Lasso of Truth

Lasso of Truth
Artwork for the cover of Wonder Woman vol. 2, 186 (Dec, 2002).Prominently featuring the Lasso of Truth. Art by Adam Hughes.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Sensation Comics #6 (June 1942)
Created by	William Moulton Marston
In story information
Type	Mystic item/artifact, Weapon
Element of stories featuring	Wonder Woman

The Lasso of Truth is a fictional weapon wielded by DC Comics superheroine Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themyscira. Originally named The Magic Lasso of Aphrodite, it is usually referred to as the Magic Lasso or Golden Lasso and forces anyone it captures to obey and tell the truth. Originally, it was created by William Moulton Marston as an allegory for feminine charm and compelled its captives to obey the wielder of the Lasso.

William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman but he also worked, in the period during and after World War I, on the systolic blood-pressure test while a graduate student in psychology at Harvard University where he earned a Ph.D. in 1921. Blood pressure was one of several elements measured in the polygraph test put together by John Augustus Larson in 1921 though it had been associated with deception since at least 1895, when Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) invented a device that police used to measure changes in the blood pressure of crime suspects. Marston's wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, a student at Radcliffe College, apparently played a key role in his research: "According to Marston’s son, it was his mother Elizabeth, Marston’s wife, who suggested to him that 'When she got mad or excited, her blood pressure seemed to climb'". Although Elizabeth is not listed as Marston’s collaborator in his early work, Lamb, Matte (1996), and others refer directly and indirectly to Elizabeth’s work on her husband’s deception research. She also appears in a picture taken in his polygraph laboratory in the 1920s (reproduced in Marston, 1938)."

But 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 direct result of their research into emotions and was more about submission than truth. So Marston created the Magic Lasso as an allegory for feminine charm and the compliant effect it has on people.