Last week I went to a Rose Cafe where we talked about torture in SE Asia. I think that torture is wrong because of moral reasons. A comment was made that torture was mostly likely to occur in places that had an insurgency because the groups engaged in “us vs them” thinking. This made me think of the psych classes I’ve taken over the years where we talked about how normal people can do terrible things. For example, in the famous Milgram study, a majority of participants gave lethal shocks to other “subjects” when they answered questions incorrectly. No one was physically harmed in this study because the “subjects” were compatriots of the researcher, and no actual shocks were given. The participants, who were all normal, average people, believed that they were giving lethal shocks though. This study revealed that even average people can do terrible things in the right situations. It showed that the situation has a greater effect on how a person will react than the person’s personality. That may be one reason why many people who are facing an insurgency may engage in torture. Again, I think that torture is morally wrong, and should not be done under any circumstances, but using some key elements from psychology may help us understand why and how normal people can do such terrible things.