Support for Coercive Interrogation Among College Students: Torture and the Ticking Bomb Scenario

Abstract

The “war on terrorism” has stimulated a debate over the use of torture to obtain vital information. One school of thought, the consequentialists, finds that there are at least some situations, such as the “ticking bomb,” in which some level of torture is called for. Others, the deontologists, argue that torture is never justified. They typically maintain that the ticking bomb scenario is more myth than reality (Homant, Witkowski, & Howell, 2008). In this research, 252 college students were asked the level of coercive interrogation—levels of pressure up to and including torture—that they would approve of in response to various scenarios involving criminal offenders and terrorists. Sixty-one percent supported at least some level of torture in the ticking bomb scenario. Support for torture formed a general coercion scale. High scores on this scale correlated with support for capital punishment, a belief that torture has yielded some useful information in the war on terror, and the belief that sometimes one must choose the lesser of 2 evils. Low scores on the coercion scale correlated with the beliefs that Arab Muslims have been unfairly targeted in the war on terror and that information gained from torture is totally unreliable.