A study was done to better understand what causes
post-traumatic stress disorder. It had
been noted that some veterans had PTSD even though a last minute reprieve
prevented them from having to carry through the awful choice they had
made. So they put people in an MRI and
asked them for a decision about the following scenario.
You and others are hiding in a concealed shelter while enemy
soldiers are searching for you. If they
find you, they will torture and kill you all.
One of the women hiding with you has a baby and the baby starts to
cry. If the soldiers hear the baby, they
will find you. Nothing the woman does
stops the baby from crying.
The question: Do you kill the baby to save yourself and the
others?
Most people react with recoil and disgust. They won’t even consider the option. Never going to happen. The researchers then pressed the research
group and forced them to enter a decision of yes or no. A control group was allowed to leave without
entering the decision.
Interestingly, those who were forced to make a decision
showed initial signs of PTSD regardless of whether the decision was yes or
no. It was the act of having to make
such a monstrous decision which caused the trauma (although I’m sure the
necessary follow through would make it worse).
Either you commit the monstrous act of killing a baby or you become
potentially responsible for the pain and death of an entire group. There’s no good decision there.
It gives us a better understanding of how our brains and
emotions work. Being forced into an
impossible situation is traumatic, even if you make the “right” decision. So our emphasis on reassuring people they
made the right choice isn’t helpful.
Giving them a chance to release the stress without judgment and
empathizing with the difficulty was more useful in helping the test group reach
some peace of mind.
Granted, this was only a hypothetical situation and the
people in question weren’t asked to carry through with their decision. But it still gives us insight. Actually, I wonder if the public nature of
the decision also plays a factor.
Presumably some of the control group had an idea of which choice they
would make but weren’t forced to reveal it.
I would be curious to see if there was a followup to see if their
potential choice weighed on them later.
There could also be some interesting parallels with the Milgram experiments where people had to choose whether or not to give a fatal shock to a fellow experimentor (who was actually an actor). How many of those people ended up with traumatic issues from having to make that decision?
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