Americans are not ‘fine with torture,’ despite overheated claims [View all]

[octoberlib]

Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post warns us “not to kid ourselves: Most Americans are fine with torture, even when you call it ‘torture.“ Brittany Lyte of fivethirtyeight.com shows slightly more restraint while reporting “Americans have grown more supportive of torture.”

But have they? Public opinion polls have shown the contrary. The public has seldom been supportive of torture, even when presented with “ticking time bomb” scenarios where the intelligence is described as vital to stopping an impending terrorist attack. When asked about actual torture practices such as waterboarding or sexual humiliation, public support mostly collapses.We have compiled the most exhaustive archive of US and international public opinion data on torture dating back to 2001. Additionally, we have conducted three survey experiments to identify the boundaries and probe the nuances of public attitudes about torture. The archive includes items asking about support for torture, support for specific torture techniques, and even some surveys of American military personnel.

Our analysis, which is summarized in our 2010 paper, is that the American political and media elite badly overestimated public support for torture, especially in the early years of the war on terror and after the publicized events at Abu Ghraib. In this piece, we argued that the political and media elite came to false consensus. This is a coping mechanism long known to psychologists whereby we project our views onto others. We developed unique survey items that clearly showed widespread projection effects regarding torture, especially among those who were most supportive of these techniques.

However, nothing in our data supports Ingraham’s overheated claim that Americans are “fine with torture.“ Ingraham makes this claim by counting those who say that torture is “never justified” as opposed and all others as “supportive.” This is a mistake. The public is rarely comfortable with moral absolutes. Our work shows that it is wrong to lump those who say “rarely” into the supportive category, a conclusion also reached by Aaron Blake of The Fix.Furthermore, when Americans are asked about specific techniques that Senator John McCain says have “dubious efficacy” and “risk our national honor,” public support is far lower. A table from our 2010 paper, reproduced below, shows that 81% oppose electric shock, 58-81% oppose waterboarding, 84-89% oppose sexual humiliation, etc.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/americans-are-not-fine-with-torture-despite-overheated-claims/