October 28, 2009, Harvard University — Psychologists have found that the more a person appears to suffer when tortured, the guiltier they are perceived to be. According to the researchers, those complicit with the torture need to justify the torture, and therefore link the victim’s pain to blame.
The full paper, which seems to have been published in 2010, even though the summary is from 2009(???), is: “Torture and judgments of guilt,” by Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner.
Full study is free to read here
So if you are ever arrested and mistreated, try to act stoic, I guess.
It’s easy to see how this phenomenon could lead to spiraling sadism and abuse, as the abuser lashes out in hatred to bury their increasing guilt.
Oh sweet man-made horrors within my comprehension!
study: people don’t think critically and instead believe whatever is politically convenient as a coping mechanism for their atrocities
depressing but obvious
the study participants were randomly placed in the complicit or the uninvolved groups, presumably there wouldn’t have been a major ideological difference between the groups. the two variables were the apparent pain of the actor and the participants’ complicity in that pain. the complicit group was more sure of the actor’s guilt when the actor expressed more pain, while the distant group was more sure of the actor’s innocence when the actor expressed more pain.
The torture being studied was a hand in ice water, I don’t really understand how this is applicable. What did the distant participants who listened via audio hear? “Oh shit that’s cold water”. A university study would never get ethics board permission to actually give frostbite. Sits just a psych student who has to participate in at least one study in order to get study credit for the program.
It was explained to participants that although there was no way to tell if Carol had lied or had legitimately rolled an 8, people often admit to wrongdoing when placed in stressful situations. To that aim, Carol ostensibly did a cold pressor task after she reported the results of her die-roll, placing her hand in ice water for 80 s. Participants were told that they would listen to Carol being “tortured” and then judge the likelihood that she had cheated. Participants heard her react one of two ways to the cold pressor. In the pain condition, she appeared to feel significant discomfort, whimpering throughout the cold pressor. In the no pain condition, she appeared to feel little discomfort, reacting stoically to the cold.
After listening to the torture session, participants evaluated the likely guilt of the “torture victim” by answering three questions. The first two were, “How likely is it that the ‘torture victim’ had cheated?” and “How likely is it that the ‘torture victim’ is lying?” with responses made on a scale from 1 (“Not at all likely”) to 5 (“Extremely likely”). The third was “How moral or immoral do you perceive the ‘torture victim’ to be?” with responses made on a scale from 1 (“Extremely moral”) to 5 (“Extremely immoral”). As a manipulation check, participants also evaluated how much pain they perceived the “torture victim” to have felt on a scale from 1 (“No pain at all”) to 5 (“Extreme pain”).
CW: Abuse
This makes me wonder if patterns of abuse have a similar response. A lot of abuse victims adjust their behaviour to silence, seeking not to react and not to provoke their abuser. The less reaction the better.
I suspect that abusers also display similar patterns to these torturers, and abuse victims learn this behaviour unconsciously because it is the optimal way to reduce the severity of the abuse they receive.
Edit: how cold was the ice water? That’s deeply variable and 90 seconds is literally nothing
I may be focusing on how completely inconsequential the phsyicsl “torture” was. If the subject is a good actor they may have been able to effectively convince the subjects being tested on empathy. Maybe.
how cold was the ice water
they didn’t actually do it, she was just acting, but presumably ice water would be just above 0°C
if you stuck someone’s hand in ice water continuously for 80 seconds and they started to act like they were in pain and afraid, I think you might feel bad no matter what you told yourself logically.
I haven’t read the paper, but are they just counting the guy pulling teeth as torturers or also the DeSantis types that revel in watching and ordering others to do it? I feel like if you’re torturing somebody, you don’t really give a shit about truth or justice whereas the pencil pusher watching has more internal justification to do because he’s a legal official of a bureaucracy
Title probably could use a CW of some sort.
