By Tom Dare
AN INCREDIBLE VIDEO from the 1930s in which a doctor claims to have invented a machine that can compare the emotions of blonde, brunette and redheaded women has resurfaced this week, as the string of sexual abuse claims in the entertainment industry continued unabated.
Footage from 1930 shows a Dr. Marston conducting a series of experiments on three women, one with blonde hair, one with brunette hair and one with red hair, in an attempt to measure their emotional response to certain stimuli.
These include gambling, which the doctor determines stirs the greatest emotions in redheads, and watching a romantic film, which the brunette woman has the greatest response to. The blonde woman, the test determines, is the easiest to scare out of the three.
The experiments in the film were conducted by Dr. William Marston, a well-known doctor in his field at the time.
Marston was the creator of the systolic blood pressure test, a key component featured in the famous polygraph test that was invented just a few years later. The idea behind it was that when someone was lying it would cause their blood pressure to rise, whereas their blood pressure would remain the same when telling the truth.
He took this concept with him into his research on the emotions of women with different hair colours, presumably believing that all women of the same hair colour would have similar reactions. The narrator explains the results during the video.
“Here we see how a redhead reacts to gambling,” he says.
“And as she wins, Marston’s emotion finder indicates that redheads show most emotion when gambling.
“Now girls are taking reaction tests in matters pertaining to love. Watching love scenes, all girls show some kind of emotional response to a romantic scene, but not all show a similar reaction.
“The stinograph shows it’s the brunette who most wants to be loved.
The final test involves a man in a film pointing and firing a gun unexpectedly, with the narrator stating:
“Now here’s a test to show which of the three is most susceptible to shock or fright.
“Taking a look at the graph, as we go through that again, Dr Marston and science shows that blondes are easiest to scare.”
