Article archive / August 1, 2015
Originally published: . Volume 6, No. 8. Source pages: 2.
Will APA Throw the Baby Out with the Water Torture? by J. Nelson
The Hoffman report comes out after a decade long conflict between those with different goals and to some degree, different worldviews. The human rights psychologists promote the noble ideal of “first do no harm,” which, it appears, the military psychologists fear will prohibit them from any involvement in interrogations. The human rights people have been frustrated mightily and dismissed by APA. Gasoline was poured on the fire when it eventually came out that two psychologists were involved in water- boarding terrorists, proving that the human rights people had a point––that this type of power is very dangerous.
Into this conundrum enters Hoffman with his 556-page report. There is no quantification of data, there are no frequency tables or even any collapsing of themes. There are no standardized measures, but of course without themes, what is there to measure? We are told that the “process” amounts to reviewing 50,000 documents and interviewing 148 people, which of course is not a process or method, but a list of things. As to the report itself, we find that observations are mixed with opinions, opinions mixed with conclusions, and unproven hunches about inner motivations and personality characteristics, mixed with all the rest.
Haven’t we psychologists been trained to guard against intuitions, even in qualitative research, that sneak ad hoc into our explanations? We know that a couple of solid categories and a 2 X 2 table can help us avoid what our minds naturally do––which is to truncate, delete, and distort, which make our final judgments no better than dart-throwing chimpanzees.
By now you may have guessed that I feel uncomfortable with this report. How are we as psychologists to deal with this? I’ve seen the comments that say, “Yes the report is flawed, but it is still valid in ways.” Well, doesn’t our training say that reliability limits validity? I believe I can explain something, and at the same time avoid being criticized as trying to kill the messenger. Hoffman was right about the general phenomenon. APA officials had lost grip on their duty to stay 100 percent clear of subgroup conflicts. A huge mistake and probably obvious to any outsider who stopped to look. Hanlon’s razor––Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. (Tom Hannie keeps wisely pointing this out to me.)
For those who are untrained in group dynamics, like Hoffman, the slide from being neutral, or at least trying to be neutral, into the projective field, where our groupish brains take hold and reality shifts, might look like conscious intent and “collusion.” But it isn’t. Even in Hoffman’s report he points out the emotional conflict, referring to “incredible intensity of the anger” on “both sides of this debate.” He tells us straight out that this is a high-intensity conflict. From these emotions it is nothing at all to slip back and forth from the rescuer to the victim to the persecutor roles in social exchanges.
I would imagine that officials in APA started out and even continued to see their efforts as “facilitating” some compromise. Not as Hoffman sees it, “manipulating.” But there might not look like much difference at all in overt behavior, the difference is only in intent.
What astonishes me also is that APA hired an attorney to “investigate” its organizational problems, which is substituting an adversarial approach for what might be better viewed as a family group issue. And, an attorney who has run for the U.S. Senate. Duh?!
But I’ve seen it now so often, that I am wondering if psychologists have some sort of genetic makeup that causes them not to be able to resolve intragroup conflicts. That is certainly the case here in our community. I’ve witnessed a very strong tendency to avoid conflict. I’ve seen years of people in this community knowing there are serious intragroup problems and never asking for help. I’ve seen them ask for administrators, lobbyists, attorneys, even parliamentarians, but I’ve never seem them ask for psychological help. Go figure.
So Hoffman sees malice apparently with “secrets” and “collusion,” cloak and dagger images. He views it as manipulating rather than failed facilitating. He suspects intentional misleading, rather than poor leadership. He sees APA as seeking the favors of DoD, rather than serving the members who work for DoD.
Outcomes include removing those who were involved in the mistakes, a necessary management change for the depth of this kind of error, whether malice or incompetence. APA had the power and so had the responsibility. The outcomes in the sound bite media, ugh.
The outcomes for the two factions, well that is less clear. It’s possible that there is not enough room in APA for two, conflicting worldviews. Most psychologists are in health care, even military psychologists, and most psychologists are progressives politically, with 94 percent being Democratic.
The myths have legs now. The cognitively complex reasoning is harder than the simple sound bite that is more dramatic. Backfire effects are in play. Anyone who objects looks defensive, or worse, in favor of torture, which is a sticky word. The word sticks to your hand no matter how hard you try to shake it off.
But I hope APA does not throw out the military psychologists who want to apply scientific psychology for a non-healthcare purpose––national security. I hope we can keep them involved because I believe we need them. I hope we can keep all the human rights psychologists involved also. We need good psychologists everywhere, with our unique training and with our ideals, to help solve our human problems, and to keep the waters pure.
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