The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

torture as well as to plea bargaining and other forms of coerced interrogations. 35 I argue that the
incentives faced by the accused during the witch trials mimic this logic strongly: by the time the trials
were fully characterized by a deceptive cycle, it was clear to all accused that the only chance they held
of surviving lay in confessing their 'crimes' – and naming others. In validating these denunciations, the
elites running the trials made use of a curious technology: 'spectral testimony' as related by the young
girls whose suffering began the whole affair, known collectively as the 'afflicted.' In effect, these girls
acted as a form of lie detector – sending a signal to the magistrates of the reliability of the testimony
obtained through the threat of coercion. And like all lie detectors, this technology was unreliable in the
extreme. 36
In Salem then, we have a case where the authorities confront an (unreal) threat through coerced
interrogation, but with minimal ability to evaluate the truth value of the information coerced. While it
may seem obvious in retrospect that this situation should lead to a deceptive cycle, I argue that it was
only the use of coerced interrogations that made this cycle possible. In stark contrast to 1692, no other
New England witch trial resulted in such a spiral of denunciations. In fact, the Salem trials do not
resemble other New English trials as much as the widespread witch hunts on the European continent
from the 15 th through the 17 th Centuries, which were marked for their direct use of torture as a means of
generating information. I argue that the Salem trials differ so strongly from prior trials in New England
precisely because they ended up mimicking the strategic logic of informational torture. And the cycle
was itself generated by an act of unofficial torture, perpetrated on the body of the slave, Tituba.
Consequently, I argue that Salem shows us how torture degenerates into the deceptive cycle in
the absence of a strong information environment, and an actual threat to be faced. Because the
authorities believed they could independently verify the accusations leveled by the afflicted and the
accused alike, and because these accusations fit their preconceptions, they unleashed forces they could
not control. But it is in how this cycle was eventually broken that we see the importance of empirical
verification in stemming (and potentially preventing) this cycle most clearly. Only when Rev. Increase
Mather, first president of Harvard College, was able to disseminate the properties of eye-sight newly
35 See in particular Langbein (1978). Although his analysis centers on the commonality between torture and plea
bargaining when it comes to confession, the same logic applies when the threat of pain, suffering, or imprisonment
hangs over the informant.
36 'Lie detectors' as such do not actually exist: 'truth' and 'fiction' are purely abstract concepts that cannot be measured
directly. Instead, most lie detectors historically have functioned as a form of elaborate bluff: that is, they only work
when the subject believes that they work. (Alder, 2002)
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