https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4095-8825
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ABSTARCT
Ostensibly, the main purpose of any interrogation is to obtain the truth about what a detainee knows and does not know, yet punitive motives can influence interrogators’ decisions on how to extract information from detainees. Three studies directly compared the degree to which punitive or informational priorities predicted decisions to use “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” and other forms of torture on hypothetical detainees in a War on Terror scenario. Participants were, both within subjects and between subjects, more likely to support torture for detainees with a violent history but unlikely to be withholding potentially life-saving information than for detainees likely withholding such information but having a non-violent history. In addition, multiple regression and mediation analyses suggested that punitive motives were stronger predictors of support for torture than informational motives. The results further bolster the existing evidence that punitive motives may decisively influence decisions about when to inflict torture.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the PSC-CUNY Research Awards under Grants TRADB-43-266 and TRADB-45-289. We thank the first author’s research assistants and Independent Study students at York College who provided invaluable assistance in the collection and entry of the data used for these studies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available at https://osf.io/6akp3/?view_only=8ecfe01dde444c31a6c468fa50fc5438.
Geolocation information
The data was collected from longitude — 73°47′46′′W (−73.79611), latitude — 40°42′3.74′′N (40.701042).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17467586.2023.2280865.
Notes
1. The most recent affiliation for conduct of research is Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, Graduate Center, City University of New York. The current affiliation is Department of Citywide Administrative Services, New York, NY.
2. We note that it is rare for interrogators or public figures to explicitly reference punitive motivations they might hold when justifying torture. Donald Trump’s remarks as a 2015 presidential candidate (Jacobs, Citation2015), quoted at the beginning of this article, reflect a rare case of a credibility-seeking public figure articulating a punitive justification for torture with only minor regard for torture’s supposed utilitarian value.
3. To be clear, our research is not intended to replicate or extend findings about all the other possible concerns, conditions and traits associated with support for torture (e.g., mortality salience, conservative personality variables). We are also not claiming that punitive and/or informational priorities are the most potent predictors of support for torture. Our specific concern is to add further evidence, and empirical refinement, regarding the distinction between informational and punitive priorities as two particular, and distinguishable, predictors of support for torture.
4. When Carlsmith & Sood employed these different scenarios, they did so between subjects and thus did not give different names to the detainees. Callaghan and Hansen (Citation2016), whose example we followed more closely in order to pit informational motives more directly against punitive motives, provided these scenarios to participants within subjects, and so named a unique individual (Malik vs Farid) in each scenario. Common to both Carlsmith and Sood (Citation2009) and Callaghan and Hansen (Citation2016) is the use of scenarios to manipulate moral status/punishability and informational status of a hypothetical detainee, to contrast the impact of these manipulated variables on support for torture.