patrick.net

http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201412/what-role-did-psychology-play/our-opinions-about-torture-depend-the-person-who-is

And what David had to tell us was, to say the least, very disturbing. What he and his colleagues are investigating is how people's ideas about torture differ according to their cultural and political values. They conducted an experiment in which subjects were presented with a fictional case of a government agent being charged with waterboarding a terror suspect. The test subjects were presented with "experts," one arguing that torture was very effective at obtaining valuable and reliable information, and the other that terror is completely ineffective (so that they heard both sides). The test subjects were also classified according to...