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The Use of Torture in Interrogations
 

For a .PDF version of this fact sheet, please click here.

Torture during interrogations is defined by the United Nations as cruel or degrading treatment of a person, with the intent of obtaining intelligence or a confession. [1]  Any form of torture is prohibited in the United States, including during times of war.

Unsurprisingly, torture produces serious and lasting trauma in the victims of torture. While some may accept this in the interest of national security, the severe cost of torture extends to the individuals who apply torture techniques as part of national security investigations. Policy-makers should take all of this into account when evaluating the use of torture in interrogations.

The following science-based arguments are particularly relevant for the debate on the use of torture in interrogations:

-Torture is ineffective and liable to produce false information
-All parties involved in torture suffer long-term damaging effects
-Torture has severe adverse consequences for society

Torture is ineffective and liable to produce false information
• The use of abusive interrogation techniques is often based on the assumption that a suspect is withholding intelligence. Research has confirmed that interrogators can not reliably tell when a suspect is withholding information. Innocent suspects who do not possess valuable information are likely to appear defiant and resistant to interrogators, and are interrogated more violently. [2] 
• Numerous survivors of torture report they would have said whatever they believed would make the torturers stop. [3]  
• Longitudinal studies show that false confessions are among the main causes of wrongful criminal convictions, especially for the most serious crimes. About one-quarter of wrongful conviction cases involve false confessions [4] 
• Research has demonstrated that professionally trained interrogators are able to identify deception at a rate only marginally above chance. [5]

All parties involved in torture suffer long-term damaging effects
• Systematic data analyses of the effect of torture suggest that torture survivors suffer severe life-long damage in their physical, psychological, and economic functioning. [6] 
• The traumatic consequences of torture extend to families of the victims, and span across multiple generations of survivor communities. [7]
• Research evidence confirms that even if a society justifies the use of torture, perpetrators of harsh interrogation techniques experience long-term negative psychological effects as a result of their actions. [8]

Torture has severe adverse consequences for society
• Scientific studies illustrate that impunity for perpetrators of torture are linked to frustration, insecurity, and addictive as well as violent behavior in the community. [9] 
• The United States endangers its citizens who are imprisoned abroad because of its own failure to abide by international standards for an ethical treatment of detainees. [10]
• Since torture in interrogations occurs in secrecy, i.e. in a void of legal, professional, or community oversight, the human rights of all parties involved are not protected. [11]


  > Policy recommendation

The use of torture undermines the credibility of the United States in advocating for international human rights. Furthermore, as the research evidence above illustrates, torture is ineffective and has far-reaching damaging consequences for American citizens. This is ethically unacceptable. Therefore, the United States and its military should once and for all outlaw all interrogation techniques that are cruel, dehumanizing, and degrading.


This fact sheet is based on the scholarly article “Psychologists and the Use of Torture in Interrogations” by Mark Costanzo, Ellen Gerrity, and M. Brinton Lykes, published in the journal Analyses Social Issues and Public Policy, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2007, pp. 7-20.


About SPSSI
The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) is an international group of approximately 3000 psychologists, allied scientists, students, and others who share a common interest in research on the psychological aspects of important social issues. In various ways, the Society seeks to bring theory and practice into focus on human problems of the group, the community, and nations, as well as the increasingly important problems that have no national boundaries.

For more information, please contact Jutta Tobias, Ph.D., SPSSI James Marshall Public Policy Fellow, at jtobias@spssi.org, or (202) 675-6956.

Fact sheet created by Jutta Tobias; June 2009.

References

1. United Nations. (1984, 1987). Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Retrieved May 7, 2006 from www.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm.
2. Kassin, S. M., Goldstein, C. J., & Savitsky, K. (2003). Behavioral confirmation in the interrogation room: On the dangers of presuming guilt. Law and Human Behavior, 27, 187-203.
3. Mayer, J. (2005). The Gitmo Experiment. Retrieved April 3, 2006, from www.newyorker.com; McCoy, A. (2006). A question of torture: CIA interrogation, from the cold war to the war on terror. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.
4. Drizin, S. A., & Leo, R. A. (2004). The problem of false confessions in the post-DNA world. North Carolina Law Review, 82, 891-1007.
5. Vrij, A. (2004). Why professionals fail to catch liars and how they can improve. Legal and Criminal Psychology, 9, 159-181; Vrij, A., & Mann, S. (2001). Who killed my relative?: Police officers’ ability to detect real-life high-stake lies. Psychology, Crime, and Law, 7, 119-132; Garrido, E., Masip, J., & Herrero, C. (2004). Police officers’ credibility judgments: Accuracy and estimated ability. International Journal of Psychology, 39, 254-275.
6. Basoglu, M., Livanou, M., Crnobaric, C., Franciskovic, T., Suljic, E., Duric, D., & Vranesic, M. (2005). Psychiatric and cognitive effects of war in former Yugoslavia. Journal of the American Medical Association, 294, 580-590; Mollica, R. F., McInnes, K., Poole, C., & Tor, S. (1998). Does-effect relationships of trauma to symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among Cambodian survivors of mass violence. British Journal of Psychiatry, 17, 482-488; Quiroga, J., & Jaranson, J. M. (2005). Politically-motivated torture and its survivors: A desk study review of the literature. Torture, 16, 1-112.
7. Daud, A., Skoglund, E., & Rydelius, P. (2005). Children in families of torture victims: Transgenerational transmission of parents’ traumatic experiences to their children. International Journal of Social Welfare, 14, 22-32; Yehuda, R., Engel, S. M., Brand, S. R., Seckl, J., Marcus, S. M., & Berkowitz, G. (2005). Transgenerational effects of posttraumatic stress disorder in babies of mothers exposed to the World Trade Center attacks during pregnancy. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 90, 4115-4118.
8. Falk, R., Gendzier, I., & Lifton, R. J. (Eds). (2006). Crimes of war: Iraq. New York: Avalon Publishing Group; Lifton, R. J. (2004). Doctors and torture. New England Journal of Medicine, 351, 415-416.
9. Lagos, D., & Kordon, D. (1996). Psychological effects of political repression and impunity in Argentina. Torture, 6, 54-56; Neumann, E., & Monasterio, H. (1991, November). Impunity: A symbiotic element of terror. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on Health, Political Repression and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile; Roht-Arriaza, N. (1995). Punishment, redress, and pardon: Theoretical and psychological approaches. In N. Roht-Arriaza (Ed.), Impunity and human rights in international law and practice (pp. 13-23). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
10. Costanzo, M., Gerrity, E., & Lykes, M. B. (2007). Psychologists and the Use of Torture in Interrogations. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 7(1), 7-20.
11. Lott, B. (2007). APA and the Participation of Psychologists in Situations in Which Human Rights Are Violated: Comment on “Psychologists and the Use of Torture in Interrogations”. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 7(1), 35-43.