Aggressive Interrogation and Retributive Justice: A Proposed Psychological Model

Sood, Avani Mehta; Carlsmith, Kevin M.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737512.003.0022

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Second, the suspect in the scenarios of Study 2 was located in Switzerland, amidst the participants themselves, while the suspect in the original study by Carlsmith and Sood (2009) was located far away. The suspect’s location may influence people’s evaluation of the suspect and their interrogation recommendations (this issue will be addressed in a forthcoming publication by Sood and Carlsmith, in press). Third, in the scenarios in Study 2 we made the Afghani a student of languages and the Swiss a student of religious studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Terrorists Among Us

Fischer

Oswald

Seiler

2013

Swiss Journal of Psychology

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Support among US citizens for severe interrogation has been recognized as drawing upon utilitarian as well as on retributive motivation ( Carlsmith & Sood, 2009 ). Two studies were conducted to expand on these findings in a Swiss sample. In Study 1, participants rated the severity of different interrogation techniques, which were scaled to provide an alternative measure of interrogation severity. In Study 2, retributive motivation was manipulated by varying the terrorist past of a male suspect, and utilitarian motivation was manipulated by varying the probability that the suspect could provide valuable information. Additionally, we manipulated the suspect’s group membership. The results of the vignette study suggest that the number and severity of recommended interrogation techniques is mainly influenced by whether the suspect might provide valuable information. Whether the suspect had a terrorist past was an additional influence that, however, was primarily attributable to the suspect’s group membership: If the suspect belonged to the ingroup, participants’ harsher interrogation recommendations were affected by that person’s past, whereas recommendations were not significantly influenced by a terrorist past if the suspect was an outgroup member.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Terrorists Among Us

Fischer

Oswald

Seiler

2013

Swiss Journal of Psychology

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“…Because virtually all TTB scenarios identify the suspect as a terrorist, it is likely that decisionmakers assume the suspect is both a member of an out-group and guilty of similar acts of aggression. If people continue to endorse torture even when these possible confounds are eliminated, this would strongly implicate retributive justice as a motivation in torture endorsement (see also Sood and Carlsmith 2012).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ticking Time Bomb: When the Use of Torture Is and Is Not Endorsed

Spino

Cummins

2014

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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Although standard ethical views categorize intentional torture as morally wrong, the ticking time bomb (TTB) scenario is frequently offered as a legitimate counter-example that justifies the use of torture. In this scenario, a bomb has been placed in a city by a terrorist, and the only way to defuse the bomb in time is to torture a terrorist in custody for information. TTB scenarios appeal to a utilitarian "greater good" justification, yet critics maintain that the utilitarian structure depends on a questionable set of hidden assumptions. Three experiments were conducted to investigate endorsement of torture when these hidden assumptions were violated. In Experiment 1, results indicated that endorsement varied as a function of the success likelihood of torture and its alternatives. In Experiment 2, people found torture to be more acceptable, less wrong, and more obligatory when the suspect in custody was described as a "terrorist" than when he was described simply as an individual, and when he was described as culpable as opposed to innocent. These results are more consistent with retributive justice than utilitarian "greater good" concerns. The results of Experiment 3 indicated that utilitarian decision profiles were not associated with lower levels of empathic concern but were instead associated with personal distress and the ability to transpose oneself into a fictitious character's experience. Across the three experiments, deontologists were more likely to reject torture than utilitarians.

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