Holding A Gun Makes You See Held Objects As Guns

From "HOLDING A GUN MAKES YOU THINK OTHERS ARE TOO" on ScienceBlog:

Wielding a gun increases a person’s bias to see guns in the hands of others, new research from the University of Notre Dame shows.

Notre Dame Associate Professor of Psychology James Brockmole, who specializes in human cognition and how the visual world guides behavior, together with a colleague from Purdue University, conducted the study, which will appear in an upcoming issue of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Perception and Performance.***“Beliefs, expectations, and emotions can all influence an observer’s ability to detect and to categorize objects as guns,” Dr. Brockmole says. “Now we know that a person’s ability to act in certain ways can bias their recognition of objects as well, and in dramatic ways. It seems that people have a hard time separating their thoughts about what they perceive and their thoughts about how they can or should act.”

The researchers showed that the ability to act is a key factor in their effects by showing that simply showing observers a nearby gun did not influence their behavior; holding and using the gun was important.

“One reason we supposed that wielding a firearm might influence object categorization stems from previous research in this area which argues that people perceive the spatial properties of their surrounding environment in terms of their ability to perform an intended action,” Brockmole says.

By arming police officers, security guards and others with guns and putting them in situations where they will draw their firearms, independent of any racial or other prejudices, the gun holders will have a bias towards seeing more innocent objects held by others as guns. Unfortunately, due to this perceptual illusion, innocent victims are mistakenly shot and killed.