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Imagine that someone close to you was in imminent danger and the only solution involved having police use torture to extract information from a suspect in custody. Would you agree or not?
While torture remains a divisive topic with many countries around the world authorizing its use, international human rights codes and the legal codes of most countries provide comprehensive legal protections against torture under any circumstances. Public opinion polls tend to be consistent in showing that only 34 percent of people worldwide actual endorse the use of torture though the numbers vary from country to country. Still, despite the consensus that torture is both immoral and ineffective, both as a means of punishment and as a way of gaining information, controversy still surrounds its use. Issues such as rendition, waterboarding, and the very definition of torture continue to influence international relations, especially given the current "War on Terror" that shows no sign of ending.
But are there circumstances that would cause people who might ordinarily reject torture to accept its use? And why is torture still so prevalent despite a long history demonstrating the lack of any real evidence for its effectiveness? Peace psychology researchers have suggested many people who advocate the use of torture often engage in "wishful thinking" about how well it would work. Another factor that seems to make a difference in whether or not people accept the use of torture is personal closeness. In other words, they are more likely to call for torture to be used if the life of a loved one was at stake.
In a new research study published in Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, a team of researchers at the University of Montana examined how personal closeness affected attitudes about the use of torture. Lead researchers Shannon Houck and Lucian Conway conducted two experiments testing how perceptions about torture can change depending on what was at stake. In an interview with local media, Houck suggested that public opinion polls fail to capture the role that personal closeness can play in how people felt about torture."“It’s not as if the public opinion polls are wrong or anything. It’s just that they are not capturing this whole dimension,” she said. “It really changes when you consider a loved one in the scenario.”
Recruiting 262 research participants online using Amazon's Mechanical Turk system, Houck and her fellow researchers presented a series of hypothetical scenarios intended to test torture attitudes. All of the scenarios described an imminent crisis, whether involving a ticking time bomb or a kidnapping. With a guilty person in custody who possesses vital information that might prevent the loss of life of innocents, the research participants were then asked whether torture would ever be permissible.
To test the effect of personal closeness, participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: whether the person in imminent danger was a total stranger or a loved one. Along with questions about whether torture was justified, participantw were also asked if they felt torture would be effective in getting the needed information.
Based on the results, the researchers found that personal closeness had a powerful impact on whether people felt that torture would be effective as well as whether it should be used at all. Basically,research participants were far more likely to endorse the use of torture in getting the needed information if it meant saving a loved one than if a stranger's life was at risk. Partipants in the personal condition were also far more likely to believe that torture would be effective in extracting information from the suspect in custody if they were personally close to the person in danger.
These results closely matched previous research studies conducted by Houck and her colleagues. While public opinion polls have been consistent in reporting that only 30 to 40 percent of the general public endorsed the use of torture, knowing that the life of a loved one was at stake led to as much as 80 percent of research participants endorsing torture. Not only does personal closeness make torture seem more acceptable to many people, but these results also suggest that personal concern can affect how they view the effectiveness of torture.
As Houck and Conway suggest, hoping for the safe return of a loved one appears to bias people in favour of using torture methods that they might otherwise not trust to extract important information. While this study has important limitations, especially since it involved presenting people with hypothetical situations, it does indicate that many people are willing to set aside their own scruples about torture under certain circumstances.
So what do these findings mean for the thorny questions surrounding torture? Shannon Houck summed it up best in one comment on her research: "It’s constantly a debate. Philosophically, most people say they’re opposed to torture. And I think the point is mostly to bridge that gap and provide a fuller picture of, you know, how do people actually think about torture. And really, there’s not a lot of scientific research at all that addresses the psychology of torture perceptions.”
As the War on Terror drags on and new hot spots arise, the question of torture will not go away anytime soon. Understanding what might make people endorse torture when they would otherwise reject it may become increasingly important in the years to come.
