A term coined by Rev. Walter Summers in his research into lie detection. The emotional standard was an emotion-provoking question to which the examinee answers truthfully, but one that the examinee would prefer to hide. It was included in a test series so the reaction evoked by it could be compared with the reaction elicited by relevant questions. Summers’ test format included an established ordering of pairs of relevant and emotional standard questions, interspersed with irrelevant questions, as needed. It is the first report in the literature of this type of question, and it predates Reid’s “comparative response question”. See: Summers (1939).
