Abstract
Over two-thirds of the 110 college students in this study reportedly have entertained at least one fantasy of an offending person being tortured, and 58% of the students reportedly have entertained at least one fantasy of a terrorist being tortured—physically, psychologically, or sexually—by themselves, by other persons, or by divine or demonic beings in an afterlife. The 58% with one or more fantasies of torturing a terrorist felt significantly more ashamed of the real torture perpetrated by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison. The students who felt significantly more avenged by the actual torture at Abu Ghraib turned out to be the 34 who had torture fantasies and, at the same time, had higher psychoticism scores. Higher psychoticism—measured not as an all-or-none abnormality, but along an abnormal-to-normal continuum—was also associated with fantasizing the sexual torture of terrorists and fantasizing the torture of terrorists in an afterlife.
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