Torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

, whether physical or psychological or both, depends on complicated interpersonal relationships between those who torture, those tortured, bystanders and others. Torture also involves deeply personal processes in those tortured, in those who torture and in others. These interacting psychological relationships, processes and dynamics form the basis for the psychology of torture.

Motivation to torture

Research over the past 50 years, starting with the Milgram experiment

Milgram experiment

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...

, suggests that under the right circumstances and with the appropriate encouragement and setting, most people can be encouraged to actively torture others.

John Conroy

John Conroy

Sir John Conroy, 1st Baronet KH was a British army officer who became the chief attendant of the Duke of Kent and the Duchess of Kent who were the parents of Queen Victoria. When the Duke died, he became comptroller of the duchess' household and was rumoured to be her lover...

:

Confidence in the efficacy of torture is based upon the behaviorist theory of human behavior.

Stages of torture mentality include:

• Reluctant or peripheral participation
• Official encouragement: As the Stanford prison experiment
  Stanford prison experiment
  The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted from August 14th-20th, 1971, by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University...
  
   and Milgram experiment
  Milgram experiment
  The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
  
   show, many people will follow the direction of an authority figure (such as a superior officer) in an official setting (especially if presented as mandatory), even if they have personal uncertainty. The main motivations for this appear to be fear of loss of status or respect, and the desire to be seen as a "good citizen" or "good subordinate".
• Peer encouragement: to accept torture as necessary, acceptable or deserved, or to comply from a wish to not reject peer group beliefs.
• Dehumanization
  Dehumanization
  Dehumanization is to make somebody less human by taking away his or her individuality, the creative and interesting aspects of his or her personality, or his or her compassion and sensitivity towards others. Dehumanization may be directed by an organization or may be the composite of individual...
  
  : seeing victims as objects of curiosity and experimentation, where pain becomes just another test to see how it affects the victim.
• Disinhibition
  Disinhibition
  Disinhibition is a term in psychology used to describe a lack of restraint manifested in several ways, including disregard for social conventions, impulsivity, and poor risk assessment. Disinhibition affects motor, instinctual, emotional, cognitive and perceptual aspects with signs and symptoms...
  
  : socio-cultural and situational
  Situational offender
  In criminology the term situational offender is used in several meanings, their common denominator being nontypical character of the offense in question for the person according to some criteria.-General criminology:Following the classical study of Martin R...
  
   pressures may cause torturers to undergo a lessening of moral inhibitions and as a result act in ways not normally countenanced by law, custom and conscience.
• Organisationally, like many other procedures, once torture becomes established as part of internally acceptable norms under certain circumstances, its use often becomes institutionalised and self-perpetuating over time, as what was once used exceptionally for perceived necessity finds more reasons claimed to justify wider use.

One of the apparent ringleaders of the Abu Ghraib prison torture

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

Beginning in 2004, human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to public attention...

 incident, Charles Graner

Charles Graner

Charles A. Graner, Jr., is a former U.S. Army reservist who was convicted of prisoner abuse in connection with the 2003–2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal...

Jr., exemplified some of these when he was reported to have said, "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'"

Further reading

• McCoy, Alfred, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (Hardcover)
• Conroy, John, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.

External links

• Human Rights First; Tortured Justice: Using Coerced Evidence to Prosecute Terrorist Suspects (2008)