Lasso of Truth
fictional lasso used by Wonder Woman
The Lasso of Truth is a weapon wielded by DC Comics superhero Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themyscira. It is also known as the Lariat of Truth, the Magic Lasso, the Lasso of Hestia or the Golden Perfect. It was created by William Moulton Marston, inventor of the lie detector, as an allegory for feminine charm, but it later became more popular as a device to extract truth from people.
The lariat forces anyone it captures into submission, compelling them to obey the wielder and tell the truth. It is also a divine relic, and it also requires a pure heart to wield.
Origin and influences
William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman but he also worked, in the period before, during and after World War I, on understanding and perfecting the systolic blood-pressure test while working on his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University. Blood pressure was one of several elements measured in the polygraph tests that had been under development since 1895 by Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso and others. Marston's wife, psychologist and lawyer Elizabeth Holloway Marston, one of his inspirations for the Wonder Woman character, also played a key role in his lie-detector research.
The lie detector had nothing to do with Marston's creation of the Magic Lasso. Wonder Woman's Magic Lasso or Golden Lasso was the result of their research into emotions and was more about submission than truth.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lasso of Truth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.