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TORTURE AND PSYCHOLOGIST

Are Psychologists Justified or Unjustified to Participate in Torture?

Briana Wesclitz

Loras College
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Are Psychologists Justified or Unjustified to Participate in Torture?

There is much controversy over the presence and involvement of psychologists in torture

interrogations. Torture is defined as an act by an individual that causes severe pain or suffering

on another. This includes physical and mental pain. Torture’s intends to inflict pain on a certain

person to obtain information that may be useful (United Nations n.d). Some people see torture as

a way to save lives or retain information at the cost of harming the to-be-tortured person; they

consider this harm reduction. Other people do not see it this way and believe that torture often

causes some type of harm, which violates human rights and ethics. They believe torture is never

justifiable. Torture is not necessary for psychologists to engage in when other methods can

replace it. Psychologists are, indeed, breaking the code of ethics while involved with torture

interrogations due to the development of psychological disorders, negative motivations, and

unreliable information.

To fully understand the debate over torture, some background information needs to be

explained. After September 11th in 2001, the safety of citizens while keeping human rights has

been an ongoing concern. Since then, torture became a subject in the United States related to the

prevention of terrorist attacks. Evidence has come to light on the misuse of ethical and moral

principles by U.S officials for the War on Terror. This also includes breaking legal standards.

Severe torture inflicted on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay has especially produced shock and furry

over the use of torture. The Military Commissions Act (MCA) occurred in 2006 and permitted

terrorist suspects to become prisoners in military prisons. In 2009 president Obama presented
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legal justifications for torture. This was known as "Torture Memos." In 2014, the Senate released

a report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program. This ultimately led to a 2015 ban on

torture as a law entirely (Background on Torture 2016). Not surprisingly, the debate over

whether torture can be justified or not continues to ensue.

Torture brings on the development of psychological disorders that negatively affect the

victim's life. Research has found that fear, distress, and anger experienced by the person tortured,

influences psychological outcomes. For example, some common psychological problems found

in torture research includes anxiety, depression, aggressiveness, emotional instability, self-

isolation, and social withdrawal. (Costanzo & Gerrity 2007). A cross-sectional study focused on

the emotions experienced during torture and difficulties in life after the torture. 108 refugees and

asylum seekers in treatment at two psychiatric clinics in Switzerland went through path analyses

to get results for the study. The study found that distress during torture causes significant risk

factors for the mental health of torture survivors. This study speaks to this claim because PTSD,

depression, and anger problems were some of the psychological outcomes that arose from the

research results. Psychological disorders seem to be more likely to occur for torture victims due

to neurological changes in the brain. One study focused on the neurological effects that happen

after torture. They did a Cross-sectional neuroimaging study on Vietnamese ex-political

detainees that had experienced torture. The results showed that there was a higher rate of

depression that could be attributed to changes in the participants’ cerebral cortex thickness and

volume of the amygdala, hippocampus, and thalamus (Mollica & Lyoo 2009). According to

Elbert and Schauer (2011), Brain rewiring seems to occur for these victims because they have a

need for permanent defense. The trauma puts the victims at a disadvantage when it comes to fear
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and stress because they are always on an alert mode. Torture is not a form of harm reduction

because in the end psychological disorders may come about.

Psychologists knowingly putting a person in a position that may cause psychological

disorders is violating the code of ethic 3.04 Avoiding Harm. This ethic proposes that

psychologists need to take rational steps to avoid harming the client, patient, student, research

participants, and others that are involved in the work (American Psychological Association

2016). This code also states that psychologists need to keep harm to a minimum if it is

unavoidable. Torture is avoidable harm since there are many other ways to handle the situation

without harm. For example, a softer approach would be to talk to the person or make a deal with

them. Research studies have shown these tactics to be effective and may even be more useful

than torture. According to Robert Cialdini (1994), some principles have been shown to work and

can replace torture as a whole. These principles include getting the suspect to like the

interviewer, having the interviewer take the role of an authority figure, keep consistent action,

tell the suspect that other suspects are cooperating, and offer something to get the information.

Since there are other ways to get information that also seems to be effective, torture is not

inevitable. The psychological implication is that it is putting the suspect at risk of developing

psychological disorders while having other options to get important information.

Torture is sometimes used as a punishment rather than for extracting information. The

goal of torture is to obtain certain information. In more cases than one would think, this is not the

only goal that interviewers have while inflicting pain on the suspect. Research suggests that

people who support or partake in torture may have retributive motives. A national sample of US

residents found that harsh interrogation is correlated with the desire to punish. Their focus may

not be on the effectiveness of the interrogation, as it should be, but instead on the punishment.
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The person in charge may dehumanize the person tortured and be oblivious to how this can affect

the person in the end. (Carlsmith & Sood, 2009). One experiment that displays how some people

misuse authority in torture is the Stanford prison experiment. In this experiment, the guards, who

were described as gentle and caring people, found themselves coming up with new ways to

degrade and harass the prisoners (Haney & Zimbardo 1998). These participants were free to

engage in any sort of interaction. In the end, they chose dehumanizing and hostile interactions

that ultimately led to psychological hardships for all participants in the study. Some people may

think that they will just torture the person enough to get the information. In reality, humans

generally and inherently tend to misuse their authority when it comes to these situations, as

observed in the Stanford study. The person who is engaging in torture may act this way due to

the belief that the suspect is lying. Torture may then be done out of frustration or desperation to

punish the suspect for being untruthful.

The person engaging in torture has the possibility of having a biased interrogation style.

This is due to confidence from interrogation training that focuses on seeking out guilt. Common

cues that show a suspect being truthful may be overlooked (Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004). Other

things that may influence the torture are physical appearance, ethnicity, stereotypes, and

behavioral cues. (Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004). With all these factors that may occur, there is not

a definite way to carry out torture for the sole purpose of acquiring information. Punishment is

something that may be present during torture interrogation.

Participating in the role of torturing someone breaks 3.03 Other Harassment in the code

of ethics. This ethic code states that psychologists shall not knowingly participate in behavior

that is harassing or demeaning (American Psychological Association 2016). By torturing

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someone, the psychologist is ultimately dehumanizing the person as a result of causing severe

suffering. They are inflicting pain on the person which, in the end, violates human dignity.

Torture can lead to unreliable information and false intelligence. There are many factors

as to why information achieved by torturing may be false. One thing that might deter the

interrogator from getting reliable information is torturing the wrong person. This can happen if

the interrogator assumes that the to-be-tortured person has the relevant information when in

reality they might not (Bufacchi 2012). The interrogator could also be misinformed if the person

is motivated to say anything to escape torture or want to lead interrogators in a different direction

(Costanzo & Gerrity, 2009). Since torture is used in a secret and unethical ways, there is not

enough research on the relationship between false information and torture. There is, however,

research displaying that in less coercive techniques, a large number of false confessions have

been produced.

Since DNA has recently been able to help prove who is guilty or innocent, researchers are

able to look at case studies when it comes to false confessions. The releases of innocent people

who confessed to crimes helped researchers prove that false confessions did occur in certain

cases, thereby suggesting that torture can provide false intelligence (Costanzo & Leo, 2007). In a

recent large-scale study, 125 confessions to serious felony crimes were proven to be false. These

confessions were a result of negative and harsh police interrogations (Drizin & Leo 2004). Even

though this study did not include torture, less severe methods of obtaining information seem to

generate false confessions.

Torture victims may provide false information or confessions to stop their pain but they

also may not remember the important information. Stress that forms from torture may make it
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difficult for the victim to recall information. This memory loss may just lead to the suspect

giving up information that they believe is true but in reality, may not be. A 2013 study focused

on 800 military soldiers that were participating in stressful survival school training. These

soldiers were asked to identify an aggressive interrogator that they were exposed to. Results

show that the majority of participants could not pick out the interrogator or even picked the

wrong one. However, the participants were more likely to identify the person after being exposed

to a low-stress experience. This study displays that stress can inhibit memory and prevent torture

methods from getting accurate information (Morgan & Southwick 2013). In conclusion, torture

leads to unreliable information because of stress barriers, pressure from the interrogators, and

wrongful assumptions.

Since torture has been found to have negative effects on memory and produce false

information, psychologists are breaking the 1.01 Misuse of Psychologist Work code of Ethic.

This ethic states that if a psychologist learns of the misuse or misrepresentation of their work

then they need to correct what they have done wrong. As discussed earlier, there is evidence to

suggest that people cooperate better if they like the interviewer, believes the interviewer is an

authority figure, the interviewer's actions are consistent, something is offered in exchange for

information, or if the suspect is told that others are cooperating (Cialdini 1994). Since studies

have found that low-stress experiences have better memory recall, a psychologist would be

misusing their work by inflicting high amounts of stress through torture to get information.

Overall, there are alternative ways for people to get information without misusing their work

through torture.
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Those who believe in using torture may think that the to-be-tortured person has

information that could prevent significant harm if the information is acquired. They believe that

the psychologist could advise interrogators to use the least harmful practices of torture. This

would save the potential victim while only inflicting short pain on the person tortured. They may

argue that there are methods of helping torture victims if they do experience negative outcomes.

One study focused on psychoeducation, supportive counseling, cognitive-behavior therapy, and

family counseling/therapy treatments. They conducted surveys to analyze the experience of

torture victims’ post-treatment. In the surveys, they found that torture victims experienced

positive outcomes after going through these treatments (Vrana & Campbell 2013). This is

relevant to pro-torture people because they believe that the tortured person only goes through

some harm while the victim gets saved. If they do develop any emotional difficulties after

torture, then they can go to therapy.

Torture may save one victim but can also cause long-term effects in the person tortured.

A cross-sectional survey involving South Korean torture survivors showed that distress from

torture was positively correlated to the development of PTSD symptoms. This, in turn, imposed

complications with the survivors’ lives. (Choi & Lee 2017). When it comes to harm reduction,

there is not a way to avoid harming someone during torture. Even though people may think

certain practices of torture are less harmful than others, in the end, there are still negative

outcomes that ruin people's lives. Therefore, while some may think that psychologists can help

determine the use of torture with minimal harm, this may not be the case. As discussed earlier,

there is inevitably going to be harm imposed in some form, such as mental harm – or even
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neurological rewiring (Elbert & Schauer 2011). There is always the increased likely hood of

forming mental disorders for the person tortured. Someone who is for torture may just argue that

this can be fixed by therapy or time. There are many barriers people face when it comes to

getting treatment after torture. For example, some people do not initiate an attempt to go to

therapy because they believe it does not help. In a research survey discussed in regards to pro-

torture, there were many barriers that therapists identified. These barriers included lack of clinic

funding, interpreters, client transportation, and cultural awareness (Vrana & Campbell 2013).

This prevents the victims from getting quality treatment. In conclusion, a psychologist may not

be able to come up with methods of harm reduction for torture because many factors can affect

the torture victims without the psychologist knowing. The treatment after the torture does not

always work out as one would assume.

Another argument that may arise is that psychologists play a valuable and ethical role by

participating in torture interrogations. Those who justify torture believe psychologists are

protecting the nation and innocent civilians from harm. They are collecting useful information

that can be a defense for the nation or certain aspects of life. For example, many people turn to

the “ticking time bomb scenario” as a justification for torture. The scenario goes as follows: The

scenario goes as follows: there is a bomb in a very populated city and authorities cannot locate

the bomb, meaning that it would have the potential to take thousands of innocent lives. A

terrorist is being questioned but is not giving up any information. The authorities have to then

decide if they are going to torture the terrorists to get information about the bomb or alternatively

try to find it in time. One study, done with 252 undergraduate students focused on this scenario.
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The results showed that when referring to the ticking time bomb scenario, 61% of undergraduate

student participants supported the use of torture. They believed that tortuous methods

would save many people, and therefore, torture can be justified (Homant &

Witkowski 2011). People who believe torture can be justified may refer to this

scenario and study to argue that the psychologist involved would save multiple

people just by getting the information on the bomb.

Psychologists are not filling an ethical role in the ticking time bomb scenario because of

human rights violations. Psychologists must follow laws just as citizens do. There are laws such

as those included in the Bill of Human rights and the International covenant on civil and political

rights (The Foundation of International Human Rights Law n.d.). These rights prevent the use of

torture, cruel, or degrading treatment. Psychologists would break these while participating in

torture.

Another reason why the ticking time bomb argument is not valid is that torture does not

always get information promptly. Psychologists may need results right away and, by the time

they do get the information, the damages may have already been done. Psychologists are going

against ethics instead of actively participating in an ethical role. In the ticking time bomb

scenario, the information needs to be acquired immediately. It takes time to torture people until

they are willing to give up information. If they do give up the information it may be to stop the

torture or throw interrogators off track. The information that comes from the torture may be

unreliable and give false intelligence. As discussed earlier, case studies with current DNA testing
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suggested that there were false confessions as a result of getting out of interrogations (Kassin

2015). Justification of torture through the ticking time bomb scenario gives people the wrong

idea of when torture is realistically implemented. According to Miller (2005), there is not a case

documented similar to the ticking time bomb scenario in U.S. history. This means that situations

in which torture has been used may not be as extreme as having a bomb about to kill thousands

of innocent people.

Overall there are many complications when it comes to psychologists and torture

interrogations. Some may think that the harm done to the tortured person is just a way for there

to be the least amount of harm. The research done on psychological disorders and torture

suggests that there is more harm done than one would think. The unreliable information and

damaged lives are not worth torturing during investigations. Psychologists have to keep ethical

roles to make sure everyone is safe during research. They are straying from this role by

participating in torture interrogations. There are other useful ways for the interrogator to gain

useful information as discussed earlier. Those who believe torture can be justified have

confidence in the thought that it is a form of harm reduction. Innocent lives are saved while the

suspect can get therapy after. These beliefs are not valid when looking at all the factors and

outcomes that come with torture. Psychologists are not justified to partake in torture under any

circumstances.
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