Christians and Torture: Part 5, Torturing a Family Man

In the fourth post of this series we talked about empathy and torture, showing that if you increase empathy you reduce pro-torture sentiment. My second team of students--Whitney, Alison and Courtney--approached this same topic from a different angle.

Specifically, they noted that these torture questions tend to be very abstract. There is usually just a generic reference to a captured "terrorist." Very little humanizing information is given. More, the word "terrorist" acts like a cipher, allowing us to project stereotypes into the blank. We usually think the terrorist is a male and Muslim. Beyond that, we add few personalizing details, details that might show similarities between ourselves and the terrorist.

Given all this, this team did a simple manipulation. What if we added personalizing information to one of these torture questions like the one the Pew Research Center used? Their choice focused on manipulating information about having a family and children.

One group of participants read the following description before rating torture endorsement. No family information was included:

No Family Context Prime:
A suspected terrorist has been captured by the US military and brought in for questioning. This suspect is believed to have crucial information that could save the lives of many people. However, getting this information may require using torture and other enhanced interrogation tactics. Do you think it is acceptable to use torture in this situation?
A second group of participants read a similar description, but this time family information about the terrorist was included (I've highlighted the change):
Family Context Prime:
A suspected terrorist has been captured by the US military and brought in for questioning. This suspect is a 30 year old male who is married and has two children (boy age 3, girl age 8). He is believed to have crucial information that could save the lives of many people. However, getting this information may require using torture and other enhanced interrogation tactics. Do you think it is acceptable to use torture in this situation?
The students found that adding humanizing detail--in this case information about age, family, and children--significantly reduced torture endorsement.

This outcome isn't surprising, but I find it highly significant. Violence requires dehumanization. Consequently, I worry, as we discussed in the first post, that many Christians, more so than non-Christians, favor torture. It's worrisome in that Christians are allowing their hearts to be affected by the forces of dehumanization. As a result our empathy is being compromised.
To Create an Enemy by Sam Keen
To create an enemy
Start with an empty canvas.
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women, and children.
Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.
Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every finite heart.
Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.
Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.
Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares—devils,
demons, minions of evil.
When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

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5 thoughts on “Christians and Torture: Part 5, Torturing a Family Man”

  1. I don't know if there are any fans of the re-visioned Battlestar Galactica out there, but the show did a remarkable job of exploring just this point - when you come to know your enemy, it is much harder to think of them as your enemy.

  2. Excellent.

    Another interesting way of phrasing the question would be to ask about the answerer's own family:

    A family member has been accused of terrorism. Do you think the use of torture in their interrogation is acceptable?

    -Daniel

  3. The study we wanted to do but never got around to was to change the terrorist's name contrasting reactions to a "Christian" name (e.g., Mark Christian) to a Muslim name. Would Christians be more willing to torture a Muslim? This would get after an kind of "holy war" dynamic.

  4. Compare this with propaganda pieces from WWII depicting Germans and Japanese more as animals then as men. Often with fewer details in the depiction, etc. A general study in artistic expression of the enemy will demonstrate the same invocation or suppression of empathy.
    How does this relate to the believer, who is no longer supposed to rely on empathy to direct his ethical position? The believer should derive his ethics from the life of Christ. Re-humanizing the enemy was a central part of Jesus' message.
    Nathanael Snow

  5. "Violence requires dehumanization."

    I'd suggest it might be more accurate to say that violence requires de-individuation. Our violence against both animals and humans requires the same denial of the victims' identity as an individual. The idea of "the animal" being a categorical construct through which we already have strong de-individuation mechanisms in place is precisely what makes it effective as a violence enabling construct.

    ~ Debra

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