1. What people think about torture: Torture is inherently bad…Unless it can save someone I love.
Shannon C. Houck Meredith Repke Lucian Gideon Conway III
Introduction
Manipulations and Dependent Measures
Figures
Across two studies, all participants read about a hypothetical crisis scenario that contained the following information: (a) The suspect in custody readily admits guilt, but refuses to provide the information needed to prevent the loss of innocent life; (b) There is certainty that the guilty detainee is the only person who holds this vital information; and (c) All other alternative approaches to obtaining this information have failed. Scenarios manipulated the following:
Primary Manipulations
(1) Personal Closeness to the Victim. Some participants read scenarios that described a close loved one as the victim in the crisis scenario, while others read scenarios that described the victim as a stranger from another country.
(2) Type of Crisis. Some scenarios described a kidnapping, while others described a time bomb set to detonate in a city.
Dependent Measures
(1) Continuous Measure. Participants were asked to indicate the level of torture they would support on a 1 (no pressure) to 6 scale (maximum pressure).
(2) Dichotomous Measure. Participants responded to a dichotomous (“yes” or “no”) measure of torture support.
Imagine the classic ticking time bomb scenario: There is a bomb set to detonate in a populated city, which will cause great loss of innocent life. The location of the bomb is unknown, but authorities have captured the terrorist who planted the bomb. The terrorist refuses to give any information. Is torturing the terrorist justified under these circumstances?
Given the cultural, political, and psychological relevance of torture, there is surprisingly little scientific research on how people actually think about torture. Indeed, most of the current knowledge about the perceptions of torture comes from public opinion polls (e.g., Canseco, 2012) or from how people respond to scenarios like the ticking time bomb (e.g., Homant et al., 2008). This work suggests that people generally have very negative views of torture. Rejali and Gronke (2011, para. 5) summarized polling data in the U.S. by noting: “Even given that absolute certainty and a ‘ticking time bomb,’ time and again, a majority of Americans rejected the use of torture by our government.” Additional research suggests that Europeans have similarly negative views of torture (World Public Rejects Torture, 2008).
Yet, this prior work focuses on torture perceptions at an abstract level. Even more concrete scenarios like the ticking time bomb commonly concern at-a-distance crises involving ambiguous, unknown “others” as victims. This abstractness may create a sense of psychological distance—a perception that the situation does not matter to the participants personally—from the crisis.
This project aimed to fill the gaps in prior work by exploring the difference between people’s views of torture in an at-a-distance scenario and an applied scenario where they have some psychological investment.
Pooled Results: Participants’ Continuous Endorsement of Torture Use by Personal Closeness and Type of Scenario
Torture Support
Pooled Results: Participants’ Dichotomous Endorsement of Torture Use by Personal Closeness and Type of Scenario
Design Overview and Expectations
Study 1. Participants were randomly assigned to one of eight hypothetical scenarios derived from a 2 (personal closeness) × 2 (personal responsibility) × 2 (crisis type) design.
Study 2. Participants were randomly assigned to one of eight hypothetical scenarios derived from a 2 (personal closeness) × 2 (opinion of a policeman) × (crisis type) design.
Primary Hypothesis: We expected that an applied, personally-relevant scenario would produce more torture support than the traditional scenario involving unknown potential victims.
Torture Support
Discussion
This research suggests that, at a cultural level, there may be some discontinuity between the commonly perceived view that torture is bad—a perception largely based on at-a-distance or abstract measures—and what people say they would actually do in a personally relevant torture scenario. This information could be vital in piecing together the larger picture of the dynamic interplay between the psychology of terrorism on the one hand (see, e.g., Conway & Conway, 2011; Houck et al., in press) and the psychology of the perceptions of the treatment of terrorists on the other (e.g., Homant & Witkowski, 2011; Rejali, 2007).
Pooled Results from Studies 1 and 2
Primary Results
People were considerably more likely to support torture in personally relevant scenarios compared to at-a-distance scenarios involving unknown victims (F’s> 7.48, two-tailed p’s< .007).
(2) Pooled analyses suggested that this effect of personal closeness to the victims occurred for both crisis types, but the effect was stronger for the kidnapper scenario (p< .001), compared to the time bomb scenario (p< .056).
See Figures 1 and 2.
Contact information .
References
Shannon C. Houck
Meredith
Repke
Lucian Gideon Conway III
University of Montana
Canseco, M. (2012). Most Americans reject the use of torture on terrorism suspects. Angus Reid Public Opinion . Retrieved from
Conway, L. G., III, & Conway, K. R. (2011). The terrorist rhetorical style and its consequences for understanding terrorist violence. Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict , 4 , 175–192.
Homant, R. J., & Witkowski, M. J. (2011). Support for coercive interrogation among college students: Torture and the ticking bomb scenario. Journal of Applied Security Research, 135–157. 
Homant, R. J., Witkowski, M. J., & Howell, M. (2008). Is torture ever justified? College students’ attitudes toward coercion/torture. Journal of the Institute of Justice & International Studies , 8 , 152–165.
Houck, S. C., Conway, L. G., III, Gornick, L. J., & Cvasa, G. P. (in press). Terrorism. In K. Keith (Ed.), Encyclopedia of cross-cultural psychology . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Rejali, D. M., & Gronke, P. (2011). Accepting Torture? The Huffington Post . Retrieved from
Rejali, D. M. (2007). Torture and democracy . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
World Publics Reject Torture. (2008). World public opinion: Global public opinion on international affairs . Retrieved from