A Tormenting Dilemma: American Identity and Attitudes Towards Torture

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X231173917
• Author: Anca Zugravu,Mike Medeiros,Alessandro Nai
• Date: 01 July 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2023, Vol. 51(4) 457–466

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1532673X231173917

journals.sagepub.com/home/apr

A Tormenting Dilemma: American Identity

and Attitudes Towards Torture

Anca Zugravu

1

, Mike Medeiros

2

, and Alessandro Nai

1



Abstract

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, research on attitudes towards the use of torture on suspected terrorists has become common.

However, despite acknowledging the identity-rooted relationship between threat and out-group hostility, the possible re-

lationship between identity attachment and attitudes towards torture has been under-explored. Using data from the 2016

American National Election Study, the results of the present study further the understanding of the relationship between

identity and support for torture. Two main f‌indings are supported: 1) greater attachment to American Identity increases

support for the torture of suspected terrorists, and 2) the perceived threat of terrorism partially mediates the relationship

between attachment to the American Identity and attitudes towards torture. Ultimately, the study demonstrates, high at-

tachment to American Identity and the 9/11-generated discursive construction of terrorists as threatening this identity is

associated with individuals’attitudes towards torture.

Keywords

Identity, threat, terrorism, torture, United States

Introduction

The 1949 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the

1984 United Nations Convention against Torture prohibit the

use of torture (Off‌ice of the united nations high commissioner

for human rights (OHCHR) 1984). Yet, in 2014, the Select

Committee of the United States Senate published a

report documenting the CIA’s six-year-long “enhanced

interrogation program”(BBC 2014). Initiated in the after-

math of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the program involved the

harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists at black sites

around the world through methods such as: sleep deprivation,

prolonged stress positions, wall standing, box conf‌inement,

sexual threats, sexual humiliation, mock executions, and

waterboarding (ibid). The release of the report provoked

outrage across the world, but in the United States, torture had

already become a subject of public discussion a mere

2 months after the September 2001 terrorist attacks

(Rutenberg 2001).

Since then, countless national polls have explored

Americans’attitudes towards torture, illustrating a diverging

set of opinions (Gronke et al., 2010). Given the importance of

public opinion on policies and the grave violation of human

rights that torture implies, the main question has always been:

What drives support for the use of torture on suspected

terrorists? Broadly speaking, research has mainly focused on

four sets of factors. First, individual prof‌iles and their

relations with attitudes; in this direction, the scholarship has

highlighted the role of ideology, partisanship, gender, age,

and authoritarian predispositions in determining attitudes

towards torture (Gronke et al., 2010;Haider-Markel and

Vieux 2008;Huddy et al., 2005;Lizotte 2017; Mayer and

Armor 2012; Piazza 2020). Second, the inf‌luence of exposure

to political information, most notably the political discourse

surrounding the war on terrorism, in determining foreign

policy attitudes after 9/11 (Blauwkamp et al., 2018;Haider-

Markel et al., 2006). Third, the role of situational perceptions,

such as the link between the perceived threat of terrorism and

opinions on torture (Huddy and Feldman 2011;Huddy et al.

2005,2007;Nacos et al., 2007).

Next to these three broad sets of factors, there is, fourthly,

dynamics of social and political identity have also been

shown to play a central role in explaining individuals’atti-

tudes towards torture. Specif‌ically, the ethnic background of

suspected terrorists, whether they are of Arab descent and/or

Muslim, has been shown to be related to Americans’support

1

University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

2

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Mike Medeiros, Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab, The University of Texas at

Austin, 158 W 21st St, STOP A1800, Austin, TX 78712-1139, USA.

Email: mike.medeiros@austin.utexas.edu