The usual thinking about torture is that ‘pain will make the guilty confess.’ A whole new study coming out of Harvard University refutes that all the way around. These researchers are now saying that, contrary to popular belief, ‘the pain of torture can make even the innocent seem guilty.’ The research appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The study was undertaken by Kurt Gray, graduate student in psychology, and Daniel M. Wegner, professor of psychology. Both are with Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

According to Gray, “Our research suggests that torture may not uncover guilt so much as lead to its perception. It is as though people who know of the victim’s pain must somehow convince themselves that it was a good idea — and so come to believe that the person who was tortured deserved it.”

Gray adds, “Those who feel complicit with the torture have a need to justify the torture, and so link the victim’s pain to blame. On the other hand, those distant from torture have no need to justify it and so can sympathize with the suffering of the victim, linking pain to innocence. Seeing others in pain can perpetuate ideological differences about the justifiability of torture. Those who initially advocate torture see those harmed as guilty, unlike those who initially reject torture and its methods.”

The findings explain the mystery behind the controversial scandal that rocked the US prisons in Abu Ghraib. As the world now knows, prison guards routinely inflicted torture on detainees. ‘Prison guards, who are close to the suffering of detainees, see detainees as more guilty the more they suffer, unlike the more distant general public.’

There is still a debate as to whether torture can actually make a victim tell the truth. The new study suggests a whole new meaning of the practice of torture: ‘the mere fact that someone was tortured leads observers to think that the truth was found.’

Via ScienceDaily