Frederick Forsyth shows a keen appreciation of the psychology of coercion in his, The Fist of God, a piece of fiction set during the first Gulf War, pages 553-555.
Two American bomber pilots are shot down over Iraq, captured and then tortured until they reveal their secret -the flight information. Both, heroically resist to the point of death. The only information they will reveal to their captors is name and rank.
Yet, they are broken in the end. By a simple bit of applied psychology.
The flight lieutenant is told that since he has resisted "so well", the torture is now over for him. The implication is that the Iraqis believe that he will not break. Before he can fully digest the strategic import of this information, he is also told that his pilot, in the other room, is dying.
"Your choice, when you tell us [what we want to know] we stop and rush him to the hospital."
This promise/threat works and soon both captives are confessing. The flight lieutenant, first.
The Iraqi officer concludes with the observation "Never underestimate the sentimentality of the British or Americans."
This strikes me as both insightful and philosophically puzzling. (The sort of puzzle that if you cannot solve, the lack of a solution doesn't sneak doubt or skepticism back into the original insight.)
1. The Flight Lieutenant would rather die than break and reveal the flight information.
Dfl > Bfl
2. The Pilot would, also, rather die than break and reveal the flight information.
Dp > Bp
3. Each is reasonably aware of this, having been trained together in the military.
(Each has been trained well enough to act in accordance with these demanding preferences -- dictating a disregard of personal survival. A point of honor.)
4. But, the Flight Lieutenant would rather break than have the Pilot die.
Bfl > Dp
The Flight Lieutenant appears to have robbed the Pilot of the value of his physical resistance, by revealing what both had intended never to reveal. Does he imagine that the Pilot will thank him for action -- acting against the Pilot's hard won preferences?
And how does "sentimentality" figure in as an explanation for this deviation from honor, if it is a deviation?
Finally, this gives rise a formal puzzle.
The Flight Lieutenant by transitivity has these preferences: Dfl > Bfl > Dp, but knows that the Pilot prefers Dp > Bp. The content revealed by either is the same, so we may equate with Bfl with Bp, call it B.
The Flight Lieutenant prefers: Dfl > B > Dp
The Pilot prefers: Dp > B.
There appears no consistent way for the Flight Lieutenant to honor the Pilot's preferences. Either he lets the Pilot die, or dishonors him by refusing to act in accordance with the Pilot's preferences.
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