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3. How to Strip a Job-Seeker Naked

“Bill, one more question before you leave. . . . Are you inclined to be homosexual?”—Question that the author heard a polygraph examiner address to a young man being considered for a salesman’s job

A few years ago a management consultant in Chicago told me, “We have developed techniques that strip people psychologically naked.”¹ At the time I thought he was merely showing an entrepreneur’s exuberance in promoting some psychiatrically oriented assessment sheets he had developed for personnel directors to use in assessing managerial can-didates for private industry. Now I find a gigantic trend, involving thousands of companies, toward investigating all or most job applicants, not just would-be executives, to the point where the individuals are often deprived of virtually every shred of privacy.

All across the country, managements are evincing a growing wariness about taking on new “teammates.” They used to size up a man by looking him over and by determining his “trade reputation.” That is no longer enough. The increasing suspiciousness is illustrated in a booklet widely circulated by the American Management Association. It is titled “How to Keep Bad Apples Out of the Barrel.” The cover illustration shows two men—one at a file and one at a desk—eyeing each other suspiciously.

The booklet, by a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin, describes how a prospective employee’s private life can be investigated by “personal interviews with the neighbors both at his present address and at two or three of his former locations.” And the blurb explains, “With the workforce more on the move than ever before, companies now run the risk of finding themselves loaded down with all kinds of undesirable employees.”

Possibly another reason for the growing wariness is that a company takes on a larger commitment than in earlier decades when a man is hired, because of all the payments that must be made by the company for unemployment compensation, Social Security, insurance, pensions. Also, many companies find it necessary to make commitments in the form of job-security agreements with the unions.

But the suspiciousness of managements is also encouraged by the proliferating investigative firms, search firms, and psychological testing firms who keep worrying them as insistently as the deodorant makers asking in their commercials: “But can you be sure?” Managements are warned that the ordinary employment interview is ineffective as a safeguard because the applicant is on his good behavior then. They are warned that ordinary application forms can be filled with a pack of lies. They are warned that letters of reference are farcical and only a fool would trust them. They are warned that even a telephone call to a former superior may produce false assurances because the former superior may be pleased to be well rid of the man or may fear a slander suit.

What is the answer? It is a probe in depth. This may cost anywhere from $15 to $250 depending on the importance of the job and the probing techniques used. Each year several million Americans are subjected to these probes, often without their knowledge. We shall explore three of the major approaches:

—The use of a straight sleuthing to do a “background” check or compile a life history.

-—The use of lie detectors.

—The use of psychiatrists, psychologists, or psychological apprentices armed with tests to make a personality analysis.

There is some overlapping in the kind of personal information each is designed to uncover; but each also is assumed to be superior in uncovering certain areas of one’s life, soul, and psyche. Let us examine them in turn.

1. The Use of Investigative Sleuthing

A corporate personnel director may simply turn to a local private eye. One such private investigator in the Baltimore area confided to the pages of Police Review his practices in making an employment check. He digs up everything he can about a prospect by talking with neighbors, former employers, and co-workers. “At no time,” he asserted, “is the identity of the inquiring client made known to the persons being questioned about the applicant.” (My own practice is to shut the door on any investigator who will not disclose at the outset who wants the information and why.)

Our private eye in Baltimore, after checking out his facts, turns in a report to the personnel manager. If his report contains “derogatory data,” he said, the applicant may be granted the privilege of furnishing an oral explanation in a “private interview” with the personnel manager. He said that one personnel manager, in granting such a “private interview,” usually “requests a tape recording of the interview [made without the applicant’s knowledge] for subsequent evaluation with our office.” If after the interview the man is not hired, “the recording is erased forever. If he is placed on the payroll, the tape is retained in his personnel folder for later inconsistencies that may arise in which veracity may be the issue.”

If the applicant has been working in another town or state the client probably will turn to an investigative network, such as Fidelifacts, with its 200 ex-FBI special agents scattered in many cities. These ex-FBI men conduct personal interviews with former employers, check the neighborhood, the bank, the local police, and so on. The New York City branch of Fidelifacts reports that in one large sampling of its works it had turned up “adverse information” in 29 per cent of its investigations of prospective employees. (It cited wife trouble, evidence of drunkenness, absenteeism, indebtedness, poor job performance, etc.) The head of the New York office, Vincent Gillen, who has also worked as a lawyer and a professor, finds the horizons for such “pre-employment investigations” broadening rapidly. He said that originally these “PEIs” were designed to screen applicants for sensitive government posts and jobs in industry requiring bonding. “However in the last several years,” he said, “their uses have broadened. We’ve investigated job applicants ranging from charwomen in a bank to the top corporate executives.”

Franchise holders of Fidelifacts are likely to charge $8.00 or $9.00 for each source checked on an ordinary worker, perhaps $80 for a more thorough report on a managerial candidate. Mr. Gillen told me the fact that each man holding a franchise is a former FBI agent is a great sales point because of the high esteem in which the public holds the FBI.

John Cye Cheasty, the former Secret Service, Internal Revenue, and Navy Intelligence man, serves as a counsel to top managment and confines himself largely to checking out managerial personnel. He relates: “We were asked the other day by a client where they should start checking their personnel. We laid down this rule. If the man makes more than $8000 a year he should be checked coming in [to the company]. If, on the other hand, he comes in at a lower salary but is considered a potential executive you should check him out anyhow.” In the past, he contends, companies have been content to judge a man simply on his “trade reputation.” Now, however, he states, more and more companies are making “extensive pre-employment checkups” before hiring such people. And he added: “I think that industrial intelligence is one of the fastest-growing businesses in the United States today. . . .”

Much of the investigating of executives, especially in the financial world, is done by Bishop’s Service. The “Bishop’s Report” on a man is held in considerable awe in some circles, and a good one is widely regarded as a prerequisite for getting ahead. Actually this is only partially true. The president of Bishop’s, William M. Chiariello, explains that his firm has actually made full investigative reports on about 10,000 executives. “The men who make decisions,” he said, “can’t escape the cold, hard facts of an investigation. I find that more and more business leaders . . . no longer rely upon their own appraisal.” In addition to its 10,000 full-fledged personnel reports made for specific clients, Bishop’s has in its files on the second story of a skyscraper in the Wall Street area of New York information on 5,000,000 people—or just about everyone of consequence in the U.S. business world.

A full Bishop’s Report on a man is not cheap. The Bishop motto is “A Man’s Whole Life Preludes the Single Deed.” A report is likely to cost from $150 up. Those that were shown to me ran from twelve to eighteen pages and covered with seeming thoroughness the subject’s career, his finances, his mode of life. Each page bore a stamp in the middle sternly reminding the client that all information thereon was “privileged and confidential.”

Mr. Chiariello, who was trained as a lawyer, considers amateurish and unnecessary the use of electronics, gumshoeing, keyhole peeping, or posing as a government agent to get information. “The heart of the investigating process is interviewing and gaining public documentary evidence.” His investigators work on salary rather than at piecework rates, the method of payment more common at large investigative firms. And he scorns the rule common with some firms that investigators must come up with “derogatory information” in at least ten per cent of the reports in order to “maintain a balance.” The great majority of the Bishop’s Reports, he states, are not only wholly favorable to the subject but in most cases are constructive for him because potential abilities and skills are uncovered.

In general, those engaged in investigative sleuthing try to check a man or woman out on the factual kind of information that can be learned by interviewing the person, his business associates and neighbors, or by searching records. Here are the major facts they are paid to uncover:

1. How is his work record? Frequently investigators go all the way back to cover every job held since leaving school, and make certain there are no unexplained gaps. Some investigators, such as those working for Bishop’s, also explore the school background. Investigators usually want to know not only how well the person performed his job but whether he had a healthy attitude toward the company.

2. How well has he lived within his means? This involves checking the credit bureaus for a rating and litigation bureaus for any suits or judgments, among other things. There is a widespread theory in business that a person who has at some time been lax about meeting financial obligations might also be lax in fulfilling his job responsibilities.

3. How has his home life been? Is there any evidence of an unhappy marriage or neglect of children? Investigators tend to be less wary of a man if he has both wife and children. As Mr. Chiariello explained it: “A man who is a bachelor can pick up and go, and even the man with a wife can pick up and go, but if he’s a man with five children it is hard for him to disappear.” In the case of a man being considered for an important executive job, many search firms and management consultants feel it is imperative that someone—either with the company or retained by the company—actually get into the man’s home for a look around. The management consulting firm, the McMurry Company, has developed a “Home Interview Report Form” for companies making such a check. The form includes such points to be noted as: “Who dominates the conversation? Whose opinions are decisive? . . . What is the attitude of others in the home? . . . Toward travel? Toward transfers? . . . Are the daily activities of the home arranged for the convenience of the applicant or for others?”

Dr. McMurry stated recently that in appraising potential chief executives “it is imperative that the candidate’s off-the- job circumstances be investigated as thoroughly as he is himself.” Such a check “is best done by a personal visit to the candidate’s home. This has the advantage that the entire household can be observed and that family members tend to speak more freely on their home grounds. It is thus easier to ascertain who is dominant in the family; the emotional climate of the home, and the extent to which the wife will be friendly and supportive or critical, deprecatory or a ‘problem’ in some other fashion.”

Sales Management carried an article by one of Dr. McMurry’s associates entitled: “Don’t Hire a Salesman—Hire a Man & Wife Team.” Dr. McMurry believes any effort to eavesdrop on a home by electronic means would be entirely inexcusable. He states that it is bad enough to invade the privacy of the individual’s home by interviewing him there. He does feel, however, that situations might well arise when it would be appropriate for a man’s superior—after the man has been hired—to make follow-up visits should he have reservations about the man’s home situation or the man’s performance.

4. Are there any court convictions on the person’s record? The professor who wrote the AMA brochure on keeping bad apples out of the barrel stressed the fact that few people have actual criminal records but that this check is nevertheless regarded as necessary because permitting even a few with such backgrounds to enter the company gates could be “highly important.” And he added ominously: “Convictions as apparently innocuous as traffic violations have enabled some investigators to uncover everything from felonies to clearly psychopathic behavior.” The head of a leading investigative firm scoffed at this assertion. He said: “We have prepared any number of reports on extremely competent executives, who were extremely sane but were always in a hurry.” Frequently information about many a person’s legal tangles can be got simply by checking the credit bureau in the area where he has lived.

5. Is there anything in the person’s health history to create concern? Some investigators look into this quite thoroughly. As the Baltimore investigator explained: “He could be suffering from a latent illness which could recur and result in a subsequent compensation claim against the company. Or he could be under a psychiatrist’s care.”

6. Is the person controversial in any way? This assumes greatest importance in checking out potential managers, but even a workman can be too controversial for the company’s comfort. Mr. Chiariello said quite a few of his clients want assurance that the man conforms. He added, “Big business hates controversy in any of its employees.” A number of other investigators mentioned that they watch out for controversial types. The president of one large investigating organization, when invited to explain what kind of things can make an ambitious man too controversial for big business, explained what he felt was the prevailing viewpoint in these terms:

“It is not necessary that the man be an active member of a church; most aren’t, but they can be. But does he conform, or is he an avowed, loud rebel? . . . Whether he he is Republican or Democrat is secondary, but is he what is commonly heard of today as being an extreme liberal? Is he a Communist sympathizer? Is he a man who openly espouses the end of the Cold War? Is he sympathetic to Castro? Is he a man who thinks that extreme patriotic organizations do more damage than good? Is he a man who might feel that a Communist has as much right to talk as anyone else? If he is an active Democrat, is he a member of the Americans for Democratic Action or is he just a Southern Democrat? Is he a man who might be active in the present militant fight for integration?”

Just on the basis of the definitions I italicized, quite a few million thoughtful Americans would seem to come under the cloud ot being “too controversial.”

The company-client may be anxious to know whether a man is controversial because he is too leftish or “stateish.” If it is affiliated with the strongly conservative American Security Council, some insight may be gained by inquiring at the ASC, which maintains a vast library on suspect organizations and their present or onetime members. A few years ago it was reported to have information on 1,000,000 individuals, though its president (an ex-FBI man) now insists it does not maintain a filing system on “individuals as such.” As recently as 1961 its brochure said its files were a source of information for “the personnel screening programs” of defense contractors. And its files probably contain the various ready-reference check lists of names compiled by congressional committees and other official and unofficial investigation bodies looking for “lefties” or people assumed for some reason to be security risks.

2. The Use of Lie Detectors

Promoters of the lie detector for screening potential employees argue that the detector (or polygraph) can take up where regular investigative methods leave off. One leading user of the lie detector for pre-employment screening is Dale System, Inc., an investigative company that has headquarters in New York but advertises that its services are “available in every city and state.” The polygraph, it contends, can “inform you with more accuracy than a background investigation whether your prospective employee is what he claims.”

Several hundred firms have leaped into the lushly profitable field of offering their services in polygraphic people-probing.

Until a few years ago the lie detector was used primarily in police work, inscrutinizing people assigned to highly classified defense installations, in testing guards for Brinks, Inc. Today more than three quarters of all testing is on employees or prospective employees for private companies. An official of John E. Reid and Associates of Chicago asserts: “We have done work for every major corporation in the United States.” The significance to business of the lie detector is indicated by the fact that the Wall Street Journal featured at the top of its front page a report on the growing use of them.

The Reid official, not content with proselytizing U.S. firms, had just returned from introducing his company’s methods to businesses and industries in Australia and South Africa. An official of Employment Services, which administers lie-detector tests, recently estimated that 5000 Texas firms now require their employees to take periodic tests.

And the Dale System states that among others it works for W.T. Grant Co., Westinghouse Electric Corp., Howard Johnson, Mangel Stores Corporation, Grand Union Co.

A substantial number of firms now offer polygraph service at a variety of locations within the United States. For example, the giant William J. Burns International Detective Agency, with 15,000 employees, has entered the polygraph field and now has machines at many of its forty-one offices. It screens the personnel of clients at all levels either before or after employment. One official reports: “We have quadrupled our polygraph business in the past eighteen months.” Its big rival, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, also has entered the polygraph field. Another large outfit headquartered in New York with polygraph examiners in many cities now is Lincoln M. Zonn, Inc. It boasts membership in the American Institute of Management.

What is clear from all this is that each year tens of thousands of American citizens seeking ordinary jobs—and this includes prospective filling-station attendants—find that a condition of employment is that they must permit themselves to be strapped into a chair. And while in that chair they often must answer highly personal questions. One firm, hiring out the services of the lie detectors, reported that less than one per cent of the people asked to take the test refuse to do so. There is a ready explanation. Usually applicants for jobs at client companies must state when filling out the application form whether or not they will be willing to submit to polygraph tests as a condition of employment

The general theory behind the polygraph test is that people can’t lie without creating physiological reactions within the body. A standard lie-detection machine tries to catch this lie at three points: in sweating palms, in the way the subject breathes, and in the reactions of his pulse and blood pressure.

For screening job-seekers, the lie detector is widely promoted as being particularly effective in learning five things about the applicant:

1. Are there any latent tendencies toward dishonesty? The regular investigation plus the application form have presumably already established that the applicant has no known record of dishonesty. But the lie detector, it is hoped, will make the applicant confess any dishonesties that only he himself knows, or dishonesties that occurred before the events were permitted to become a part of any official record. One polygraph examiner explained to me that records of juvenile crimes are usually not available to an investigator because the courts try to protect the youngsters. He added: “But on the polygraph you get any undetected crime, and this will cover juvenile offenses.”

2. What are his real intentions in regard to job “permanency”? Will he have a roving eye for more attractive jobs? Will he take advantage of what he has learned here to move to a better job elsewhere? Printing Impressions quoted a businessman who defended his use of the polygraph on job applicants in these words: “Now, when I hire a bright young man, I have the detection service inquire if he’s planning to use me and my know-how as a one-year training course, or if he’s seriously considering a career with my organization.” Some of the polygraph testing services claim they can help a company reduce turnover by pre-employment screening. (People may hesitate to take a better job that comes along because they have vowed to the lie-detection examiner that they planned to stay.)

3. Does he have dangerous habits not uncovered in the screening process? Is he a secret lush, or does he gamble secretly, or if married does he have a girlfriend on the side, or does he have a lot of unrevealed debts?

4. In his application did he falsify anything? Recruiters of managers report that about one managerial aspirant in twelve will on an application give himself a college degree he actually did not receive. This presumably happens because personnel directors are becoming rigidly insistent upon college degrees even for jobs where a degree has little relevance.

5. Is he a homosexual, or does he have any tendencies in that direction? Many personnel directors seem to want to know about this whether or not it has any conceivable bearing on job performance. Others are more tolerant of applicants for jobs at low levels in the company hierarchy provided they are not obviously homosexual.

During the course of my research I had several opportunites to watch through one-way mirrors while men were subjected to lie-detector tests. In one unforgettable case the young man under examination had applied for a job as an on-the-road salesman for a client company handling quite ordinary consumer products. This test took place at a polygraph testing center of an organization that does a good deal of such pre-employment testing in several American cities. The organization has a number of examiners at the center where I was visiting. (The reason I have chosen not to identify the center will soon be evident.)

Apparently the room under view was a typical polygraph setup. It had a one-way mirror on the rear wall (behind which I sat) and a bug in the room so that observers such as myself in the darkened next room could both watch and hear the interrogation. We’ll call the lad who hoped to be a salesman for the client company Bill. He was slim, blond, handsome, and understandably nervous; perhaps this was why he was so talkative. We’ll call the examiner, a man about forty-five, Mr. Probe. He told me earlier that he had examined more than 3000 people. (He also told me the name of a well-known college from which he had been graduated. A colleague of Mr. Probe’s who stood with me in the darkened room behind the mirror and served as a sort of guide mentioned that there was one man on their polygraph staff who had a college degree. The man he named was not Mr. Probe. I was left to wonder whether Mr. Probe, the lie detector, had fibbed to me.)

At any rate Mr. Probe had a marvelously relaxing, first-name manner with Bill. He sat behind a desk with a polygraph machine worth about $1300 built into it. In front of the desk there was a comfortable chair—its back to Mr. Probe—where Bill would later be asked to sit and be tested. But now they were having a pre-examination chat. Mr. Probe said, “Okay, Bill, I’ll go over several of the questions I’m going to ask beforehand.” (This is apparently standard procedure and is not done entirely as a courtesy. It helps give the subject a chance to confess voluntarily or to start worrying about questions that may be troublesome.)

Mr. Probe helped Bill light his cigarette and then said, “I know we all have skeletons in the closet, and I’m not trying to dig them up. I’m just asking you to be completely honest with me.” He gave as an example the fact that some people lie a little bit about their college backgrounds. Some say they attended college when they went only one semester, and others say they have never stolen before and maybe they have. Then he told his new friend Bill: “I want to be able to write that you have a good, clean, smooth indication of truth. I’ll be back of you all the way if that is the way it appears.” Then he said, “Okay, Bill?” And added: “If you can’t completely and honestly say ‘no’ to a question, let me know and perhaps I can rephrase the question.”

And so Mr. Probe began his pre-polygraph questioning. “Have you ever stolen from previous employers?” Bill shifted in his chair a little and said, “As far as stealing, the only kind I can remember is ten years ago I stole some stationery from a company where I was working.” Mr. Probe magnanimously waved this aside. He said: “I’m not interested in stationery and paper clips; there’s a little bit of pilferage in all of us.” Then he said, more solemnly: “Have you ever taken anything beyond what we discussed?”

Bill: “No.”

Mr. Probe: “Ever fired for cause?”

Bill: “Never.”

Mr. Probe: “Ever drink to excess?”

Bill: “I’ve been loaded a few times, but I guess that’s not ‘excess,’ so I’ll say no.”

Mr. Probe: “Any mental disorders?”

Bill: “What do you mean, mental disorders? I guess I’m nervous at times.”

Mr. Probe: “I mean anything mental that would impair your work and prevent you from being a good salesman for this company.”

Bill: “No.”

Mr. Probe: “Are you in good physical condition?”

Bill: “Yes, as far as I know, except for sinus trouble.”

Mr. Probe: “Are you seeking permanent employment?”

Bill: “Well, I guess. What do you mean?”

Mr. Probe: “Do you have any plans to leave in the near future if you get the job?”

Bill: “Not that I know of.”

At this point Mr. Probe explained that his client was not interested in spending $8000 to $10,000 to break in a man who would go to some other company. Of course, Mr. Probe said, no one can blame a man for going to a much better opening. “But right now do you have any other plans?”

Bill explained that he did have another job offer, in Boston, and he couldn’t positively state that he hoped to have a permanent career with the company to which he was applying, since he had not yet worked for it. But he said he hoped to get this job and at the moment had no other plans.

Mr. Probe: “Have you answered truthfully all the questions on the application?”

Bill paused and explained that there was that thing about having a college degree. He had attended two colleges in the Midwest for about four and a half years but had never, to be truthful, finally got the degree.

Now Mr. Probe began to explain the mechanics of the machine. He asked Bill to take off his vest, roll up his left sleeve, and sit in the subject’s chair. Mr. Probe strapped the accordion-like rubber tubing across Bill’s chest (to check his respiration), attached a blood-pressure-pulse band to his arm, an electrode to his hand to check the sweating of his palm and muscular movement.

“This machine,” Mr. Probe said jovially, “is a scientific instrument to record involuntary changes that occur when people lie.” (He was persuading Bill that the machine was infallible.) He added: “In conversation, I can sit here and tell you one lie after another, but we cannot lie to ourselves, and we know that nothing we can do will prevent changes from being recorded. It is an accurate instrument in the hands of a competent examiner. I know you are a little nervous now. We’re not measuring nerves: we are measuring changes. I will ask you some questions that are irrelevant I’ll give you two tests. Just answer yes or no.”

I could see that three needles on the recording machine in front of Mr. Probe were already starting to make their squiggling lines on paper: the first recorded breathing, the second sweating, the third circulatory responses.

And now the questioning began with the machine in operation. In addition to the ones given in pre-exam, Mr. Probe asked such irrelevant questions as “Do you ever watch TV?” These presumably are control questions. Twice Mr. Probe admonished Bill not to move about so much. At least two new questions, according to my notes, were:

“Have you ever been arrested for speeding or getting a ticket?” (Bill tried to explain something about an incident in Indiana.)

“’Have you ever done something that you are really and truly ashamed of?” Bill shook his head. My guide whispered: “That question will sometimes smoke out the homosexual.” When Mr. Probe repeated the question about ever stealing merchandise, Bill said, “No.” One of the needles drew an emphatic peak line and my guide murmured, “That doesn’t look so good.”

Now the machine was turned off and Mr. Probe was explaining that a couple of Bill’s responses did give him a little concern. There was a reference to stealing merchandise. Bill conceded he did feel sort of funny when that one came at him, and he said he had also become tense when asked about mental disorder. It sort of made him nervous. Also the drinking question. Mr. Probe talked reassuringly and said, “All right, let’s run through the questions again.” Now the needles were behaving more smoothly, and my guide commented on this. He called it “a smoother picture.” And then came the final question for the machine. Mr. Probe paused dramatically and said:

“Now, Bill, I’m going to have to ask you a very embarrassing personal question. . . . Bill, have you ever . . .” Long pause, while the needles fluttered to high peaks, then “. . . I guess that question won’t be necessary, Bill.” My guide whispered that this was a deliberate jolter designed simply to test out Bill’s “total reaction capability.” Presumably a good or pathological liar would have taken this unfinished question in stride.

Now Bill was unharnessed from the chair and there was a discussion of the test. Mr. Probe noted with approval that all the responses that had caused him concern in the first testing had “washed out” in the second. The examination seemingly was over, and Bill was looking for his hat. Then Mr. Probe said pleasantly, “Bill, one more question before you leave. There is nothing personal or offensive about this, but because of the kind of business you are going in and the fact you have been in the summer theater work, I think I should ask it. Are you inclined to be homosexual?”

Bill looked startled. He said, “No.” But the question so unsettled him that he felt compelled to explain his situation. “I have of course been surrounded by them in my work in the theater in the Midwest, and I’ve been exposed to this a lot in some of the bohemian areas where I’ve lived, and I have been approached. But the answer is no.” Mr. Probe didn’t explain why sexual status had any significant relevance to the job for which Bill was applying.

The question was outrageous not only on the ground of unreasonable intrusion but on the grounds of vagueness. As stated, it would cause a great many million U.S. males to ponder how to respond. Mr. Probe obviously had never read the Kinsey Report on males, which showed that while four per cent of U.S. males questioned had been homosexually inclined most of their lives, a full third of the U.S. male adults interviewed had at some time in their lives had a homosexual experience.

Now Bill was leaving. A second examiner had joined me meanwhile in the darkened room, and the two examiners, who said they had gone to a different polygraph school than Mr. Probe, explained that they used different techniques to try to check a man out on homosexuality without putting the question to him directly. While the machine is on they ask one or more of these questions:

“Have you had any past or present physical ailments we should know about?”

“Are you holding back something important that was not covered in the examination?”

“Are you holding back information, any incident or condition, which might open you up to blackmail?”

One of the men added, laughing, “If you really throw the homo question to them directly while the machine is on the needles really jump.”

With Bill safely gone, Mr. Probe joined our discussion.

He said Bill looked “real good” on the second chart. As far as homosexuality was concerned, there was nothing suspicious in his responses to the question about physical or mental ailments, or source of shame, he said, and added: “If I had been really concerned about this homosexuality in a job where he was going to be working, for example with youngsters, I would have thrown the question at him during the test itself.” But here, he said, there was nothing definite. “I may verbally mention to the client his theatrical background and may mention he needs watching.”

The examiners wanted me to watch more tests; but I said I had had enough. I had had enough to the point of nausea.

Subsequently I dropped Mr. Probe a note requesting a summary of the report he turned in on Bill. He sent me an extract. It noted the discrepancy about a college degree and the fact that he had been unable to state flatly that he was seeking permanent employment. But he did give Bill credit for being honest and pointed out that while slightly nervous on the second test there had been no specific reaction to any of the pertinent questions. And then, in his letter to me, he concluded:

“In rendering a verbal report of results of the interview and examination to our client . . . I pointed out that I did not have any substantiating evidence on which to conclude that this man had possible homosexual [sic] tendencies, but that it was a great possibility. I then advised our client of the discussion I had with the applicant regarding homosexual activities. It was recommended that should the client organization be desirous of ascertaining whether or not this Subject had homosexual tendencies that we could conduct a background investigation or re-examine him on the polygraph at a later date.”

In short, on no basis other than hunch based on facts already presumably stated in Bill’s application about his environmental background, Mr. Probe had raised in the prospective employer’s mind a terrible question (in our society) about Bill’s manliness.

It should be further noted that most if not all of the derogatory points he reported came not from anything on the polygraph charts but were based on facts discussed while the machine was not turned on!

This fact alone would lead the author to concur with the statement of psychiatrist Joost A. M. Meerloo that the lie detector is primarily a “tool for mental intimidation.” Two Harvard psychologists and a graduate student in industrial management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who made a study of the polygraph as an examining tool reported much the same conclusion. The squiggles intimidate. As for the machine itself, these investigators pointed out that, though lying will produce physiological changes, “other factors often produce physiological changes which are very similar. For example there is the real danger that the changes which occur are not the result of a ‘feeling of guilt’ itself, but rather of recalling some information, or of a shift in attention, or perhaps a sudden fear of the consequences of being pronounced guilty.”² Their report was entitled “Don’t Trust the Lie Detector.”

The three investigators concluded that the lie detectors might at best be 70 per cent accurate in drawing out truth. Major practitioners such as Dale and Reid claim 95 to 98 per cent accuracy. But such claims usually carry the qualifying phrase, “in the hands of a competent examiner.”

If there is such a thing as a competent examiner, he is not much in evidence. Except in a few states (notably New Mexico and Kentucky) just about anyone can set himself up in business as a polygraph examiner by reading a book. Reid reportedly hires only college graduates and certifies them for polygraph work only after a six-month apprenticeship. But most of the polygraph schools run about six weeks and may require no college training whatever. (Enthusiasts of the polygraph talk of improving its accuracy by adding devices that will measure brain waves, heart action, and eye twitching.)

As to the ethics of forcing job-seekers to submit to such a degrading experience, one comment seems appropriate. Any company that treats its future employees to such an indignity deserves the worst from those employees in terms of loyalty, commitment, and honesty—and probably will get it. One hopeful development is that unions are finally starting to fight the polygraph and seeking legislation to get it outlawed. Perhaps they became alarmed because the examiners in some instances were grilling employees or applicants about union activities. Such questions have now been ruled unlawful by the National Labor Relations Board. Unions in general have been so preoccupied with meat-and-potatoes issues in the past that they have paid too little attention to trends in the modern work world that are operating to undermine individual privacy and human dignity.

3. The Use of Personality Tests

Each year considerably more than a million job-seekers must bare themselves to a battery of personality and other psychological tests before they are hired. Since the wide-scale use of such devices for screening job applicants has already been quite thoroughly explored,³ I shall confine myself here to noting some of the privacy-intrusion aspects. For example, upon reexamining one of several batteries of tests and forms I completed or examined a couple of years ago while posing as an aspiring manager or making believe I was one, I find I was requested to supply the following quite personal facts about myself (along with many more):

—What I think of my mother and father.

—Whether I find my children upsetting.

—How often I am bothered by either constipation or loose bowel movements.

—The degree to which I am disturbed by marital troubles at home.

—How much I am disturbed by loneliness, feelings of guilt, frightening dreams.

—How close I think I am to a nervous breakdown.

—Whether I consider myself ugly.

—How much I am troubled by itching.

—How far my wife, father, and mother got in school.

—Whether I am at all worried about my health.

And here are some of the sentences I was instructed to complete:

“One of the things wrong with me . . .”

“My greatest fear is . . .”

“I failed . . .”

“Most girls . . .”

“I suffer . . .”

“My greatest worry . . .”

Business critic Alan Harrington sees these test forms so widely used as a new type of confessional. “Instead of confessing to God through a priest or confessing to one’s self through a psychologist, the Corporate Man confesses to the Form,” he stated. “He acknowledges his strengths and weaknesses as they have been defined by others.”

A great deal of confessing is taking place. Most of the nation’s major corporations as well as hundreds of smaller ones will employ only applicants who have been psychoscreened. Virtually every aspiring manager under the age of thirty already has gone through at least one testing of his personality at some stage during the past decade.