The Naked Society. Vance Packard
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is valuable, too. Specifically, it is a remarkable resource for students of gay and lesbian history, and historians of sexuality generally, a subject upon which Packard’s findings are gloriously, triumphantly dated.
The mid-twentieth century was a moment of panic over any perceived deviance from sexual normalcy. One of the most fascinating patches of the book concerns the extraordinarily intrusive psychological testing children were subject to in schools. One consisted of eleven pictures of a dog named Blacky (the “Blacky Test”) purported to evaluate kids on “Dimensions” including “Oral Eroticism” (a cartoon captioned, “Here is Blacky with Mama...”), “Anal Sadism” (“Here Blacky is relieving himself (Herself. .),” “Here Blacky is watching Tippy. . .” (“Castration Anxiety [M] or Penis Envy [F]).”
Employment applicants were even worse. In a stunning set piece, Packard takes the reader inside a polygraph examination of a poor soul named Bill who is applying for a job as a traveling salesman of consumer products:
“Ever fired for cause?”
“Never.”
“Ever drink to excess?”
“I’ve been loaded a few times, but I guess that’s not ‘excess,’ so I’ll say no.”
And so on. Until we arrive at this extraordinary passage:
“‘Have you ever done something that you are really truly ashamed of?’ Bill shook his head. My guide whispered, ‘That question will sometimes smoke out the homosexual.’...
“Bill was unharnessed...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 a 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 inquisition about “homosexuality,” is mostly irrelevant. The polygraph stuff, however, throws us right back into the first category of reasons The Naked Society is worth reading. Lie detectors, then and now, are a scam and an affront to privacy rights. Packard writes of one psychiatrist’s conclusion that they were more a “tool for mental intimidation” than a reliable apparatus for the detection of lies, and of a joint Harvard and MIT study that polygraphs may have no more than 70 percent accuracy. Even that was only in the hands of a competent investigator, unlikely in an entirely unregulated industry.
The spring the book came out, a Democratic California congressman, John Moss, began hearings on the subject. He was soon announcing, “I would never submit to a polygraph unless accompanied by my personal physician, my lawyer, and my psychiatrist.” His subcommittee later concluded that “there is no such thing as a lie detector.”18 Unions, Packard noted, were lobbying for legislation to have them outlawed. They failed, of course—and their manufacturers still claim 90 percent validity, even though the National Research Council has found no evidence for their effectiveness. In United States v. Scheffer (1998), the Supreme Court left their use up to the states—and nineteen allow polygraph testimony to be admitted into evidence. Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, and Iowa eventually banned polygraph testing as a condition of employment, or in the investigation of wrongdoing by employers.19 That, of course, means forty-five states have not.
IV.
We still stand naked in our society—more shiveringly than ever before. Consider the workplace. Packard profiles companies like Bishop’s Service (motto: “A Man’s Whole Life Precludes The Single Deed”), which maintained files of five million names for clients seeking executive talent; organizations like the American Society for Industrial Security, whose membership grew from 1800 to 2500 in two years; a staggeringly fast-growing company named Wackenhut that specialized in renting out former FBI agents (they are now the largest private prison company in the world). He also studies the prevalence of cameras in employee bathrooms, miniature transmitters installed inside toilet paper rollers, factory surveillance—”At thousands of plants no one is to be trusted in any sense in which we’ve traditionally known the word”—and what one expert called “psychological espionage”: personality testing, sometimes in disguised form, was rampant, with a “special interest in trying to determine whether the applicant is adaptable enough to be a good team player...is money-minded (that is good)...is controversial or a ‘screwball’ (those are bad).” This despite the findings, according to the Harvard Business Review, of those tests’ “dismal history” of scientific reliability.”
So what is the state of the art now?
According to Ann Murphy Paul, author of The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves (2005), 2500 such tests are on the market and being utilized by corporations now—an entirely unregulated industry (including the notorious and entirely unscientific Rorschach “inkblot” test)—not to mention their use in “the admissions processs at private schools, the evaluation of learning and behavior problems, and the investigation of child custody and child abuse cases.”20
Meanwhile, employment applicants these days do not have to establish their heterosexuality in order to get hired. Instead, they have to lay bare their credit ratings—quite possibly creating, in the not-too-distant future, a blacklisted underclass rendered permanently unemployable because of their bad financial luck some time in the distant past.21 (So much for Packard’s invocation of one of the rights heretofore considered characteristically American that we seem to be in danger of scuttling: the right to a fresh start.)
And what about workplace spying? Google led me to an article in a newsletter called “Business Watch” that noted, “Employee monitoring is becoming a standard practice in just about every industry. . . . A 2001 American Management Association Association survey found that three-quarters of all major companies record and review employee communications and on-the-job activities.” Most employers install software programs like “Investigator” which “allows an employer to monitor everything a user does on a computer, including opening windows and posting items in chat rooms. It then sends an activity report via email to the employer.” Other programs flag taboo words selected by employers, or classify emails by the number of words sent, or measure the amount of time an employee spends composing, or even reading, email.
What is permitted, and what is not? In Wisconsin, I learned from “Business Watch,” statutes specify that employees have a right to be free from intrusion in circumstances that “reasonable people would consider to be private, such as using the bathroom”—but that “much of what is considered private is ultimately based on what employers tell their employees to expect. ‘If, say, they’re committed to maintaining the security and integrity of the office by reserving the right to inspect lockers and offices, then it’s clear lockers and desks aren’t considered private space,’” the article quoted a lawyer named Tom Godar. Courts have generally upheld this and employers’ rights to monitor just about anything else without disclosing to employees they are being monitored, I learned. And though the Electronic Communications Privacy Act prohibits unauthorized or warrantless electronic interception of oral communication, “there are several key exceptions: 1) Employers are allowed to monitor business-related activities if the monitoring is in the ordinary course of business, and 2) The employer is exempted from ECPA if its employees agree to be monitored.” So it is that “employer-issued cell phones” have become “a monitoring technique that is gaining popularity, which allow employees to trace the whereabout of their traveling employees.” Kind of like the ankle bracelets parolees where, only for traveling salesmen.
Scary stuff, and I braced myself to enjoy the jeremiad to follow.