

Pain Of Torture Can Make Innocent Seem Guilty - amichail
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091026152818.htm

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btilly
This result is absolutely predictable by anyone who understands _cognitive
dissonance_.

[http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/cognitive_dis...](http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/cognitive_dissonance.htm)
has a decent explanation of cognitive dissonance. The same phenomena is what
causes many programmers to protect their self-image of being good programmers
by being unable to find the bugs in their own code, acknowledge that the bugs
are their fault, and then to be upset afterwards.

For a classic reference on that phenomena and what to do about it I recommend
_The Psychology of Computer Programming_ by Gerald M. Weinberg. (Yes, it is
several decades old. But human nature hasn't changed and its advice is still
good.) I also wrote up an explanation of the phenomena at
<http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=270083> some time ago.

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aerique
A couple of centuries late but it never hurts to reinforce common knowledge
with a new study.

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RyanMcGreal
> Gray explains the different results as arising from different levels of
> complicity.

Or as Upton Sinclair famously put it, it is difficult to get a man to
understand something if his paycheck depends on his not understanding it.

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biotech
Sounds pretty similar to the Milgram Experiment
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment>).

~~~
blahedo
Related, although Milgram was showing that people can explain away their own
complicity by being within a chain of authority, while this experiment teases
apart the perceptions of the complicit (or non-complicit) agent.

