From: elg@elgamy.jpunix.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 12 Dec 92 09:46:50 CDT
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Psychology and Interrogation
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <1992Dec11.193925.2464@dct.ac.uk>, by mcsdc1al@dct.ac.uk:
> In article <1992Dec10.193426.2411@dct.ac.uk>, mcsdc1al@dct.ac.uk writes:
>> As someone not too clued up on psychology and with a slight problem to solve, I
>> wonder if anyone could help me...
>>
>> If you took a strong-willed man and wished to extract information from him,
>> how, psychologically speaking, would you go about taking this information from
>> him.

What you have here is a problem in basic compliance training. It is always
possible to train a person in basic compliance, if the person has the
prerequisite mental and physical capabilities to comply with the directive.
It basically requires administering a negative consequence for every
instance of noncompliance, and a positive consequence for every instance of
compliance (to be thinned out when noncompliance no longer occurs, of
course). This means in addition to instances of noncompliance you must find
an instance of compliance, which may be either accidental, or purposeful.
For example, if your interrogator asks him for his name, rank, and serial
number, and he replies with his name, rank, and serial number (as most
soldiers are trained to do when interrogated), he has complied. If he has
been deprived of sleep for three days by watchful guards, and then you tell
him to go to sleep and he does, he has complied. It may also be useful to
have the interrogator personally administer positive consequences, while
some other party administers negative consequences. This prevents the
problem of punisher avoidance.

You first train compliance for simple tasks. Then you gradually train
compliance for more and more complex tasks. Eventually -- and it will take
quite some time -- you train compliance for intellectual tasks. Then you're
ready to tackle the question of obtaining information from him. It is
always possible to train a human being in compliance. With some human
beings, however, it takes much longer than with others. It may take as long
as six months with a particularly resistant highly-trained individual.

None of this is particularly revolutionary. Parents do this with their
children. When their children are being unreasonable (don't comply with
parental directives), parents "time out" their children or otherwise punish
them. When their children are being reasonable, parents do interesting
things with their children and otherwise reward them. As a teacher, I, too,
have trained basic compliance into my students. Non-compliance gets them a
swift trip to timeout and loss of ten minutes of recess. Compliance gets
them praise, parties, and other rewards. The difference between our
situation and that of an interrogator trying to interrogate a spy is one of
degree of consequences and degree of training. My kids haven't been taught
about scientific behavioral techniques, and thus are unable to apply
systematic anti-behavioral-change techniques. However, I do not apply
aversive consequences -- I don't hurt my children by cranking their arms
behind them, I don't squirt lemon juice into their mouth at every instance
of noncompliance, I don't slap their face and shout "Don't!" at every
instance of noncompliance, etc... all of which have been methods used to
train compliance in less scrupulous times. Thus I suspect it would probably
take me and a trained interrogator about an equal amount of time to get
good physical compliance from our charges -- around four to eight weeks.
Intellectual compliance, on the other hand, may take quite a bit longer,
due to the inaccessibility of cues (i.e., it's harder to measure compliance
and noncompliance). As a teacher I don't really have that problem -- I
don't want to tell my kids how they should think, I just want to keep them
from killing each other and tearing up the room. Interrogation is a
slightly different ballgame.

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.jpunix.com   Dodson Elementary
 (713) 664-6446                             Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"
Newsgroups: sci.psychology