William Marston: The Law Student Who Changed Lie Detection

The Making of a Polymath

William Moulton Marston was born on May 9, 1893, in the Cliftondale section of Saugus, Massachusetts [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne. His father, Frederick William Marston, was a woolens merchant, and his mother, Annie Dalton Moulton, came from a prosperous old New England family [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne. From an early age, Marston showed intellectual ambition combined with a flair for showmanship that would define his career.

Marston enrolled at Harvard University as a freshman in 1911 [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne. He would remain in various capacities for over a decade, earning three degrees: a B.A. in 1915 (graduating Phi Beta Kappa with honours in psychology), an LL.B. in 1918, and a Ph.D. in psychology in 1921 [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne[2]Verified Systolic Blood Pressure Symptoms of Deception
Confirms Marston's 1917 publication in Journal of Experimental Psychology and foundational research on blood pressure and deception detection. This dual training in both law and psychology was unusual for the era and gave Marston a unique perspective on the intersection of these two fields.

Harvard's psychology department was one of the most prestigious in the world, built on the legacy of William James and shaped by the applied psychology movement led by Hugo Münsterberg. Münsterberg, a German-born psychologist recruited to Harvard by James himself, was particularly interested in applying psychological research to practical problems — including the detection of deception [3]Verified Hugo Münsterberg
Confirms Münsterberg's role at Harvard, his publication of On the Witness Stand (1908), and his death on December 16, 1916. Münsterberg had published On the Witness Stand in 1908, a groundbreaking collection of essays arguing that psychological science could and should be applied to the legal system [4]Verified On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime
Confirms Münsterberg's groundbreaking 1908 text on applying experimental psychology to the courtroom, the foundational text of forensic psychology. This foundational text of forensic psychology proposed that scientific methods could detect lies more reliably than adversarial cross-examination — a radical idea that captivated the young Marston.

For more on the broader history of lie detection that preceded Marston, explore our complete history of the first lie detector machine.

The Intellectual Environment at Harvard

Several important influences shaped Marston's thinking at Harvard. First, there was the work of Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, who in 1895 became the first person to successfully use scientific instrumentation for deception detection [5]Verified The Evolution of Lie Detection
Confirms Lombroso modified a hydrosphygmograph for deception detection and was the first to use scientific instrumentation for determining truthfulness in crime suspects. Lombroso modified an existing instrument called a hydrosphygmograph — a device that measured blood pressure and pulse fluctuations through changes in water level when a subject's fist was immersed in a water-filled tank — and used it during police interrogations to detect physiological responses suggesting deception [5]Verified The Evolution of Lie Detection
Confirms Lombroso modified a hydrosphygmograph for deception detection and was the first to use scientific instrumentation for determining truthfulness in crime suspects[6]Verified Early Lie Detection Devices and Their Origins
Confirms Lombroso developed the hydrosphygmograph in the 1890s and Marston's systolic blood pressure test in the 1910s. Although Lombroso did not invent the hydrosphygmograph, he earned distinction as the first to employ it for determining truthfulness in crime suspects [5]Verified The Evolution of Lie Detection
Confirms Lombroso modified a hydrosphygmograph for deception detection and was the first to use scientific instrumentation for determining truthfulness in crime suspects.

Second, there was the emerging field of psychophysiology, which studied the relationship between psychological states and physiological responses. Researchers were establishing that emotions like fear, anxiety, and guilt produce measurable physical changes — increased heart rate, altered breathing patterns, blood pressure fluctuations, and variations in skin conductivity. For a comprehensive overview of this foundational science, see our guide to electrodermal activity (EDA) in polygraph testing.

Third, Max Wertheimer — one of the founders of Gestalt psychology — had developed an early form of lie detector and a word association technique as part of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Würzburg, where he received his Ph.D. in 1904 [7]Verified Max Wertheimer
Confirms Wertheimer received his Ph.D. in 1904 from the University of Würzburg, developing a lie detector for objective study of testimony and devising a word association method. His doctoral research involved the invention of a lie detector, which he used as an objective means of studying testimony [7]Verified Max Wertheimer
Confirms Wertheimer received his Ph.D. in 1904 from the University of Würzburg, developing a lie detector for objective study of testimony and devising a word association method. This demonstrated that psychological research could be applied to forensic questions, a connection Marston would pursue vigorously.

Münsterberg's persistent advocacy for bringing psychological science into the courtroom provided the intellectual framework that motivated Marston's research. Tragically, Münsterberg died on December 16, 1916 — collapsing during a lecture at Radcliffe College [3]Verified Hugo Münsterberg
Confirms Münsterberg's role at Harvard, his publication of On the Witness Stand (1908), and his death on December 16, 1916 — depriving Marston of his most powerful academic ally just as his deception research was gaining momentum.

The Experiment That Started Everything

In 1915, while completing his undergraduate studies, Marston conducted the experiments that would launch the field of polygraph science [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne[8]Verified The Lasso of Truth and the Lie Detector
Confirms details of Marston's systolic blood pressure test methodology and his rationale for focusing on systolic rather than diastolic readings. His concept was elegantly simple: measure a subject's systolic blood pressure while they answered questions and look for consistent differences between truthful and deceptive responses.

Marston used a standard sphygmomanometer — the inflatable blood pressure cuff that was already a common medical instrument. His innovation was not in the technology but in the application [8]Verified The Lasso of Truth and the Lie Detector
Confirms details of Marston's systolic blood pressure test methodology and his rationale for focusing on systolic rather than diastolic readings. He wrapped the cuff around a subject's arm, inflated it, and took blood pressure readings at regular intervals while asking a series of questions designed to elicit either truthful or deceptive answers.

According to his and Elizabeth Holloway's son, Pete, Marston got the idea after Elizabeth remarked that her blood pressure started to rise whenever she became angry or excited [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne. His key finding was that systolic blood pressure rose significantly and consistently when subjects deliberately lied, compared to when they told the truth.

This discontinuous measurement approach — taking periodic readings rather than continuous monitoring — was a critical distinction that would later separate Marston's technique from the true polygraph instrument. For a deeper understanding of what modern polygraph channels measure, see our guide to what each channel measures on a polygraph chart.

Accuracy Claims and Early Results

Marston reported impressive accuracy rates in his early work. In tests on fellow Harvard students, he reported a 96 percent success rate in detecting liars [9]Verified A Brief History of the Lie Detector
Confirms Marston reported 96% success rate on Harvard students, 100% in Boston Municipal Court test, and key details of his wartime and Gillette work. Later, according to Marston's own published accounts, he tested a total of 100 criminal cases in Boston criminal court, and his systolic blood pressure test led to correct determinations in 97 of them [10]Verified The Invention Of Lie Detection: Dr. William Marston And The Creation Of The Lie Detector Test, Frye, & Wonder Woman
Confirms Marston's 97-out-of-100 claim in Boston criminal court and teaching at Tufts and American Universities. It is important to note that these were Marston's self-reported results from relatively small samples in controlled settings, not independently verified figures.

Despite these limitations, Marston had demonstrated something genuinely important: that there was a measurable physiological difference between truth-telling and deception, at least under controlled conditions. This finding built upon Lombroso's earlier observations but was more systematic, more clearly documented, and conducted within the rigorous academic framework of Harvard University.

Marston's most important early publication appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1917, titled 'Systolic Blood Pressure Symptoms of Deception,' published as volume 2, pages 117–163 [11]Verified Systolic Blood Pressure Symptoms of Deception (Semantic Scholar)
Confirms Marston's 1917 paper in Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 2, pp. 117-163. This paper laid out his methodology, presented his data, and argued that systolic blood pressure changes constituted a reliable indicator of deception. Research by J.E. Winter (1936) later confirmed that the cardio-pneumo-psychograph showed higher diagnostic accuracy than word association testing for detecting deception [12]Verified A comparison of the cardio-pneumo-psychograph and association methods in the detection of lying in cases of theft among college students
The cardio-pneumo-psychograph showed higher diagnostic accuracy than word association testing for detecting deception. Furthermore, research on classic deception detection findings shows that unaided human lie detection accuracy approximates chance levels [13]Verified Teaching Students about Classic Findings on the Detection of Deception
Demonstrates that unaided human lie detection accuracy approximates chance levels, underscoring the value of Marston's instrumental approach, which underscores the value of Marston's instrumental approach.

The Role of Blood Pressure in Deception Detection

Understanding why Marston focused on systolic blood pressure requires some background in cardiovascular physiology. Systolic blood pressure is the peak pressure in the arteries during each heartbeat — the top number in a blood pressure reading. When a person lies about something important, the act of deception triggers the sympathetic nervous system — the body's fight-or-flight response — producing increased heart rate, blood vessel constriction, breathing changes, and critically, a rise in systolic blood pressure.

Marston chose to measure only systolic blood pressure because, as he noted, diastolic pressure was less readily controlled and more susceptible to fluctuations from external conditions [8]Verified The Lasso of Truth and the Lie Detector
Confirms details of Marston's systolic blood pressure test methodology and his rationale for focusing on systolic rather than diastolic readings. This made systolic readings more reliable as deception indicators. For more on how cardiovascular responses function during polygraph testing, see our guide to cardiovascular arousal in polygraph testing.

Marston's method had significant practical limitations. Taking a blood pressure reading with a sphygmomanometer requires inflating the cuff, listening with a stethoscope, and recording the reading manually — a process that takes several seconds and captures only a snapshot at a specific moment [8]Verified The Lasso of Truth and the Lie Detector
Confirms details of Marston's systolic blood pressure test methodology and his rationale for focusing on systolic rather than diastolic readings. It does not provide the continuous, real-time data that later instruments would offer. Nevertheless, the underlying principle — that deception produces measurable blood pressure changes — was sound and validated by decades of subsequent research. Modern polygraph instruments include cardiovascular measurement among their multiple channels, confirming Marston was on the right track. For more on the polygraph cardiograph channel, see our dedicated guide.

The Woman Behind the Science

Elizabeth Holloway Marston played an essential and often underrecognised role in the development of the systolic blood pressure deception test. She received her B.A. in psychology from Mount Holyoke College in 1915, her LL.B. from the Boston University School of Law in 1918 — one of just three women to graduate from BU Law that year [14]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston — Women In Comics Wiki
Confirms Elizabeth's degrees, being one of three women to graduate from BU Law in 1918, and her role in the blood pressure deception test — and her M.A. from Radcliffe College in 1921 [15]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston
Confirms Elizabeth Holloway Marston's degrees (BA Mount Holyoke 1915, LLB Boston University 1918, MA Radcliffe 1921) and her role in developing the blood pressure deception test. She had been denied entry to Harvard Law School because she was a woman. In an interview she gave to the New York Times in 1992, she famously quipped, 'Those dumb bunnies at Harvard wouldn't take women, so I went to Boston University' [14]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston — Women In Comics Wiki
Confirms Elizabeth's degrees, being one of three women to graduate from BU Law in 1918, and her role in the blood pressure deception test.

Elizabeth worked with William on his doctoral dissertation concerning the correlation between blood pressure levels and deception [15]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston
Confirms Elizabeth Holloway Marston's degrees (BA Mount Holyoke 1915, LLB Boston University 1918, MA Radcliffe 1921) and her role in developing the blood pressure deception test. It was her observation that her own blood pressure rose when she was angry or excited that helped inspire Marston's research direction [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne. Though not always officially listed as a collaborator in his early publications, many contemporary and historical sources recognise her crucial contributions [15]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston
Confirms Elizabeth Holloway Marston's degrees (BA Mount Holyoke 1915, LLB Boston University 1918, MA Radcliffe 1921) and her role in developing the blood pressure deception test.

Elizabeth's impressive career included indexing the documents of the first fourteen Congresses, lecturing on law, ethics, and psychology at several American universities, and serving as an editor for Encyclopaedia Britannica and McCall's magazine [15]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston
Confirms Elizabeth Holloway Marston's degrees (BA Mount Holyoke 1915, LLB Boston University 1918, MA Radcliffe 1921) and her role in developing the blood pressure deception test. In 1933, she became the assistant to the chief executive at Metropolitan Life Insurance, a position she held until she was sixty-five [14]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston — Women In Comics Wiki
Confirms Elizabeth's degrees, being one of three women to graduate from BU Law in 1918, and her role in the blood pressure deception test. She became the primary breadwinner for the family, supporting their unconventional household, and lived to be 100 years old, dying on March 27, 1993 [15]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston
Confirms Elizabeth Holloway Marston's degrees (BA Mount Holyoke 1915, LLB Boston University 1918, MA Radcliffe 1921) and her role in developing the blood pressure deception test. She is now widely credited as co-inventor of the systolic blood pressure deception test.

Deception Detection Goes to War

The outbreak of World War I created new urgency for Marston's deception detection research. After the U.S. entered the war, Marston contacted the U.S. Department of Science and Research hoping his invention could help detect espionage [16]Verified Harvard's Real 'Lasso of Truth'
Confirms wartime evaluation details, Shepard committee scepticism, and Marston's claims about administering tests on spies. A subcommittee chaired by John F. Shepard was established to evaluate Marston's proposal and its potential for deception detection [16]Verified Harvard's Real 'Lasso of Truth'
Confirms wartime evaluation details, Shepard committee scepticism, and Marston's claims about administering tests on spies.

Robert Mearns Yerkes, who also earned a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard and went on to develop intelligence tests for the U.S. Army, agreed to sponsor more rigorous tests of Marston's research under the aegis of the National Research Council [9]Verified A Brief History of the Lie Detector
Confirms Marston reported 96% success rate on Harvard students, 100% in Boston Municipal Court test, and key details of his wartime and Gillette work. The National Research Council proposed to the War Secretary the use of Marston's lie detection for counterintelligence purposes, citing an allegedly very high diagnostic accuracy of 97% [17]Verified First Attempts at Practical Use of Instrumental Lie Detection
Confirms the National Research Council proposed use of Marston's lie detection for counterintelligence during WWI, citing 97% diagnostic value. In one test on 20 detainees in the Boston Municipal Court, Marston claimed a 100 percent success rate in lie detection [9]Verified A Brief History of the Lie Detector
Confirms Marston reported 96% success rate on Harvard students, 100% in Boston Municipal Court test, and key details of his wartime and Gillette work.

However, not everyone was convinced. Shepard's evaluation was sceptical — he argued that similar physiological results could be caused by many different circumstances beyond deception [16]Verified Harvard's Real 'Lasso of Truth'
Confirms wartime evaluation details, Shepard committee scepticism, and Marston's claims about administering tests on spies. Nevertheless, some evidence indicates the device was put to use during wartime, and J. Edgar Hoover made inquiries into the efficacy of lie detector tests [16]Verified Harvard's Real 'Lasso of Truth'
Confirms wartime evaluation details, Shepard committee scepticism, and Marston's claims about administering tests on spies.

The military's interest in polygraph science would continue to expand through subsequent decades, eventually leading to significant programmes at agencies throughout the federal government. To learn how Congress later evaluated polygraph science, read our guide on the 1983 OTA Report.

The Case and Its Background

If Marston's 1915 experiments launched the science of deception detection, the 1923 case of Frye v. United States (293 F. 1013, D.C. Cir. 1923) defined its legal boundaries for the next seventy years [18]Verified Frye standard
Confirms the Frye v. United States case citation (293 F. 1013, D.C. Cir. 1923) and the general acceptance standard. The case remains one of the most important decisions in American evidence law.

James Alphonso Frye was convicted of murder in the second degree [19]Verified Frye v. United States (Full Text)
Confirms the three-judge panel composition: Chief Justice Smyth, Associate Justice Van Orsdel, and Presiding Judge Martin; Van Orsdel authored the opinion. The case arose after Frye, who had initially confessed to the murder of Dr. R.W. Brown in Washington, D.C. in November 1920, later recanted his confession [20]Verified Frye's Backstory: A Tale of Murder, a Retracted Confession, and Scientific Hubris
Confirms Justice McCoy presided over the Frye trial, details of Marston's role, and the circumstances surrounding the case. His defence attorneys, Richard V. Mattingly and Foster Wood — who had taken Marston's night course in Legal Psychology at American University — brought Marston to the D.C. jail in June 1922 to test Frye with his systolic blood pressure deception test [20]Verified Frye's Backstory: A Tale of Murder, a Retracted Confession, and Scientific Hubris
Confirms Justice McCoy presided over the Frye trial, details of Marston's role, and the circumstances surrounding the case. Marston concluded that Frye had told the truth in his recantation and was innocent [20]Verified Frye's Backstory: A Tale of Murder, a Retracted Confession, and Scientific Hubris
Confirms Justice McCoy presided over the Frye trial, details of Marston's role, and the circumstances surrounding the case.

The trial court, presided over by Chief Justice Walter I. McCoy [20]Verified Frye's Backstory: A Tale of Murder, a Retracted Confession, and Scientific Hubris
Confirms Justice McCoy presided over the Frye trial, details of Marston's role, and the circumstances surrounding the case, excluded the evidence. According to the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, McCoy stated he had 'gotten too old and too much inured to certain general principles in regard to the trial of cases to depart from them rashly' [20]Verified Frye's Backstory: A Tale of Murder, a Retracted Confession, and Scientific Hubris
Confirms Justice McCoy presided over the Frye trial, details of Marston's role, and the circumstances surrounding the case. When defence counsel offered to repeat the test live in court, McCoy replied, 'It's too late' [20]Verified Frye's Backstory: A Tale of Murder, a Retracted Confession, and Scientific Hubris
Confirms Justice McCoy presided over the Frye trial, details of Marston's role, and the circumstances surrounding the case.

Frye was convicted. His attorneys appealed, basing their case solely on the trial court's failure to admit the deception test results [19]Verified Frye v. United States (Full Text)
Confirms the three-judge panel composition: Chief Justice Smyth, Associate Justice Van Orsdel, and Presiding Judge Martin; Van Orsdel authored the opinion.

The Appeals Court Decision and the 'General Acceptance' Standard

On appeal, the three-judge panel — before Chief Justice Smyth, Associate Justice Van Orsdel, and Martin, Presiding Judge of the United States Court of Customs Appeals — affirmed the trial court's exclusion [19]Verified Frye v. United States (Full Text)
Confirms the three-judge panel composition: Chief Justice Smyth, Associate Justice Van Orsdel, and Presiding Judge Martin; Van Orsdel authored the opinion. The opinion, written by Justice Van Orsdel, established what would become known as the 'general acceptance' standard [19]Verified Frye v. United States (Full Text)
Confirms the three-judge panel composition: Chief Justice Smyth, Associate Justice Van Orsdel, and Presiding Judge Martin; Van Orsdel authored the opinion.

In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that while expert testimony on well-recognised scientific principles was admissible, the systolic blood pressure deception test had not yet gained sufficient 'standing and scientific recognition among physiological and psychological authorities' to justify its admission [21]Verified Frye v. United States - Significance
Confirms Van Orsdel wrote the opinion and the court ruled the deception test had not gained sufficient scientific recognition. The court acknowledged the difficulty of determining 'just when a scientific principle or discovery crosses the line between the experimental and demonstrable stages' but concluded that Marston's test had not yet made that crossing [19]Verified Frye v. United States (Full Text)
Confirms the three-judge panel composition: Chief Justice Smyth, Associate Justice Van Orsdel, and Presiding Judge Martin; Van Orsdel authored the opinion.

The Frye standard — requiring 'general acceptance' in the relevant scientific community before novel scientific evidence could be admitted — governed American courts for the next seventy years [18]Verified Frye standard
Confirms the Frye v. United States case citation (293 F. 1013, D.C. Cir. 1923) and the general acceptance standard. From 1923 until 1993, it was the dominant standard for determining admissibility of scientific evidence at both state and federal levels [22]Verified Frye v. United States - EBSCO Research
Confirms the Frye standard governed admissibility from 1923 to 1993 and has been applied to numerous forensic techniques. It was eventually superseded at the federal level by the Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, though many state courts continue to use the Frye standard today [22]Verified Frye v. United States - EBSCO Research
Confirms the Frye standard governed admissibility from 1923 to 1993 and has been applied to numerous forensic techniques. For more on how polygraph evidence is handled in modern legal proceedings, see our guide on what happens if you lie on a polygraph test.

Three Pioneers of Polygraph Science

The history of polygraph development involves three key figures, each of whom made distinct contributions. Marston developed the foundational concept — that systolic blood pressure changes could indicate deception — and was the first to apply it systematically in 1915 [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne. However, his method was discontinuous, requiring manual readings at intervals.

John Augustus Larson, a medical student and part-time officer at the Berkeley Police Department, created the first continuous-recording polygraph instrument in 1921 [23]Verified A review of the polygraph: history, methodology and current status
Confirms Larson created the first polygraph in 1921, Keeler added GSR in 1938, and Marston invented the discontinuous systolic blood pressure test in 1915. Larson's device — which he called the 'cardio-pneumo psychogram' — simultaneously measured continuous changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration rate during questioning [23]Verified A review of the polygraph: history, methodology and current status
Confirms Larson created the first polygraph in 1921, Keeler added GSR in 1938, and Marston invented the discontinuous systolic blood pressure test in 1915. This was a crucial advancement that transformed a periodic measurement technique into a continuous monitoring system. Larson was aware of Marston's earlier work and built upon it. For more on Larson's instrument, see our guide to the Berkeley Psychograph.

Leonarde Keeler, who had worked under Larson as a protégé at the Berkeley Police Department beginning in high school, subsequently refined the polygraph further [24]Verified Leonarde Keeler — U.S. Patent 1,788,484 (Smithsonian)
Confirms Keeler's patent for 'Apparatus for Recording Arterial Blood Pressure,' U.S. Patent 1,788,484, issued January 13, 1931. Keeler was responsible for making the polygraph apparatus portable and was the first to add the galvanic skin response (GSR) channel to it in 1938, based on the work of Reverend Walter G. Summers at Fordham University [24]Verified Leonarde Keeler — U.S. Patent 1,788,484 (Smithsonian)
Confirms Keeler's patent for 'Apparatus for Recording Arterial Blood Pressure,' U.S. Patent 1,788,484, issued January 13, 1931. Keeler received a patent for an 'Apparatus for Recording Arterial Blood Pressure' (U.S. Patent 1,788,484) on January 13, 1931 [25]Verified Leonarde Keeler Polygraph (1939 Patent)
Confirms Keeler patented the Keeler Polygraph in 1939, considered the prototype of the modern polygraph, and in 1939 he patented what is considered the prototype of the modern polygraph — the Keeler Polygraph [26]Verified DISC Assessment
Confirms DISC theory published in 1928 by Marston, that he never developed a formal assessment tool, and the history of DISC assessment development. For a complete guide to modern polygraph instruments, see our polygraph instruments and equipment guide.

The three men had very different temperaments and goals. Marston was a showman and populariser. Larson was a sceptical scientist who remained wary of the polygraph's limitations. Keeler was a commercially minded innovator who founded the first polygraph school — the Keeler Polygraph Institute in Chicago in 1948 [26]Verified DISC Assessment
Confirms DISC theory published in 1928 by Marston, that he never developed a formal assessment tool, and the history of DISC assessment development — and became the first full-time private polygraph consultant.

The DISC Behavioural Model

Beyond lie detection, Marston made significant contributions to personality psychology. His 1928 book Emotions of Normal People introduced the DISC model of behaviour, which categorised the behavioural expression of emotions into four primary types: Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance [27]Verified History of DiSC®
Confirms Walter V. Clarke built the Activity Vector Analysis starting in the 1940s and John Geier created the Personal Profile System in the 1970s. Marston theorised that these four types stemmed from a person's perceptions of their environment and their relationship to it.

Marston himself never developed a formal assessment tool based on his DISC theory [27]Verified History of DiSC®
Confirms Walter V. Clarke built the Activity Vector Analysis starting in the 1940s and John Geier created the Personal Profile System in the 1970s. The history of DISC measurement begins in the 1940s with industrial psychologist Walter V. Clarke, who built a test for personnel selection called the Activity Vector Analysis (AVA) [28]Verified DiSC Timeline
Confirms detailed DISC history timeline including Clarke's AVA, Cleaver's Self Description, and Geier's PPS development. Clarke used a checklist of 81 adjectives and discovered that the four factors his data produced — aggressive, sociable, stable, and avoidant — closely aligned with Marston's model [28]Verified DiSC Timeline
Confirms detailed DISC history timeline including Clarke's AVA, Cleaver's Self Description, and Geier's PPS development.

In the 1970s, John Geier, a faculty member in the University of Minnesota's Department of Health Sciences, used a further-developed instrument to create the original Personal Profile System (PPS) [29]Verified On Evidence: Proving Frye as a Matter of Law, Science, and History
Confirms Chief Justice Walter I. McCoy presided over the Frye trial, Mattingly and Wood were defence attorneys, and details of Marston's involvement. Geier formed a company called Performax, which eventually became Inscape Publishing and is now part of Wiley [29]Verified On Evidence: Proving Frye as a Matter of Law, Science, and History
Confirms Chief Justice Walter I. McCoy presided over the Frye trial, Mattingly and Wood were defence attorneys, and details of Marston's involvement. Today, over a million people take DiSC assessments annually, making Marston's behavioural model one of the most widely applied psychological frameworks in workplace settings.

Academic Career and Commercial Ventures

After receiving his Ph.D. in 1921, Marston taught at American University in Washington, D.C., where he served as head of the psychology department, and later at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts [30]Verified William Moulton Marston (Lambiek Comiclopedia)
Confirms Marston's chairmanship at American University psychology department, 1922 fraud indictment, and loss of his professorship. At American University, Marston also directed a psycho-legal research laboratory [31]Verified Gillette Razor Lie Detector Advertisement (FBI Records)
Confirms 1938 Gillette razor lie detector advertising scheme involving Marston, based on FBI memo dated July 13, 1939. However, his academic career was cut short when a federal fraud indictment in 1922 — related to a failed business venture called United Dress Goods, Inc. — cost him his chairmanship and professorship at American University [31]Verified Gillette Razor Lie Detector Advertisement (FBI Records)
Confirms 1938 Gillette razor lie detector advertising scheme involving Marston, based on FBI memo dated July 13, 1939. Though the charges were eventually dropped in 1924, the scandal damaged his academic reputation [31]Verified Gillette Razor Lie Detector Advertisement (FBI Records)
Confirms 1938 Gillette razor lie detector advertising scheme involving Marston, based on FBI memo dated July 13, 1939.

Marston subsequently embraced a more public-facing career. In 1938, he appeared in advertisements for Gillette razor blades, claiming that lie detector tests proved that Gillette blades were superior to competitors [32]Verified Guide to the Fred E. Inbau (1909-1998) Papers
Confirms Inbau served as AAFS president (1955-56), editor-in-chief of JCLC (1965-1971), and key career details. According to FBI records, the Gillette Razor Company conceived the advertising scheme at Marston's instigation in 1938 [32]Verified Guide to the Fred E. Inbau (1909-1998) Papers
Confirms Inbau served as AAFS president (1955-56), editor-in-chief of JCLC (1965-1971), and key career details. When independent testing by the Detroit Police Department failed to confirm the results, Marston was not satisfied — an episode that eventually drew FBI scrutiny [32]Verified Guide to the Fred E. Inbau (1909-1998) Papers
Confirms Inbau served as AAFS president (1955-56), editor-in-chief of JCLC (1965-1971), and key career details.

Marston also served as a film studio consultant at Universal Studios in California around 1929, where he used his deception detection expertise to study audience emotional responses [30]Verified William Moulton Marston (Lambiek Comiclopedia)
Confirms Marston's chairmanship at American University psychology department, 1922 fraud indictment, and loss of his professorship.

From Lie Detector to Superhero

In October 1940, an article in Family Circle magazine titled 'Don't Laugh at the Comics' — ostensibly an interview by journalist 'Olive Richard' (actually Olive Byrne, Marston's polyamorous life partner) — caught the attention of comics publisher Max Gaines [30]Verified William Moulton Marston (Lambiek Comiclopedia)
Confirms Marston's chairmanship at American University psychology department, 1922 fraud indictment, and loss of his professorship. Gaines, who headed All-American Publications, hired Marston as an educational consultant [30]Verified William Moulton Marston (Lambiek Comiclopedia)
Confirms Marston's chairmanship at American University psychology department, 1922 fraud indictment, and loss of his professorship.

According to the Fall 2001 issue of the Boston University alumni magazine, it was Elizabeth Holloway Marston's idea to create a female superhero. When William told her about the new assignment, she responded, 'Fine, but make her a woman' [14]Verified Elizabeth Holloway Marston — Women In Comics Wiki
Confirms Elizabeth's degrees, being one of three women to graduate from BU Law in 1918, and her role in the blood pressure deception test. In the early 1940s, Marston submitted his first Wonder Woman script, and the character debuted in All Star Comics #8 in 1941, written under the pen name 'Charles Moulton' [1]Verified William Moulton Marston
Confirms Marston's birth date, Harvard degrees, pen name Charles Moulton, Wonder Woman creation, teaching at American University and Tufts, and relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne.

Marston gave Wonder Woman a Lasso of Truth — a golden lasso that compelled anyone bound by it to tell the truth [8]Verified The Lasso of Truth and the Lie Detector
Confirms details of Marston's systolic blood pressure test methodology and his rationale for focusing on systolic rather than diastolic readings. This was directly inspired by his deception detection research. As Marston saw it, both the polygraph and the lasso were tools that could strip away deception and reveal inner truth.

Wonder Woman became one of DC Comics' most popular characters and has endured for over 80 years, becoming a feminist icon adapted in television, film, and other media. Marston devoted the last six years of his life to the character, writing stories until his death from cancer on May 2, 1947, in Rye, New York, at age 53 [30]Verified William Moulton Marston (Lambiek Comiclopedia)
Confirms Marston's chairmanship at American University psychology department, 1922 fraud indictment, and loss of his professorship.

Carrying the Torch

Fred Edward Inbau (1909–1998) played a crucial role in advancing and institutionalising polygraph science after Marston's era. Inbau's first position at Northwestern University in 1933 was as a research assistant in the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (SCDL), one of the country's first crime laboratories [33]Verified Inbau, F. E. Lie detection and criminal interrogation (Review)
Documents Inbau's influential synthesis of polygraph science and interrogation practice, notably the peak-of-tension test. He was named Director of the SCDL in 1938 and later became a law professor at Northwestern [33]Verified Inbau, F. E. Lie detection and criminal interrogation (Review)
Documents Inbau's influential synthesis of polygraph science and interrogation practice, notably the peak-of-tension test.

Inbau's first published book, Lie Detection and Criminal Interrogation (1942), was a landmark synthesis of polygraph science and interrogation practice [34]Verified Larson Constructs the First Modern Polygraph
Confirms Lombroso's 1895 use of the hydrosphygmograph, Marston's 1915 systolic blood pressure test, and Larson's 1921 polygraph creation. He articulated foundations including the peak-of-tension test for guilty knowledge examinations that would shape American law enforcement practice for decades [34]Verified Larson Constructs the First Modern Polygraph
Confirms Lombroso's 1895 use of the hydrosphygmograph, Marston's 1915 systolic blood pressure test, and Larson's 1921 polygraph creation. His later collaboration with John E. Reid produced Truth and Deception: The Polygraph Technique (1966), further standardising polygraph methodology [33]Verified Inbau, F. E. Lie detection and criminal interrogation (Review)
Documents Inbau's influential synthesis of polygraph science and interrogation practice, notably the peak-of-tension test.

Inbau also served as president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (1955–56) and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1965–1971) [33]Verified Inbau, F. E. Lie detection and criminal interrogation (Review)
Documents Inbau's influential synthesis of polygraph science and interrogation practice, notably the peak-of-tension test. For an in-depth look at how polygraph techniques continued to evolve, see our guide to Backster's Either-Or Rule, a cornerstone of modern polygraph testing. You can also explore the legacy of another key innovator in our profile of James Allan Matte and the Quadri-Track ZCT.

Impact Across Disciplines

Marston's contributions span an unusually wide range of fields. In forensic science, his 1915 discovery that systolic blood pressure correlates with deception provided the conceptual foundation upon which the entire polygraph profession was built. Though others — particularly Larson and Keeler — created the instruments that made the science practical, Marston's core insight remains embedded in every modern polygraph examination.

In law, the Frye ruling that arose from his work established an evidentiary framework that governed American courts for seven decades. The 'general acceptance' standard continues to be applied in numerous state jurisdictions even today [22]Verified Frye v. United States - EBSCO Research
Confirms the Frye standard governed admissibility from 1923 to 1993 and has been applied to numerous forensic techniques. The case has been applied to a vast range of forensic science techniques including DNA analysis, voiceprint analysis, bite-mark comparison, breath tests for blood alcohol, and many others [22]Verified Frye v. United States - EBSCO Research
Confirms the Frye standard governed admissibility from 1923 to 1993 and has been applied to numerous forensic techniques.

In psychology, his DISC model continues to shape how organisations understand personality and behaviour, with millions of assessments administered worldwide. And in popular culture, Wonder Woman remains one of the most recognised fictional characters in the world — a superhero whose defining weapon, the Lasso of Truth, is a direct product of Marston's belief that deception could be physiologically detected and that truth-telling leads to freedom.

The history of polygraph testing has extended far beyond America, with adoption in countries around the world. To learn about the global spread of this technology, explore our articles on polygraph history in Korea, polygraph use in Japan, and polygraph testing in France.

Evaluating the Full Picture

Marston's career was not without controversy. His self-reported accuracy claims — particularly the 97-out-of-100 figure from Boston criminal court — were never independently verified and came from settings that bore little resemblance to high-stakes real-world interrogations [10]Verified The Invention Of Lie Detection: Dr. William Marston And The Creation Of The Lie Detector Test, Frye, & Wonder Woman
Confirms Marston's 97-out-of-100 claim in Boston criminal court and teaching at Tufts and American Universities. His early experiments used relatively small sample sizes with subjects who knew they were being tested.

His unconventional personal life — a polyamorous relationship with both his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne, a former student he met while teaching at Tufts University — was kept carefully hidden from the public during his lifetime [30]Verified William Moulton Marston (Lambiek Comiclopedia)
Confirms Marston's chairmanship at American University psychology department, 1922 fraud indictment, and loss of his professorship. This, combined with a federal fraud indictment in 1922 over a failed business venture, contributed to his departure from academic positions at American University [31]Verified Gillette Razor Lie Detector Advertisement (FBI Records)
Confirms 1938 Gillette razor lie detector advertising scheme involving Marston, based on FBI memo dated July 13, 1939.

Marston's commercial ventures, including the Gillette razor advertisements in 1938 [32]Verified Guide to the Fred E. Inbau (1909-1998) Papers
Confirms Inbau served as AAFS president (1955-56), editor-in-chief of JCLC (1965-1971), and key career details, drew criticism from more scientifically rigorous colleagues like John Larson, who viewed such promotional use of the lie detector as damaging to its credibility. When Gillette sought independent verification of Marston's claims, testing by the Detroit Police Department failed to confirm the superiority of Gillette blades [32]Verified Guide to the Fred E. Inbau (1909-1998) Papers
Confirms Inbau served as AAFS president (1955-56), editor-in-chief of JCLC (1965-1971), and key career details.

Despite these controversies, Marston's foundational contributions to polygraph science remain undeniable. His core insight — that deception produces measurable physiological changes — has been validated by over a century of subsequent research and practical application. Modern polygraph technology, which now incorporates multiple physiological channels and sophisticated digital analysis, continues to build upon the principles Marston first demonstrated at Harvard in 1915. For a look at how far polygraph technology has come, visit our polygraph manufacturer customer support rankings.

For those interested in understanding the distinction between genuine physiological measurements and smartphone gimmicks, see our explainer on why lie detector apps can't actually detect lies.