, although Liebow calculates it as a good deal less.^[42] Be that as it may, the important point is that expectation of employee dishonesty may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the employer takes distrust and the assumption of employee theft so far as to build it into the wages, the employee's only options are to steal (even if initially disinclined to do so) or to be a fool.

Although most employers are not as explicit as Tonk's, the metamessage of distrust conveyed by the demand that employees take authenticity tests is still unmistakable, and it often erodes loyalty and morale. Essentially they are being told, regardless of your record of service, reliability, and safety, you are suspected of theft, dishonesty, or drug use, and that suspicion will be suspended only by your passing this test, and even if you pass, you will be trusted only until the next test. This engenders hostility against the company and may even spur some workers to take steps to confound or subvert the tests purely as a way to maintain a sense of autonomy and dignity in the face of a system that is aimed at systematically humiliating them. Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Urine Test ,^[43] a practical guide to techniques for beating drug tests, is a good example of this reaction. Much more commonly, the metamessage of distrust and lack of consideration conveyed by testing programs and various other employer practices destroys employee motivation to take pride in one's work and perform at a high level and engenders a passive-aggressive response marked by smoldering resentment and diminished productivity. This attitude is clear in the four-page letter that one trainman returned with my questionnaire on attitudes toward drug testing. He was disturbed about a number of things besides the company's drug testing policy, but his letter tells volumes about what can happen to employee morale:

I'm made to work every day without a day off in conditions that I would not force my dog to endure (filthy locomotives, stinking

toilets and warm drinking water, etc.). I used to take pride in my work habits. Always on time, prepared and conscientious. For seven years my work record was flawless, but because an industrious trainmaster wanted to shed some light on himself and some glory, I was fired for 45 days for something that was the Dispatchers fault. I went home and bought some marijuana and thanked [the railroad] for the good job they'd given me.

Sir, it has been like that since. I do just enough to get the job done. I don't smoke marijuana on the job nor do I condone the use by fellow employees. I see that the train gets over the road, but if something breaks down or there is something that should be reported, I don't report it, I just look the other way. . . . When I'm done for the day and it's been an unusually long day (which there are many), I'll stop on the way home and have a couple of beers. When I can get some time off of the board [so as not to be "on call"], I'll really unwind and smoke some marijuana as I know a lot of people like myself do. Would you ask if I'm a drug abuser? No, I don't think I am. . . .

As for the [railroad's] testing programs, you should make the [company] Officials be required to have some management and people skills. I'm a hard working, tax paying, Vietnam Veteran and a Registered Voter. I pay my bills, take care and time to love my children and I don't cheat on my wife. I work for the . . . Railroad and until something better comes my way . . . I'll be out here just doing enough to get by.

The typical response to complaints such as these is that the only people who have any reason to fear lie detector or drug tests are those with something to hide. And, indeed, the author of the letter would fall in that category because he admits to smoking marijuana occasionally. But others who do not use drugs at all or have done nothing wrong also express great concern at being subjected to drug, lie detector, or integrity tests. This concern can be articulated on two levels. One argument, on the practical level, has to do with the danger of false positive results due to inadvertent or intentional error in the testing process. As one trainman put it, with specific reference to drug tests,

I cannot describe to you the amount of anger that I feel over this particular issue. Keep in mind that I feel this way and I'm an

individual who has no reason to be concerned. The very idea that I could lose a job because of someone's incompetence or because of someone's wanting to get back at me for one reason or another is infuriating. This company's attitude that you have nothing to worry about if you've nothing to hide is totally naive and unrealistic.

The second argument, on the level of principle, has to do with the legitimacy of subjecting people to authenticity tests in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing. Often this is phrased in legal language pertaining to the right to privacy and presumption of innocence. It is more relevant to this work, however, to articulate the point in social theoretical language on the basis of insights put forth by Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life .^[44] To the claim that only those with something to hide need fear drug, lie detector, and other authenticity tests, the proper response is that everyone has something to hide . This does not mean that there is a little crook in all of us. It recognizes rather that social interaction consists largely of a series of dramaturgical performances in which people don many masks in an effort to present themselves artfully—concealing certain elements of the self while highlighting and tinting others. The aim is to exercise some control over social situations by influencing others' perception of the self and thereby of the situation. As a family of technologies that extract and reveal information about the self in ways and for purposes that are beyond the control of the self, authenticity testing erodes this distinctive feature of social life. Whether test results are positive or negative is, at this level, irrelevant. The point is that testing opens the self to scrutiny and investigation in ways that the self is powerless to control. So far as the areas of knowledge covered by the tests are concerned, this transforms the person from autonomous subject to passive object.

It might be protested that even if these concerns constitute a potential threat to the self, that threat is never actualized because test results are kept strictly confidential. They are revealed only to the parties who need to know: personnel directors who must review test results before making conditional offers of employ-

ment final, EAP and medical personnel involved with counseling, treatment, and rehabilitation, and, perhaps, supervisors. The confidentiality of testing is normally presented as a safeguard for the test taker's reputation, although protecting the organization from legal action is surely of at least equal importance.

However, far from protecting test takers, the confidentiality that shrouds authenticity tests is better analyzed as yet another ingenious and highly effective technique for exercising power and discipline over the individual. In his discussion of the panopticon as an instrument of the disciplinary technology of power, Foucault stressed that it provides for perfect axial visibility while completely obstructing lateral visibility. That is to say, the panopticon's cells are arranged in such a way that their occupants are easily observed from the central tower but they cannot see each other at all. As a result, each inmate faces the representatives of power alone. Their inability to communicate with each other prevents any collusion among them that might constitute a threat to power. As Foucault explains,

This invisibility is a guarantee of order. If the inmates are convicts, there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences; if they are patients, there is no danger of contagion; if they are madmen, there is no risk of their committing violence upon one another; if they are schoolchildren, there is no copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time; if they are workers, there are no disorders, no theft, no coalitions, none of those distractions that slow down the rate of work, make it less perfect or cause accidents. The crowd, a compact mass, a locus of multiple exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect, is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities.^[45]

What was gained by the restriction of lateral visibility in the panopticon is achieved in the contemporary regime of authenticity testing by confidentiality. Although it is advertised as a protective measure for test takers, confidentiality completes the domination of test givers over test takers. It assures that each

individual confronts the organizations that mandate testing utterly alone and therefore in the weakest possible state. Here disciplinary power has achieved the remarkable feat of perfecting the domination of people by dividing them and dealing with them singly, all the while convincing them that the arrangement is for their own good.